How to Create a Restaurant Ordering App (2026)

By Sigsten Gustavii· 27 October 2026· 10 min read

To create a restaurant ordering app, write down your menu and how pickup works, describe both to an AI app builder like Borel (or paste your website's link), check one order from guest to kitchen and back, then publish it under your own Apple Developer account.

A restaurant app has one job: make ordering from you easier than ordering from anywhere else. Regulars want their usual in three taps, a pickup time that is honest, and a reason to come back. You don't need a marketplace with thousands of restaurants for that. You need your own menu, in your own app, with your name on it. This guide covers the screens, the kitchen side most guides forget, how payment works under Apple's rules, the costs, and then the exact steps in Borel.

What a restaurant ordering app needs

Every order has two sides: the guest who places it and the staff who make it. Plan both from the start.

With Borel, all of this is kept in Borel Cloud, the database, sign-in and file storage Borel runs for the app. A guest's orders are readable by that guest and by the restaurant's staff account, and nobody else.

Pickup, delivery or table ordering?

Decide which kind of ordering you mean before anything else, because each one changes the app:

• Pickup is the simplest and the right place to start: a time slot, an order status and a counter.
• Table ordering swaps the pickup time for a table number, often from a code on the table. Guests usually pay at the end, as they do now.
• Delivery adds addresses, an area, drivers and a route. It is a bigger app; read how to create a delivery app before you promise it.

Many restaurants do pickup for a month, learn what regulars order, and only then add delivery.

How guests pay under Apple's rules

Apple's Guideline 3.1.3(e) says that physical goods and services used outside the app, which includes food, must be paid for with something other than Apple's in-app purchase. That leaves two honest choices:

1. Pay at pickup. The app takes the order; the guest pays at the counter as today. Nothing to set up, no fees beyond your card terminal.
2. Pay in the app with Stripe. Add your Stripe key under Tools, in Keys. Borel stores it encrypted and calls Stripe from its own server, so the key is never inside the app. A Stripe Checkout page the app opens is the simplest version; test it in Stripe's test mode before real money moves.

Either way, keep the menu in the app and the till in step: a dish sold out at the counter should be sold out in the app.

What brings regulars back

Once the order flow works, the extras are a short message each:

• Reorder the last order from the home screen.
• A loyalty stamp on every order, with a free dish at ten.
• A pickup reminder scheduled on the phone ten minutes before the time, using Apple's reminders and notifications.
• Directions to the restaurant on Apple Maps.
• Your own dish photos, attached in Borel, so the menu shows your real food.

App Store rules for restaurant apps

Guideline 4.2 matters most for restaurants, because many "restaurant apps" are only a website in a frame and get turned down. A native menu and cart are the opposite of that. The full text is on Apple's App Review Guidelines page.

What a restaurant app costs

A year on Borel's lowest Pro tier and Apple's membership is $339, or $291 with Borel paid yearly. Delivery platforms take a commission on every order instead; your own app takes none. See pricing for every tier.

What Borel won't do for you

• Push notifications. Not built yet. A guest sees "ready" when the app is open, and staff see new orders when the list refreshes, so keep the staff screen open on a phone or iPad at the counter.
• Your till. Borel doesn't connect to point-of-sale systems out of the box. If yours has an API, a key under Tools, in Keys, is the way in.
• Delivery drivers at scale. Live courier tracking and dispatch are a different product.
• Android. Borel makes iPhone and iPad apps only.

How to choose the right restaurant app builder

• Borel, for your own native iPhone app with a menu, ordering and a staff screen, built from your website or a description.
• [CatDoes](/compare/catdoes), if Android guests are a large share of your regulars; it builds React Native apps for both stores.
• [FlutterFlow](/compare/flutterflow), if a developer will hand-tune the app in a visual editor.
• An ordering platform, if you want delivery and a listing among other restaurants and accept a commission per order.

Builder prices are each company's lowest plan that publishes to the App Store, from their pricing pages in October 2026.

How to do it with Borel, step by step

Step 1: Start from your menu or your website

If the restaurant has a website, paste its link. Borel's website to iPhone app reads the name, colours, logo and content, and builds a native app from them, not a web page in a frame. Otherwise, have the menu as text: categories, dishes, prices, options and allergens.

Step 2: Describe how ordering works

Open Borel and describe the guest's path and the kitchen's. Say how pickup times work, because that is what guests care about most.

Make an ordering app for Nonna's, a pizza restaurant. Guests browse the menu by category with photos, pick a size and extras, and add a note. Checkout asks for a pickup time in 15-minute slots from 20 minutes ahead, and the guest pays at pickup. Guests sign in with email to see their order status (received, in the oven, ready) and to reorder past orders. The restaurant signs in with a staff account and sees incoming orders, oldest on top, with buttons to mark each one in the oven and ready. Refresh that list every few seconds. Staff can mark a dish sold out. Warm red and cream colours.

Borel's planner, Penny, asks about anything unclear, like opening hours. Then Rivet writes the app in Swift with SwiftUI and Xcode compiles it on Borel's Mac, so you don't need a Mac.

Step 3: Check one order end to end

The app opens on a live iPhone in your browser within a minute or two. Place an order as a guest, sign in as staff and move it to ready, then go back to the guest's account and check the status changed. Then ask yourself: can a guest order in under a minute, are sold-out dishes greyed out, and does the pickup time skip hours when you're closed?

Step 4: Add the extras

Ask for reorder, the loyalty stamp, the pickup reminder and directions, one message at a time. Every change is built and opened again, and every version is kept, so you can roll back in a click.

Step 5: Test in the restaurant

With Pro, Borel Companion installs the app on your iPhone and the counter's from a Windows PC or a Mac. Run a quiet afternoon with staff ordering from it before you tell guests.

Step 6: Publish

Stamp, Borel's reviewer, checks the app for the rules Apple most often turns apps down for. Publish then builds, signs and uploads it to App Store Connect under your own Apple Developer account. Give Apple's reviewer a guest account and a staff account so they can see both sides.

The Bottom Line

Your regulars already know your food; an ordering app just removes the queue. With Borel, the menu, cart, pickup times, order status and kitchen screen come from one description, natively on iPhone, under your own name and with no commission. Start with pay at pickup, run it for a week with staff, and add card checkout when guests ask for it. Paste your website into Borel and see your menu on a live iPhone today.

I started Borel because I wanted to make iPhone apps without a Mac or a team behind me. If this helped you build something, I would love to see it.

– Sigsten

Make your iPhone app in Borel

Describe the app you want and see its first screens before you pay anything.