The restaurant industry is massive — 1 million+ restaurants in the US alone — and desperately underserved by affordable software. Most small and independent restaurants pay $200–500/month for separate booking, ordering, and POS systems that don't integrate. A unified SaaS can win this market quickly.

1. Online Reservation System

Table reservation management: customer-facing booking widget (embeddable on any website), floor plan editor showing which tables are reserved, automatic confirmation and reminder emails/SMS, waitlist management for fully-booked periods. This core feature should take 3–4 weeks to build correctly.

2. Online Ordering

A branded ordering page where customers browse the menu, add items to cart, and pay online — with orders sent directly to the kitchen display system or printer. Stripe handles payments. The restaurant sets their delivery radius and pickup vs delivery options. Commission-free ordering (vs 30% from DoorDash) is a massive selling point.

3. Table and Waitlist Management

A digital floor plan that shows table status in real-time: empty, reserved, seated, needs attention. Host-facing app on a tablet or phone for managing walk-ins, waitlists, and table turns. When a table becomes available, automatically notify the next waitlist party via SMS.

Restaurant menus change daily — seasonal specials, 86'd items, price changes. A menu management system where staff can update items, mark items as unavailable, and change prices without a developer — then sync automatically to both the online ordering page and the in-house display.

5. Restaurant Analytics

Peak hours, table turn times, most and least popular menu items, average check size — these metrics help restaurant owners make better decisions. Pull this from reservation and order data and display it in a clean weekly report.

Build a Restaurant SaaS

I take 2 clients per month. Ship your SaaS in 2–4 weeks with a developer who has done it 350+ times.

Start on Fiverr →

Pricing

$99–199/month for independent restaurants and small chains. The zero-commission online ordering feature alone justifies the cost — one restaurant doing $10,000/month in delivery pays $3,000 in DoorDash commissions. Your SaaS at $149/month saves them $2,851/month.

POS Integration as a Moat

Restaurants that use your reservation software will actively look for competitors the moment they have to manually enter reservation data into their point-of-sale system. POS integration — specifically bidirectional sync with Toast, Square for Restaurants, or Lightspeed — is not a nice-to-have for serious restaurant software: it is a retention moat. Once a restaurant's reservation system is deeply integrated with their POS, table inventory, and floor plan, the switching cost is significant. Prioritize POS integration over almost any other feature if you want restaurant software customers who stay for years.