Introduction

In the fast-paced world of the restaurant industry, technology is often seen as the gateway to enhancing customer engagement and driving business growth. But while custom-built apps have become increasingly popular in the pursuit of a differentiated customer experience, many restaurant operators are now realizing that the costs and maintenance challenges associated with these apps can outweigh their benefits.

The High Cost of Custom Apps: A Burden for Restaurant Operators

Custom apps have long been a symbol of innovation in the restaurant tech world. Brands have looked to create unique, branded experiences to stand out in a crowded market, believing that a custom-built solution would offer them a competitive edge. However, the reality is often far more complicated—and expensive—than anticipated.

Creating and maintaining a custom app requires a significant investment in both time and money. Not only does it take a dedicated development team to build the app, but there are also continuous costs associated with updates, security patches, and ensuring the app evolves in line with changing consumer expectations and technological advancements. For many restaurants, these expenses are often underestimated at the outset. What initially seemed like an innovative way to engage guests turns into a heavy burden of ongoing maintenance costs and technical challenges.

The financial burden of custom app development extends far beyond the initial build. Restaurant operators face a multi-layered cost structure that includes substantial upfront investment in design, UX/UI development, backend infrastructure, and integration with existing restaurant systems like POS and online ordering. Once launched, the expenses continue to mount: regular updates for iOS and Android compatibility, security patches, server hosting, technical support staffing, and ongoing bug fixes. Each new feature or enhancement triggers additional development cycles, testing requirements, and potential complications. For multi-location or franchise operations, these costs are amplified by the need for consistent rollout and training across locations.

Many restaurants discover too late that their annual technology budget is dominated by app maintenance rather than innovation, with costs typically ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, depending on the app’s complexity and user base. Meanwhile, precious management attention is diverted from core restaurant operations to troubleshooting technical issues, creating a significant opportunity cost that rarely appears on balance sheets but impacts the bottom line nonetheless.

The Challenge: Bells and Whistles that Don’t Deliver ROI

Restaurant operators have understandably sought to offer their guests a differentiated experience, with custom apps providing a canvas for a wide range of unique features. However, many of these differentiators—such as gimmicky functions or flashy design elements—tend to be just bells and whistles that don’t actually drive meaningful business outcomes.

Even when these features show promise, they often come at a high cost. For instance, implementing complex loyalty programs, custom order flows, or unique rewards systems requires significant investment, but the return on investment is rarely sufficient to justify the expense. In many cases, these custom features fail to deliver the promised results in terms of customer retention, higher order values, or increased frequency of visits.

At the same time, many white-label apps—which are pre-built solutions designed to serve a wide range of restaurant brands—fail to provide the level of customization that restaurants desire. These solutions often look and feel generic, with minimal room for true brand differentiation. They are simply lightly branded versions of the same basic tech, leaving restaurants with a subpar customer experience.

The Shift: Moving Away from Custom Apps

The realization that custom apps and features often fail to deliver the desired business outcomes—while costing far more than expected—has led to a shift in the restaurant tech landscape. Restaurant operators are increasingly moving away from the expensive, time-consuming burden of custom apps and toward more flexible, streamlined platforms that offer a balance between differentiation and cost-efficiency.

Blaze Pizza, one of the fastest-growing fast-casual pizza brands in the U.S., provides a prime example of this shift. Previously, Blaze relied on a custom app and a loyalty program that was not optimized for the brand’s needs. These solutions were costly, difficult to maintain, and failed to deliver the desired level of guest engagement and operational efficiency.

“We had an older platform for our web and app that was very custom,” said Christian Kuhn, Chief Marketing Officer at Blaze Pizza, in a recent article in QSR Magazine. He goes on to say, “it took us forever to make changes, and we couldn’t act in real-time. We are at a place where we’ve got to start driving change for this organization.” He goes on to talk about the fact that today, about 35 percent of Blaze’s traffic is digital, and they have ambitions to grow that number to 50 percent or higher. “To do that, we need to find a partner that provides us an infrastructure that allows us in real-time to make changes, to understand data and what people are doing, to update things, and to create something that will grow with us.”

How Blaze Simplified with Thanx

In search of a more effective and cost-efficient solution, Blaze Pizza transitioned from a custom app built on top of Punchh, to Thanx. Thanx offered Blaze a streamlined, integrated solution that would reduce costs, provide fine-tuned customizability and, most importantly, simplify the digital experience for guests and franchisees.

By shifting to Thanx, Blaze was able to consolidate its tech stack, moving away from the complexity and expense of a fully customized solution. The platform enabled Blaze to roll out personalized rewards, an optimized mobile app, and seamless loyalty integration without the need for a dedicated development team. Thanx’s ability to provide easy-to-use tools with minimal customization overhead was also key to Blaze’s decision. 

Why Thanx Stands Out in the Evolving Restaurant Tech Landscape

Thanx’s platform is built to support the evolving needs of restaurants like Blaze, offering a dynamic solution that allows for rapid updates and customization without the complexity of custom app development. Unlike traditional custom apps, Thanx’s solution is flexible enough to meet the unique needs of each brand while being cost-efficient and easy to maintain. 

Read more about Thanx Apps.

For restaurant operators, Thanx offers a key advantage: a system that reduces the burden of tech support and maintenance while delivering a differentiated, high-quality guest experience. By integrating loyalty, guest engagement, and data-driven insights into one platform, Thanx provides a seamless experience that doesn’t require constant updates or heavy maintenance.

Thanx’s platform allows for better guest engagement and a smoother digital experience and reduces operational complexity and maintenance costs. The Thanx solution is designed to evolve with the brand’s needs, ensuring that restaurant operators can stay agile and continue offering fresh, engaging customer experiences.

Conclusion: The Future of Restaurant Tech is Streamlined and Flexible

As Blaze Pizza’s example shows, the restaurant tech landscape is shifting away from the complexity of custom-built apps. The high costs and ongoing maintenance challenges associated with custom solutions are no longer sustainable for many operators. Instead, restaurants are increasingly turning to flexible, easy-to-manage platforms like Thanx that offer the best of both worlds: a customized experience without the financial burden and operational complexity of custom apps.

In an industry where time and resources are precious, finding a technology partner that can deliver long-term value without overburdening restaurant teams has never been more critical. With streamlined, cost-effective solutions like Thanx, restaurants can create meaningful, personalized experiences for their guests while driving profitable growth.