Online food delivery apps development solve a common problem among people, which is providing food at their doorsteps. The technology of today’s time is focusing on providing comfort to the customers and helping them to solve their problems. People want technology that reduces their efforts and values comfort over money.
According to statistical data, US food delivery revenue was around $26.5 billion in 2020. The market revenue is increasing with the speed of 204 percent, backed by platform-to-customer services, like uber eats, post mate, DoorDash. Us food delivery users are increasing drastically.
According to a report, there were around 111 million users in 2020. The users are inclining more towards comfortable food deliveries. Now you know the overview of the food delivery market, let’s quickly go through the amount of money that flows in this market.
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Total Revenues of Food Delivery App Market
The magic of food delivery applications is that you can get cooked food in just a few tabs. It is a trending technology; whenever you feel hungry, you need to click on the food that you like, the food will reach you in no time.
In the upcoming years, the online food supply will surpass offline because, according to data, the online food delivery market will reach USD 10,196 Mn by the end of this year. Also, the market share will get USD 14,679 Million by the year 2024, with a CAGR of 9.5%. Online food delivery app development cost.
According to USA Today’s report, the online food delivery market recorded $17 billion in 2018 and reached $19.472 billion in 2019.
For now, you know the revenue of the food delivery app market and may be interested in knowing the cost of building a food delivery app.
How to make Online Food Delivery Business Successful
Keeping business in mind, everyone wants to make a huge profit and want to stand out strong in front of others. To do so, food delivery app development is coming up with a wide range of features. Most companies are taking great steps to improve their productivity and performance. Entrepreneurs are also wondering about the cost to develop an app like Grubhub that gives them a great possibility to aim profit.
To achieve the food delivery model you need a large number of orders. Here is the impressive range of features needed to make your online food delivery business successful. Development companies are offering numerous features and the cost varies depending on the functionality of a platform just like Grubhub food delivery app development cost would be higher than any other app.
Plan Your Budget
To start the food delivery business you are needed to first settle your mind and think accordingly. Choose the best options you want to pursue but after analysing the market research and the demand of the product. You also need to sell the products at a considerable rate. Prepare your budget accordingly and focus on setting your business with great ideas.
Analyse Target Audience
It requires proper planning and target-market research before beginning any business. First, you need to assess the company’s size and location by evaluating market trends properly.
Easy Search Options
Food delivery is the most popular app these days, and with these devices, if there are no user-friendly services are provided, there is no use for it. An easy to use option helps all age groups people to use the app more appropriately. Users can easily track their orders and get proper knowledge of the arrival of food locations. With the help of a real-time app, users can keep themself updated and track their orders.
Easy Navigation
It is easy to use the online food ordering delivery system, helping everyone use those apps without much technical understanding. Failure to navigate quickly is one of the major setbacks that need to be avoided for any mobile app.
Easy Payment Options
Gateways are the main thing you need to have and allow the customer to pick up your internet ordering system, as there has been no internet ordering business without smart payment gateways. It’s important to have a variety of ways to pay for every order buyers place. Offer the best payment gateway solutions that fit well in the place where your business operates the best. You can also provide cashback and discount deals by catching the customer’s attention.
Steps To Follow to Start an Online Food Delivery Business
Use an attractive and unique name for your business.
Generate extra income from home delivery orders.
Tie up with good brands and earn good revenue.
Go on a fixed commission basis
Promote products on both social media and print media.
Monetisation Technique of Online Food delivery apps
The U.S. National Restaurant Association of the U.S. has recently conducted a survey, and they have found that 37% of the restaurants offer online ordering, while 32% accept mobile payment.
By providing conveniences like food delivery at the doorstep at minimal charges, results in a tremendously increasing Demand. It is becoming famous which results in most of the leading businesses moving towards online food delivery.
Top Monetization Techniques of Online Food Delivery Apps
Any startups require investment and to cope with the expenses companies need to find some techniques to make money via food delivery apps. Let’s have a look at the major sources to generate revenue with the help of a food delivery business.
Delivery Charges
Most companies offer a free delivery facility that attracts the attention of millions. The delivery charges are based on the locations and the percentage of the order customer placed. Food delivery companies earn a huge amount of money with a considerable amount of goodwill. There are several online food distribution companies that use monetization strategies in the online model with a significant amount of revenue. The companies have to charge a substantial amount of money for the delivery services.
Advertising
Advertising can be seen as the main way of raising revenue. Online food delivery apps can earn money by offering an advertisement service on the app with the aid of proper ads and promotions. It means showing restaurant advertisements on your phones and paying the restaurant a certain amount of money to view images, videos, or advertising. Another advertisement mode can be mentioned the restaurant name at the top of the app results.
The method of monetization involves peak hours or high demands. With this process, the best online food delivery apps start taking advantage of and levying high fees during peak hours on food delivery. Charges can vary according to the location and amount of the food. Companies generally boosted the prices during peak hours such as lunch dinner, they are available with extra fees for their customers.
On the Basis of Commission
The platform charges the restaurants a significant amount. Organizations partner with restaurants and shops that can help create business models for them. The commission is usually fixed according to size and location. Deliveroo app implements these kinds of techniques of monetization which can help to make business growth important.
How to Develop a Food Delivery App?
To develop a food delivery app you should have knowledge about the food delivery market and know the mood of the market. You should have a unique idea and a good team of developers.
Food Delivery App Development Process [Infographic]
Here are the steps included in developing a food delivery app.
Focus on food delivery Industry trends: You have to calculate and find the trends of the food delivery industry to get started with the app development process. You need to keep yourself updated regarding the market trends to attract the maximum number of customers. You need to have good social networks to get a boost to your app in the initial days.
Choose the app model: After having the knowledge about the market trends you need to choose the app development model.
Research the target market: You need to research the targeted market before investing into the development of a food delivery application. The target audience could narrow, they may prefer different foods depending upon their preferences.
Choose the main features of the app: Consider the features of the food delivery app before investing in the development process of the app. These features include login, search, order packing, order checkout, etc.
How much does it Cost to Develop a Food Delivery App?
Many factors affect the food delivery app development cost, but we are trying to give you an idea of how much it costs to develop a food delivery app like DoorDash and Grubhub. Depending on the features you are looking to add to your on-demand food delivery resource and mobile app, that will require getting your app transformed from its idea stage to the launch phase.
According to statistical data, to develop an app like Grubhub and DoorDash takes approximately $30,000 to $40,000. The cost range of the app would depend mainly on the Mobile app design development of both the Android and iOS versions of the application. Moreover, if there is a need to make a web application for a restaurant, its cost may extend from $50K to $60K.
To develop an iPhone food delivery app: The estimated cost of developing an app like Grubhub and DoorDash is $4500 to $12000. There are many expenses that will combine to calculate the estimated cost of the food delivery application.
Here are some of the expenses that will be included in the food delivery app development.
Developers Expenses: If you consider the cost of hiring an engineer, the estimated expenses would range between $10 – $35 per hour or in general $100 per month.
Gathering Cost: This step involves the investment of a lot of money into social affairs, overviews and conferences, it also includes collecting requirements of the staffing team that will be involved in carrying out employment strategies.
Design and Development: The total cost of application development and configuration of the business will be spent on test engineers and its developers. This will include the cost of different licenses required for hiring additional staff for showing the development process.
Testing and Publication: It becomes crucial to test the application before launching it to the market. You need to spend a lot of money if the application does not work well after deployment. To avoid these costs the application has to remove all the bugs before launching the application to the market.
To develop an android food delivery application: Android is the most commonly used operating system in USA Market. To develop a food delivery for Android costs between $3000 to $10000, depending upon the requirements and operating conditions of your application.
Here are some of the fee’s that combinely make the total cost of the food delivery application.
License fee: To operate and share your application on the play store and apple store you need to have a license. The estimated license fee for android app development is $300.
App hosting fee: The estimated app hosting fee for android app development is $99/app. This fee you have to pay to the hosting company.
Developers fee: The developer’s fee will cost around $7000, the overall estimated cost can be around $7500.
A native food delivery app development costs around $26000 for an iOS app and $27000 for an Android one.
If you are not having a dedicated mobile application for your food delivery then you may lose at least 20%. A consumer-facing mobile app can be one of the solutions to solve the problems but this is not a holistic solution.
After getting the idea of the overall idea of food delivery app development cost, let’s get the overall idea of different types of food delivery applications.
You can think of two business models when planning to develop a food delivery application in the present mobilized restaurant economy. Depending upon the type of food delivery application, your price may vary. To develop a food development app like DoorDash, Grubhub.
The two primary business models that you think of when planning to develop a food delivery app are:
Aggregator: In this model, you can launch an application that will act as a platform where restaurants are made easily accessible to the users. An application that follows the business model gives advantages to the users to order food and for the restaurant to completely view the order without any delivery support from the application’s parent company.
The amount of money you can earn by investing in the mobile food delivery app application is around USD 121.29 per customer.
Platform with Logistic Support: In this type of business model, you give the restaurant the facilities required to deliver food in a real-time scenario. It is the time when you handle the restaurant’s complete service offering. Through your application, you will give the end-users different options to select the food options they want to eat.
Users can select the food they want to eat and track their delivery, and also get many offers while ordering food regularly. The food is fresh, and cooking occurs after you give the order. For food delivery apps development you need to have a unique idea and open-minded approach. Here we are looking into famous brands or restaurants and leading the space. Something that you will realize once you will face competition in the market.
Features of Food Ordering Applications
To develop a great application that fulfils the customer’s requirements, you have to break down the customer’s interests into different small fragments and integrate all the research done into a single application. While developing a food delivery application, you will deal with three different sectors, Restaurants, Delivery Persons, Customers, and the Admin; the features and the console of the application would vary from one person to another.
Users will have the top features because the main focus of a food delivery application should be attracting more users to the app. The system, features, and console will vary from one stakeholder to another.
Here are the features divided into four stakeholders of food app development
Customer Side: As a customer you get a wide range of features to select from a different variety of food. You also get the features like filtering the best restaurants and finding the restaurant nearest to your location.
Login
Search Menu.
Cart
Payment
Integratio
Order Tracking
Review and rating
Customer support
2. Restaurant side: As a restaurant, you get different features to manage the app. You need to update your menu frequently along with the prices. As a restaurant, you need to add content regularly.
Login
Menu Management
Push notification
Checking ratings and reviews
3. Delivery Side: As a delivery side you need to register for your account and manage the account according to the users needs. You need to update order details to keep the customers updated of his order. Delivery side deals with the order management and maintains the quality of the app.
Registration
Order Management
Updating the Order Status.
4. Admin Side: Admin is the operator of the application and maintains the performance of the application. Admin maintains all the technical as well as restaurant-related pages. Admin also manages the payment management and provides discount offers and coupons.
Admin Login
Restaurant Management
Application Management
Payment Management
Discount Offers and Coupons
Technical Assistance.
Now you know about the food app delivery process, here are some of the technology stacks of food delivery applications.
The Technology Stack of Food Delivery App Development
Now you are prepared to enter the market with the knowledge of finance and essential factors that affect the development cost of a food delivery application. Here are some of the technological stacks that depend on particular sectors of food delivery applications.
Applications
Platforms
For restaurant listing
Grubhub API and FourSquare API
For Payments
Square API, Stripe, Paypal
To find user location
Core location framework
To find direction
Google Map
For cloud
AWS, Azure
For registration
Facebook SDK Login
For Storage
Amazon Cloud Storage
For Analytics
Google analytics
Now you know the technical aspect of the food delivery app development, it’s time to know the challenges you can face.
Planning to Develop Your Food Delivery App for your Business
Let BR Softech assist you with your development-related queries & projects.
Challenges that you can face in entering the Online Food Delivery Market
Once you enter the market, you will face many challenges. You have to pass through all the challenges to develop an application that fulfills a customer’s requirements.
Here are some of the most common challenges.
Competition: The biggest challenge you face in the food delivery market is competition. Nowadays, famous restaurants and hotels have their website offering door-to-door delivery. It would help if you had a unique idea to avoid the competitions and work on your idea consistently.
Finding restaurants to partner with: It isn’t easy to have a good deal with a restaurant where you can profit. Restaurants and food delivery chains do not believe in new companies easily, so you need to convince them by showing them a business plan.
Stable UI/UX: You need to maintain the UI of your application and make it more attractive to keep the users engaged. An interactive user interface will keep the customers happy, and they will visit your website frequently.
Deciding the MVP Features: Another huddle you face in the food delivery application development is deciding which MVP features to add to the application and which to leave out.
Now you have a complete knowledge about online food delivery application development, for your inspiration here are top online food delivery applications in the USA.
Top Online Food Delivery Application in USA
The top food delivery application contains a unique set of ideas, and consistent efforts to maintain the efficiency of the application.
Here are some of the top food delivery applications in the USA.
Seamless: It is among top online food ordering sites in the USA, it is growing since the day of its launch and consistently working on the feedback and reviews provided by the customers. It has some unique features like, restaurant app, customer app and driver app.
GrubHub: It has almost 20 million active users and 115,000 associated restaurants around the USA. On Google play store it has more than 10 million + active installs. Some unique features of this application are, driver app, restaurant app and customer app.
Uber Eats: After being a billion dollar company in the on demand taxi booking industry now users are providing on demand food delivery. They are known for their satisfactory results. Some of their unique features are, Customer app, driver app, restaurant app.
Postmates: After becoming a well known name among the online food delivery website, it is now targeting the mobile app industry too. It has the same business model as the other companies in the market.
DoorDash: It is an American on-demand food delivery service company, they are mainly focusing on connecting food delivery and restaurants. It is a local community-driven delivery firm which has trusted customers over the years.
Conclusion
The cost of developing an application like DoorDash and Grubhub depends on the tools, features, and operating system on which you will launch the application. BR Softech provides app development services that you can easily afford and get maximum return on your investment.
It would help if you had a unique idea to stand out in this competitive world and compete with the technological giants. For food delivery app development you need to work on loopholes and feedback provided by the customers.
I am Nitin Garg, founder of BR Softech PVT LTD - an award-winning mobile game development company known for its excellence in the gaming domain. We have a team of 180+ exceptional professionals & we have a satisfied clientele of 2.7k+ globally. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, I aim to elevate BR Softech to a billion-dollar company.