The Secret Recipe of Food Delivery App Development

On-demand apps are transforming multiple businesses across industries with a compelling content platform, engaging visuals & a real-time feedback mechanism. This is where the food industry has felt the biggest impact. The explosive growth of apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, GrubHub & Zomato has encouraged many food businesses across the world to leverage food delivery app development. It allows restaurants and food delivery startups to automate their routine operations, accelerate food deliveries, improve customer service & increase online market reach.

So, if you want to ace the online food business with an engaging delivery app, you’ve landed at the right place! This post will walk you through the essentials of quick and cost-effective on-demand food delivery app development. So, dive right in!

Table of Contents    

• Why Invest in On-Demand Food Delivery App Development
• Online Food Delivery App Development – What Are Its Types?
• How Can Rishabh Software Help?
• Key Features of A Food Delivery App
• Success Story
• Common FAQ With Food Delivery App Development

Would it surprise you to learn that the anticipated revenue growth for food delivery application development is 9.9% CAGR (2019-23)? This is because food ordering & delivery services have transformed the way consumers get their meals & food ordering apps are set to touch $16.6 billion in 2023.

Let’s take a look at some of the compelling reasons to capitalize on on-demand food delivery apps:

• Offers restaurants to expand their consumer reach while scaling digital revenue streams and earning huge profits.
• With local & global menu availability, food chains, restaurants & food aggregators tap on additional growth opportunities.
• Meeting customer preferences with easy targeting of the right audience.
• Promotional offers encourage customers to use the service more often.
• Loyalty points on repeat orders leave a good impact on customers and improve their experience.

We believe every food business is unique: whether it’s a restaurant, a cloud kitchen, a food truck, or a home delivery service. Therefore, based on the business priority and customer needs, an organization can choose any one of these three types of on-demand apps:

• Order & Delivery Apps: This logistics-focused delivery app is an ideal option for single restaurants, food trucks & grocery stores as they don’t need to hire their delivery partners.
• Aggregator Apps: Primarily third-party apps which take care of both logistics and delivery for food businesses that want to enhance their online visibility and reach.
• Full-stack Delivery Apps: This comprehensive app monitors and manages everything from taking orders and assigning to delivery partners to tracking inventory and processing payments. It enables you to optimally use delivery resources for a seamless business pipeline from your carriers to the customer’s doorstep.

When building a food delivery app, it’s crucial to minimize the cost and time spent on design and development. As an end-to-end custom food delivery app development company, we combine innovation, technology, and design and support services for both Android and iOS platforms. Our specialists put to practice the best-proven business models while developing and launching your online food delivery software.

We even help individual restaurants, delivery startups & home delivery service companies build apps similar to Uber Eats or GrubHub faster by utilizing cost-effective alternatives like existing APIs that help hasten their development process and reduce cost. We help them make the best use of popular APIs that act as a necessary building block to create a food delivery app.

Here’s the list of standard features that can be built out for an intuitive online food delivery app. Based on customers’ unique business requirements, we integrate other advanced features later to enable them to expand their consumer reach while supporting them to scale operations.

In addition to this, you will agree that analytics and insightful reports have a critical role in identification of customer behavior, overseeing daily orders while monitoring dispatches and deliveries. At Rishabh, we help develop custom advanced analytics solutions that enable food aggregators, cloud kitchens, and other businesses in this domain to build a sustainable ecosystem.

Learn how we helped a US-based technology company automate its food delivery mechanism with the right integration of back-office operations of payment and invoicing management.

Challenges:

• A disparate employee database
• Manual order fulfillment process creating employee dissatisfaction
• Tedious & time-consuming invoicing process
• Limited visibility into the order & fulfillment process

Solution:

Our team divided the project into various phases. It included:

• Mobile app development
• Employee data referencing
• Vendor administration connect
• Inventory control and more
• Admin module for menu
• Secure payment integration
• Automated food order processing

Benefits:

• 4x improvement in work efficiency
• Automated SMS updates & notifications
• Swift & seamless backend operations
• Easy management of meal cancellations & refund

You can also read in detail about this case here.

Well, that’s not all we’re listing some of the common questions we receive on an ongoing basis from organizations;

1. How long does food delivery mobile app development take?

If you opt for a custom solution that is developed from scratch, then the timeline depends on your business needs and the complexity of features. But with a ready API component, we can help customize your unique needs. The time of the app development is typically determined by:

• The app size
• Type of app
• Customizations
• List of features

2. Can you help develop an app like Zomato?

Our experienced developers specialize in designing and developing feature-rich food delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, GrubHub & Zomato. And with our well-architected framework, you will get the added advantages of:

• Periodic updates
• Technical support
• No huge upfront cost
• Best user experience
• Faster time to market

3. What types of merchants and aggregators can get started with food delivery mobile app development?

Anyone who runs a cloud kitchen, food outlet, home delivery service, grocery store, a single restaurant, or a food truck can capitalize on a delivery platform for increased reach & revenue.

4. What basic features will be included in my food delivery app?

Your GrubHub or DoorDash type app seamlessly integrates the following features:

• SOS
• Real-time tracking
• Instant notifications
• In-app wallet
• Scheduling & reporting
• Secure payment transactions

And, we can also integrate any other features that you need depending on your target market and business goals.

5. How does an online food delivery app make a profit?

Regardless of your business model type, online food ordering app development increases your brand awareness and visibility while letting you automate all manual business processes for increased efficiency, improved customer service & reduced costs. All of this ultimately expands your customer base and gives your revenue a big boost.

6. Native or Hybrid app? Which is the better option?

While hybrid apps are relatively easier to develop and maintain, they cannot compete with native apps when it comes to user experience. Native apps are much faster and seamless and perform much better. If happy customers are your primary goal, then you should consider a native food delivery app.

7. How do I monetize my food delivery app?

You can maximize your ROI using the following three approaches:

• Profits earned from orders delivered
• Charging commission to partner restaurants
• Earnings from paid listings and promotional ads