Food delivery app development experiences dramatic growth in recent years. Analyzing the statistics reported by some reputable resources such as Statista suggests that online food delivery will reach $156 billion in revenue by 2024.
This significant growth is primarily based on increasing customer demands that are ordering food especially from restaurant apps which really make their life easier.
That’s why much more entrepreneurs and start-ups decide to develop online food delivery services or restaurant apps to use this opportunity for developing a food delivery app and gain profit by attracting target audiences.
If you are also thinking about mobile app development particularly for food delivery services, stay with us to help you successfully take advantage of this opportunity.
How do you make a food delivery app?
Developing a food delivery app like Uber EATS or Grub Hub needs struggling with a lot of issues such as evaluating the food delivery market and target audiences, estimating the cost to develop a mobile app, validating ideas about UX/UI design, and so on.
In this guide, we are going to share the necessary tech stack recommended by experts about how to successfully develop a food delivery app in 8 steps.
Step 1: Evaluate target audiences of the food ordering and delivery market
It’s very important to know the target audiences of your business before developing a food delivery app. You may think all people need to eat every day so there is no need to think about the target audiences in the food ordering and delivery industry. But you are wrong!
The point is that people have different tastes in ordering foods, some of them prefer ordering traditional foods while others enjoy eating fast foods. In some cities or towns, natives or even tourists prefer to order local dishes and local foods. You should also notice the people who eat some specific foods either due to concerns about their health or their religion such as vegetarians or Muslims.
To identify the right niche, you have to consider all of them and determine which target audiences have the greatest income for you.
Step 2: Choose the best UI/UX design for Food delivery app development
User interface (UI) and User Experience (UE) are two important factors playing a crucial role in attracting more customers and motivating them to order foods from your restaurant or delivery app.
To develop a customer-friendly food ordering and delivery app, you need to consider the following factors:
- Easy navigation through ordering and delivery options designed on your mobile app
- Comprehensive but minimalist interface to display every detail simple and distinct to audiences
- Organized information by offering foods in proper categories
- Well designed homepage to help customers find what they want in a few seconds
- Support proper logistic systems to make ordering and delivery services in the real-time possible
Step 3: Decide about the delivery model offered in your food delivery app
The only task which is really important for all food delivery services is to support on-time delivery. Don’t forget that hungry people have no patience.
Some of them have a limited time to eat and go back to their word, some others want to feed their guests and there is no doubt that they expect to receive their orders as soon as possible before their meals get cold.
In the food delivery industry, there are two basic models:
Order-only: in this model, you are responsible for managing orders and making them ready for your customer to come and pick them up.
Order and delivery: in this model, you are responsible for both making the orders ready and managing their delivery which is more popular for food delivery app development.
If your goal is to develop an online food delivery service like Uber Eats, Door dash, or Deliveroo, you have to choose an order-and-delivery model and manage with a delivery partner or some delivery drivers to do this task for you.
Regarding this fact that for food delivery, you just have a limited time of fewer than 15 minutes, you can just offer delivery to the neighbors. So, if you are thinking about a global market like McDonald's, it’s obvious that you need to establish a lot of branches all over the world which doesn’t seem logical in the first place.
The better idea is to try keeping the local customers satisfied at first, then grow your business step by step.
Step 4: Choose the operation system: Android, IOS, or web application
Now it’s time to determine in which platform you want to develop your Food delivery app. To choose between android / IOS or web application, you need to consider how easy it is to work with the features of each platform for you and for your potential customers.
Our experience revealed that it’s better to develop the user app which is going to get in touch directly with the customer based on Android/IOS but develop the Admin panel as a web application to have more control over everything.
However, it is completely up to you to choose the best platform which suits your requirements.
Then you are ready to go to the next step.
Step 5: Select your food delivery app development model
Selecting the food delivery app model on one hand depends on the budget you want to investigate for food delivery app development and on the other hand on the services you have decided to offer to your customers.
The most popular food delivery app models including:
Mobile apps provide a list of available restaurants in different locations and help customers to find what they want easier. In this method, you don’t need to have a big capital for running a real restaurant, you just need to pay for creating a mobile app and put your effort into convincing as many restaurants as you can to join your app. So, if you have a limited budget, this seems an ideal option.
To develop this kind of food delivery apps, you need to:
- Negotiate with restaurant managers and encourage them to join your plan,
- Provide a map to enable customers to find those restaurants near their locations,
- Display the menus of those restaurants in an attractive way to your customers,
- Provide a safe payment gateway
- Display a notification panel to the customer about the time of food delivery.
A mobile app that offers foods made in your own restaurant. In this model, your customers are limited to the neighbors living near your restaurant. Although you can grow it by opening more branches in different locations or use an order-only model for the customers out of your delivery zone.
To develop a mobile app for online order and delivery, you need to:
- Display an appealing food menu to the customers
- Let customers specify their exact address to receive their orders
- Provide a secure online payment gateway
If you already have a successful restaurant with a lot of in-person customers, developing a mobile app can definitely boost your sales and increase your revenue.
Step 6: Hire an expert for food delivery app development
It is obvious that to create a mobile app, you need to hire a professional developer. To choose the best food delivery app developers, you have to pay attention to the following factors:
- Their experience levels
By working with the previous applications developed by different developers, you will find out their experience level. It’s important to find a developer who created some applications similar to the food delivery model you have already chosen. In this way, you ensure that you are hiring a professional developer with incredible skills and abilities.
- Their hiring models
Mobile app developers usually offer different hiring models such as hourly pay or part-time pay. The hiring model really matters because it has a great influence on the final cost. So, before placing an order for developing food delivery apps, just make sure that the hiring model of your preferred developer is clear.
- Their cost for adding extra features or designs
It’s also important to clearly explain what features and designs you expect to see in your food delivery mobile app and ask the developer to confirm that they are able to add those features and designs to your app at an ordinary cost. It prevents you from receiving a bill that costs an arm and a leg at the end of the project.
In the “Top 5 Features of On-Demand Food Delivery App” post, we completely described what features and designs are required for making an ideal and profitable food ordering and delivery app.
Step 7: Choose the best marketing strategies
Well, consider that your online food delivery app development is completed and you have established it successfully on marketplaces. So, what’s next? The next step is planning for marketing and advertisements. If you want to make money from your mobile application, you need to introduce the advantages and functionality of your developed app to potential customers.
What are the most popular marketing strategies after Food delivery app development?
- Social media marketing
- Email Marketing
- SMS Marketing
- Content Marketing
Conclusion
We are leaving in the digital age in which smartphones make everything easier for us. The best way to make money in this situation is to take this opportunity and grow your online business. That’s why almost all of the restaurants, catering, or delivery services consider Food delivery app development to boost their revenue.
There is no doubt that Food delivery app development is a worthy investment. To know how much it is to have your own online delivery app send us your request here.
