On Demand food delivery app is a good solution for growing your running business or even starting a new business from scratch.
However, creating a food delivery app that on one hand enables your customers to order their favorite food online and on the other hand allows you to manage orders and delivery easily needs a lot of experience and knowledge about mobile app development and the features required for creating such apps.
To develop an on-demand food delivery app, three different apps must be integrated together including:
- The Customer App which is offered in marketplaces to be downloaded on customers mobile phones
- The Admin App which just authorized personnel to have access to it to gather data, manage orders and handle delivery services.
- The Delivery Person App is available for delivery partners to accept or reject making a delivery.
If you have really decided to run an online business by developing a food delivery app, you’re in the right place. Following the previous guide, we discussed “How do you make a food delivery app?”, In this tutorial, we want to share the most essential features of each app with you. So, let’s jump right to it.
5 Features of Customer app for on demand food delivery app development
In The customer app, you have to provide the most essential features to make ordering as simple as possible for your customers with an optimized UI/UX design.
Feature 1: Registration and User profiles
To create an on-demand food delivery app, you have to design a simple sign-up / sign-in option for your customers to create their accounts and place their orders.
When they want to sign up for the first time, it’s very important to ask them to enter the below information:
- Mobile phone
- Delivery address
- Name / User name
- A code usually send by SMS to their phones
By saving this information in their accounts, there is no need to ask them to determine their address or phone no. every time they want to order food from your online app.
After signing up, they must be able to enter their accounts very easily by entering username and password. Of course, you need to consider a plan to let them renew their passwords in case of forgetting.
You should also consider a profile page with edit options to let customers manage their profiles and edit their information.
Feature 2: Food ordering system
Food ordering system on customer view must be designed as a screen containing menus, make orders buttons, Add to cart buttons, and have the features for filtering foods by categories or finding them using a search bar.
In this screen, your customers must be able to easily search, filter, select, and order their favorite food, effortlessly.
If you want to successfully run an online food ordering and delivery business, you need to make the ordering process as simple as possible for your customers by:
- Offer food/restaurants in different categories
- Implement an easy search box
- Show the location of your restaurant or other restaurants on the map
It is also important to prepare secure payment portals and enable your customers to book food catering for special events and dates such as weddings, parties, etc.
Displaying Ratings and Reviews have a great influence on making a good experience for customers during their purchases from your mobile app. The customer reviews, especially those that respect your good performances are a driven force for new customers to order food. The negative points are also useful for you to know how to improve your performances.
By offering Secure online Payment Gateways keep your customer satisfied to pay their order cost by their online wallet or carts. To build trustable on-demand food delivery apps, You need to ensure your customers that online payments are safe and secure in your app. We recommend you provide the Cash on Delivery (COD) option as an optional payment method on your app.
Feature 3: Locate delivery address and track orders
To make the process of ordering even easier for your customer, it’s important to provide a map and let them locate their addresses on the map. It is also important to let them enter more than one place as their delivery address and choose one of them when they are making their orders.
The other essential features of an on demand online app are providing a map to enable customers to track their order movement.
When people are hungry, they are not so patient, they want to know their order status by real-time tracking. Displaying an estimated timer to show how many minutes later their foods are dispatched, has a great influence on customer satisfaction.
Feature 4: Order history
Another important feature that you need to consider in the customer account is the order history page. On this page, customers should be able to see all their previous orders, their ongoing orders, or delivery status.
Feature 5: Chat and Push Notifications
Chat and push notifications are essential to inform customers about their order status or answer their questions online. Online chat ensures customers that you are at their disposal every time they need more information. Receiving notifications about their order status is a great way to show their order progress. We recommend you build this feature as an optional tool and let customers decide if they want to receive notifications or not.
5 Features of Admin app for on demand food delivery app development
Food ordering Management system could be provided in an Admin app or as a website with an admin dashboard. In either way, store managers must be able to control everything from one single dashboard including:
- Feature 1: Consolidate orders and observe Order Fulfillment Status
- Feature 2: Manage delivery partners and Logistics control
- Feature 3: Update menu/Restaurants, Issue gifts, and coupons and manage data
- Feature 4: Send notifications to the client app & Chat in real-time with customers, deliver persons and staffs
- Feature 5: Analyze Sales Reports
It’s usually optional to either choose a web development or a mobile app development as an ordering management system which is better to be recommended by a mobile app developer according to the budget you want to allocate to this project.
5 Features of Delivery person app for on demand food delivery app development
Delivery person app needs to be designed with special features and functionalities to help you run an on demand online food delivery services which are:
- Feature 1: Driver’s profile similar to customer profile
- Feature 2: Route Optimization on a built-in map to help drivers deliver foods from the fastest way
- Feature 3: Order details including the customer phone number, delivery address, and ordered food
- Feature 4: Order Fulfillment Status to let the delivery person leave a digital signature on the app and close the delivery.
- Feature 5: Delivery history to help them see a report from their delivered orders during a month and calculate their salary
How much does it cost to develop a food delivery app?
The cost of developing an on-demand food delivery app depends on the app model and the features you expect to be designed on your app.
The greatest factors that play a crucial role in determining the cost of developing an on-demand food delivery app include:
- App development platform
It’s important to decide in which platform you prefer to build your Food delivery app: Android /IOS or Web application. Cost of developing apps on these two platforms is not the same.
- Developer
To build an efficient mobile app, you need to work with experts. Most of the time, developers work together as a team and you can hire them as an outsourcing company that is more economical, or an in-house development team which is less flexible and less cost-effective.
If you have a limited budget, it is also possible to hire a freelancer. The cost of building a mobile app by a freelancer is much lesser than a team. However, you need to investigate precisely to find a professional one.
- App model
On demand food delivery app models are another factor with a great impact on the final cost. To start developing a food ordering and delivery app, you need to choose one of the below models:
- Order Only App
- Order & Delivery App
- Fully Integrated App
- The aggregator model, or the third-party food delivery app
- Logistics/Delivery Service app with automated order management
The more features you need, the more cost you need to pay. So, to exactly know the cost of building a mobile app for online ordering and delivery services, it is better to consult with professional app development.
Are food delivery apps profitable?
Increasing the demand for online food delivery regarding the progress of smartphone technology is undeniable. The statistics reported by reputable resources such as Statista predicted that the revenue obtained from on demand food delivery apps would grow up to 16% in the next five years.
So, if you really plan to invest in food delivery app development and build mobile apps like Post mates, Uber Eats, or Grub Hub to make money and scale up your profits, this is exactly the right time.
Although developing an on demand food delivery app is definitely one of the best options for running an online business, you need to have some experience and knowledge about management, food industry market, competitor research, marketing strategies, etc.
If you have already a running restaurant, your experiences can help you to make a success in this rising Market with around more than $108 billion revenue worldwide. This revenue is predicted to reach around $300 billion by 2030 which means building a food delivery app is really profitable if you develop a professional app, have excellent performance, respect your customers and use suitable marketing strategies.
How do food delivery apps make money?
Making money from on demand food delivery apps depends on the monetization model which is usually one of the below methods:
Restaurant fees
If you are developing a model of a food delivery app in which the main goal is to enable customers to order foods from the nearest restaurant, it makes sense to charge the restaurants offered in your app by a fixed amount in a specific duration, for example, monthly.
Food fees
If the developed on-demand food delivery app belongs to your own restaurant and you are offering foods to be ordered online, it is obvious that you can make money by selling foods.
User fees
If you are developing an only-delivery app, you can charge the customers to pay a fixed amount to order delivery to their addresses.
In-app advertisement fees
In-app advertisement is also a good monetization strategy that can make extra money for you. We completely discussed using this method to make money in “An Ultimate Guide about How Do Free Apps Make Money in 2021?”.
Conclusion
In this post, we tried to introduce the most essential features for building an on demand food delivery app to help you create a successful online business. If you are looking for a professional developer to create a mobile app with the most impressive features that can make an excellent delivery experience for your customer and boost your ROI send us your request here!
