Creating a food delivery app: features and cost

Creating a food delivery app: features and cost

Introduction 

59% of restaurant orders from millennials are takeout or delivery. And do you know, how many millennials are in the world right now? According to the World economic forum, in 2019 there were 2.3 billion millennials.  Do you see the potential? Besides, now people consider delivery service to be more convenient than going out because it saves time and food can be enjoyed with friends in a comfortable environment while watching a movie at home, for example.

This article tells about the models of food delivery apps and what features a food delivery platform should contain. You will learn about the challenges you may face before creating a website and how to solve them. And also, you will have an idea of how the price of building the website for food delivery is calculated.

There are 2 common ways of building a food delivery app 

Before exploring these ways, you should learn about the classic participants of a food delivery service definition. There are: 

  • Potential owners of the food delivery platform (app):

    - restaurants with or without their own delivery;
    - third-party participants who are just the wannabe owners of the app.
     

  • The food delivery platform (app) which can be divided into the next types:

    - an app that operates orders, connects customers and restaurants. This way, it doesn’t do the delivery itself;
    - an app that provides food delivery with logistic support. This approach not only operates orders, connects customers and restaurants but also makes the delivery.

Taking into account all the participants above, there can be many variations of food delivery services. We will have a look at 2 ways of building a food delivery service. 

1. The traditional system of food delivery which is also called the aggregator model

This model supposes that the delivery service is in a third party role. On a platform, a customer finds restaurants, makes an order, and after confirmation, the order goes to the delivery that is appertained to the restaurant. 

According to Restaurant insider, 31% of customers say they use third-party delivery services at least twice a week.

2. Food delivery service with logistic support

This model considers that the food delivery platform also holds the delivery process itself. Many startups don’t have enough assets to own the delivery system in place. That is why the delivery service that manages delivery personnel, work equipment machines, and all the delivery process - is a savior for food startups. 

Which way to choose depends on business goals. But whatever you choose there are must-have features for a food delivery website.

5 important food delivery app features

5 important food delivery app features
  1. General advice - provide much data

    Many people care about calories, many others - about nutritional characteristics, someone will search for ingredients of a dish and somebody relies on the cuisine variations of different restaurants. Besides, it’s also important to give guidance on how much time the delivery can take and what the address of the desired restaurant is. The more data you provide, the more engaged a potential customer will be
     
  2. Online payment integration

    According to the BlueSnap, by the end of 2019, nearly 2.1 billion consumers used an eWallet to either make a payment or send money. Therefore it’s important to provide many payment options. It can be eWallets, Visa/MasterCard, PayPal, etc. An order process should go as easily as possible.
     
  3. Delivery time

    By giving information on how much time it takes to deliver the food, delivery efficiency increases and the customer’s anxiety level reduces
     
  4. Tracking 

    By providing customers with information about a delivery location, you increase the sense of quality service. Here can be used MapKit, Google Maps or Waze’s Navigation.
     
  5. Review & Ratings

    This information makes a good impression on a customer. Even if some reviews are not such rainbow-colored, still if a restaurant has reviews and ratings, it means that the restaurant is operating. 

The 2 most important things for creating a food delivery service website

Food should look good to make customers want to order it. So remember the main things - design and the right team for creating.

Finding the right development partners

Devote some time to find a perfect development team for business. Building an app takes many hours, it means that you should choose the most appropriate team. To ease your search, we suggest you consider some questions:

  1. Look through a portfolio. Learn How to choose a web development provider

  2. Check what Web development methodologies and approaches the development team is using. It can be Lean, Scrum, Kanban, or their own invention that works best for the client and them.

  3. Be sure that the development team you’re going to choose provides full-cycle development: from design to optimization and support.

  4. Learn what technologies the development team uses to keep apps bug-free and integrate necessary details about the food spots.

UI and UX design

What UI/UX design is you can learn here. Now we will list some tips for a food delivery service website that you should know about:

  1. Easy registration. Social media buttons can be used to speed-up the registration process.

  2. Provide consumers with the possibility to find a restaurant through GPS and by a restaurant name. Put relevant information about cuisine, special offers, prices, reviews, etc.

  3. Make different order options like add or remove chosen dishes to their cart.

  4. Payment process. It needs to be secure, quick and simple. And all the payments should go right after the ordering process.

  5. Also for better usability, you could implement a close location specifying. It’s more convenient because many people find it unhandy to tap the address manually.

You may have the best database of restaurants with the best reviews but if your web development team leaves a great deal to be desired then the whole idea with creating an app will fail. Pay much attention to choosing web developers and the design.

What are the steps before and while creating a food delivery app?

The process of making the food delivery app is really captivating because you should think about many things in advance. Consider the following steps:

Step 1. The food ordering flow. The common scenario: a user visits a website, chooses a restaurant, compares menus and prices, then makes an order. After confirmation of the order, the user logs in and creates an account with contact and billing details. After the successful payment, the user gets a notification about the processed order. You may also add some options like a way of food preparation and a delivery method.

Step 2. Choose certain features for different groups of users. These groups can be customers, restaurant managers, and administrators. So features are various, for example, the registration, navigation menu, placing an order, different filters, admin log-in, website management, payment management, checkout process, order status and tracking, help and support, etc.

Step 3. Choose a development team.

Step 4. Adapt an app for the needs of a target audience. Do they love Asian food? Then provide options. Do they use only PayPal? Then provide the ability to make a payment using this system. 

Step 5. Learn through the experience you have. Implement analytical instruments and learn where customers have problems with orders and why they abandon the cart, what the popular dishes and pages are. Pay attention to potential customer preferences to make them go to your app. Provide different options of a menu, simple categorization and useful database of restaurants.

How much does it cost to build a food delivery website?

The price of making a website is based on two components - a development team hourly rate and a number of hours spent on a project. In the article how much does it cost to build a website with Drupal, you may learn more about components that were mentioned above. 

What minimum amount of work does a food delivery app require? 

The work includes catalog management, content views, authorization and security, reviews and rating, ordering functionality, payments, delivery tracking, user profiles, UI and UX design, database, and deployment script, notifications. A necessary number of hours on each part of development depends on the complexity of a whole project.

Note, that it's impossible to say the exact price without seeing a spec.

 

Conclusion

Now you can choose what way to follow, the traditional system of delivery service or with logistic support and which steps the process of creating a food delivery app includes. Also, don’t forget that UI and UX design and the right web development team are the keys to the success of your app. The web development team knows more about features that should be integrated and provides more value to a business owner by optimizing and maintaining a food delivery website.

Let us know what you think about the article on Twitter @ADCISolutions

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