Food Delivery App Development: How to Attract New Clients to Your Restaurant Business

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Key Takeaways

• Food delivery applications enable hospitality businesses to offer added-value services to their customers, providing simple online ordering and trackable delivery.
• 90% of consumers plan to use more food delivery services in the future, according to a Grubhub & Technomic report.
• A well-designed delivery app can reduce order waiting time and increase the number of customers, consequently resulting in higher revenue.

Food delivery app development has gotten more demanding. How so? The market’s rapidly growing, and numerous top players like Uber Eats and DoorDash set the bar. Yet, this shouldn’t prevent you from creating your software solution.

You can still join this thriving $215+ billion market. What you have to do is to approach food app development comprehensively.

Consider this article your all-in-one guide to building a food delivery application. Here, we’ll look at the must-have features, development process, and cost in greater depth. You’ll also find the latest market trends for 2022 in our post.

Food Delivery Market Trends in 2023

Before you delve into on demand food delivery app development, you should discover some helpful market insights to guide you in this process.

According to Grand View Research, the global online food delivery market will expand at an almost 11% rate annually between 2022 and 2028. It will eventually surpass $388 billion in 2028, with the Asia Pacific region playing a significant role in this growth.

It’s also worth mentioning that platform-to-consumer delivery constitutes the largest share of the food delivery market. In 2021, it amounted to about 60% and significantly impacted the overall market growth. Another segment, restaurant-to-consumer, likewise influences the food delivery industry, expanding by 11.2% from 2022 to 2028.

Thus, you can equally succeed whether you are involved in platform-to-consumer or restaurant delivery app development.

What about consumer preferences and opinions? Grubhub and Technomic 2022 Report provides us with the following insights:

• 63% of consumers stated that they use third-party delivery more often compared to the pre-pandemic period.
• 90% of consumers said they intended to increase their use of food delivery services in the future.
• 82% of surveyed consumers value delivery speed.
• 79% of consumers note that they will reorder food delivery if their experience remains good.

Other factors related to food delivery application development influencing consumer preferences are as follows:

Source: Grubhub and Technomic 2022 Report

Therefore, the online food delivery app development market is to grow consistently and see increased demand among consumers.

Food Delivery App Development: Core Features

Regarding custom food delivery application development, one should understand that such an app is a complex software solution. It’s a platform that works for several types of users. Hence, the essential features will differ accordingly.

Think about who typically uses a food delivery app. Most likely, you have concluded that these are:

• Restaurants that process orders
• Customers who order food
• Couriers who deliver orders
• An app’s admin who oversees all the above processes

The four separate components of the delivery application revolve around all these users. So here’s what you need to create a food delivery app:

Restaurant App

It’s a food delivery app intended for restaurants. Here you can process orders, manage menus, transfer orders for delivery, and more. Core features include the following.

Signup and Login

This feature in food app development will allow restaurant owners and employees to register and log in to the application.

Order Management

Restaurants will be able to process orders due to this functionality. They will accept, reject, indicate the order’s status, etc.

Menu Management

Food ordering app development requires the ability to display restaurant menus. Add this feature so restaurant owners can show and update their menus and customers can always access up-to-date information.

Reviews and Ratings

Implement a review and rating feature so restaurant owners can get customer feedback about their venue.

Client App

You also require the client-facing application to build food delivery app. This component of your bespoke software is critical as it’s where your customers will place their orders. Take care of the application’s user-friendliness and thoughtful UX to make it convenient and engaging. Plus, pay attention to the following features:

Signup and Login

Signup and login are the primary features you must implement to create a food ordering app. Here, it would help if you made the registration process as simple as possible for users. It would also be reasonable to add login via social networks.

Search

Take care of the search function during restaurant ordering app development. In this regard, searching for venues and specific dishes fast and accurately is critical. Also, add the ability to explore nearby restaurants.

Geolocation

The geolocation feature is mandatory to create food delivery app. Thanks to it, customers can track the delivery of their orders or search for nearby restaurants.

Food Ordering and Payment

Of course, the ability to place and pay for orders is a must for your application. Make the checkout process as smooth as possible, and remember to add several payment options for even greater convenience.

Push Notifications

Keep your customers informed about the status of their orders by implementing push notifications in your app. Owing to this feature, you can also notify users about special offers or promotions.

Reviews and Ratings

As with the restaurant application, you require the review and rating feature in the client-facing food delivery app. Let your consumers leave comments about restaurants or dishes and rate them.

Courier App

Online food ordering app development involves creating a separate application for couriers. It must be simple so the delivery person can process orders on the go. Thus, you’ll need to implement the following features to achieve simplicity and convenience:

Signup and Login

Implement a registration and login feature so the courier can create an account and accept food delivery orders.

Maps and Geolocation

The food delivery app development solution requires maps and geolocation. This functionality allows couriers to build delivery routes and show their location in real time.

Order Info and Status

Add order information so couriers can check all the delivery details before they take it. The order status, in turn, is needed to update customers about the phase at which their order is.

Order History

Order history in restaurant application development is necessary for the courier to receive fair payment for food deliveries.

Admin Panel

An admin panel is the platform for managing your food delivery app. The administrator can monitor the actions of restaurants, customers, and couriers. Typically, the following features are required here:

Admin Login

This feature is needed so the administrator can log in to the system.

Restaurant Management

Thanks to this feature, the admin can add and remove restaurants in the app. Plus, this functionality allows the administrator to grant restaurant owners different permissions on the platform.

Payment Management

Owing to this feature, the administrator can monitor the payments that pass through the app. In addition, it would be good if the admin could change delivery fees, etc.

Order Management

An administrator must be able to manage orders. In this way, the admin can assign delivery tasks to couriers.

Analytics Tools

The analytics function is helpful for business development and creating the best food delivery app for restaurants. Thanks to it, the administrator can collect valuable insights about customer behavior, demand for particular restaurants, etc.

How to Build a Food Delivery App for Business

Having all the above features on board makes it quite challenging to develop food delivery app from scratch. Still, you can turn your idea into reality by sticking to a comprehensive approach and following some fundamental steps.

So let’s look at the process of food delivery mobile app development.

Step 1. Research and Analyze Your Industry

Before starting food mobile app development, you should find out what is currently relevant in your industry. Review the performance of your competitors, and explore their strengths and weaknesses. Also, define your target audience at this stage.

Step 2. Choose Your Business Model

Food ordering mobile app development requires more than selecting features and building software. Primarily, it’s a business you must expand.

That’s why at this step, you should choose your business model. There are two main options:

• Platform-to-consumer. It involves creating a marketplace that will connect various restaurants with customers.
• Restaurant-to-consumer. It involves creating an application for a single restaurant or restaurant chain.

Another thing you should consider is who exactly will deliver the orders. In this regard, you have three options:

• You run your delivery service using your vehicles. This model is quite expensive and time-consuming.
• You engage third-party delivery services. In this case, you partner with a company that has vehicles and couriers.
• You transfer delivery tasks to restaurants. Often, restaurants have their delivery services, so all you need to do is connect customers with food establishments.

So, before proceeding to the next steps, you must decide on all of the above.

Step 3. Come Up With a Monetization Strategy

When you already have a defined business model, you must decide how to make the results of your food or pizza delivery app development profitable. To do this, you need to choose one or more monetization strategies for your application.

Here are some common monetization options:

• Delivery fees. You can charge users for delivery, as apps like Uber Eats or Glovo do.
• Commissions. Another monetization option is to charge fees from restaurants for each order made through your app.
• Advertisements. You can add in-app ads to generate revenue. For example, you can promote restaurants for particular fees.
• Subscriptions. Another monetization alternative is to implement subscriptions in your app. Customers can get some perks for membership, like lower delivery prices, special offers, and discounts.

Step 4. Choose Your App Features

You can move on to feature selection when you clearly understand what business model works for you and how you plan to monetize your app. In today’s article, we have given you an example of the core functionality of your platform, but you may need more complex options.

Step 5. Select a Tech Stack

Now that you have decided on the features, you can choose the technologies needed to create food delivery website or application.

Food ordering Android app development requires Kotlin programming languages. Here you’ll also need Android Studio integrated development environment, Android Developer Tools to leverage various dev tools, and Android SDK consisting of libraries, documentation, and more.

For the iOS application, your food app developer will require Swift programming languages. Your dev experts will also need the Apple XCode toolkit and the iOS SDK.

The development of cross-platform food delivery applications that will work on Android and iOS devices can be done thanks to the Ionic and other PWA frameworks.

If you plan to develop a website in addition to a mobile app, you can use React.JS, React, Vue Angular for the front end and Node.JS, Laravel for the back end.

Your food delivery application will also require integrating third-party APIs. They are necessary, in particular, for such features as maps (e.g., Google Maps), push notifications (e.g., Firebase Cloud Messaging), and payments (e.g., PayPal or Stripe).

Step 6. Estimate Your Project

The next stage is your development project estimation. Here you calculate the cost of each feature of your food delivery application, break the dev process into stages, and come up with approximate timelines.

Step 7. Gather Your Development Team

Finally, you need a food delivery application development company to create a quality application. Depending on your budget, you can opt for different hiring options:

• Outsourcing. In this case, you transfer development tasks to a remote vendor. The primary reason to opt for an outsourced team is cost-effectiveness.
• Hiring an in-house team. You can gather a team that will work in your office. This approach makes it possible to find dedicated employees, but it requires more time and money.

Food Delivery App Development Cost

The cost of developing a food delivery app may vary significantly from one product to another. It hugely depends on the application type, the number and complexity of features, the tech stack, design, and development partner hourly rates and pricing models.

Thus, the more features, the more complex and expensive technologies, the more online food delivery app development company employees you need, the higher the price of creating an application and vice versa.

Let’s see what experts you require for food or pizza delivery app development:

• Front-end or mobile developer
• Back-end developer
• UI/UX designer
• QA specialist
• Project manager
• Business analyst

Depending on your vendor’s location, the cost of food app development services of the above specialists will differ. And here is the good news. If you opt for offshore software development, you can choose the country with the most favorable rates that fit your budget.

Wrapping it up, you may expect to pay from $50,000 to as much as $200,000 for food delivery app creation. You can get more precise calculations by reaching out to the Acropolium team.

Food Delivery App Development Companies: How to Choose

As you can see, on demand grocery delivery app development or food app creation is a complex process. It requires significant expertise and as much effort. Thus, it’s best to hire a food app development company to tackle your dev tasks.

Here are some tips on locating the best food delivery app development company:

Define Objectives and Tasks Beforehand

What can help you find a suitable development agency best? A clear definition of your goals and tasks for the project. Based on these objectives, you won’t waste your time interviewing unsuitable candidates but will immediately find specialists who can help you.

Check the Candidate’s Portfolio and Industry Experience

You require industry experts to create the best food delivery app for restaurant owners. That is why it’s critical to check the candidate’s portfolio long before the interview.

Evaluate the Candidate’s Communication Style

You probably want communication with your food delivery app developer to go smoothly. Further cooperation and the speed and efficiency of the development process depend on this. Look at how the candidate replies to your inquiries and evaluate the developer’s ability to communicate his vision.

Why Choose Acropolium as Your Food Ordering App Development Company?

Acropolium is an experienced software development vendor with over 19 years of experience in the industry. Our company has a long track of secure projects delivered for the hospitality sector.

On top of that, we handle ISO-certified development processes, ensuring consistent quality, and work on GDPR-compliant software, guaranteeing advanced security measures.

Our profound expertise covers:

• Food delivery website development
• Restaurant app development
• Enterprise mobile app development
• Serverless solutions
• Web application scaling
• And even more

By working with our IT outsourcing company, you can get a food delivery app for entrepreneurs at the best price-quality ratio. It’s because we offer a subscription-based collaboration approach. Opting for such a cooperation model means that you:

• Get 600 hours of work per month
• Gather a dedicated team of 7 experts
• Streamline your dev processes

Thus, having delivered over 450 applications successfully, Acropolium can do the same for you.

Food Delivery Portal Development: Acropolium’s Case studies

As an ISO-verified offshore vendor, we guarantee that our team will come up with a restaurant app development solution in the shortest possible time, at the most reasonable price, and with the best quality.

Here are examples of the projects we delivered for the hospitality industry.

Food to Go Order App Development

It’s an internal project our team tackled in 2017. Back then, there were almost no food pre-ordering apps on the market. Hence, our experts aimed to test this new tech and create a multi-faceted platform for food takeout.

We made two mobile apps: a client-side cross-platform mobile application and an app for cafes and restaurants. The result of our work was impressive. Our team reduced order waiting times by 90%, increased the number of customers by 55%, and boosted profits by 30%.

Restaurant Chatbot Development

Another hospitality project our team engaged in is restaurant chatbot development. We aimed to build this software solution as fast as possible to reduce the restaurant’s expenses.

As a result, we delivered a high-quality chatbot at reduced development costs by 75% and significantly accelerated the time to market.

Hotel Chain Management Software & App Development

It’s our project for one of the top Ukrainian hotel chains. The client expected us to optimize their single-server app and deliver a scalable cloud solution for hotel management.

Thus, our experts developed custom hotel management software with increased scalability. We helped our client reduce expenses by 40%, boost revenues by 30%, and fully optimize management systems.

Final Thoughts

Food delivery app development may be a challenging process. At least, that is what it seems at first. Numerous features, different user types, integrations, and other elements — all these matters indeed require increased attention.

Yet, by engaging a reliable vendor, you can handle all the dev tasks and start generating profits immediately. As someone who values their reputation, Acropolium can become your best restaurant app development company. We offer secure software development services at a monthly fee, so drop us a line and let’s get to work.

Sources of Information

1. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/

2. https://res.cloudinary.com/