Digital Marketing

How to Design an On-Demand Food Delivery App Development Solution?

The online food delivery market is set to reach $111 billion by 2020, as people are increasingly using food delivery apps to order food online.

First, the rise of cashless payments and now the COVID-19 outbreak has encouraged people across the globe to stay at their homes and avail on-demand services. This also means there’s a high demand for on-demand delivery solutions.

If you’re planning to design an on-demand food delivery app development solution for your business, follow this step-by-step guide.

Do market research

The first step towards creating an on-demand food delivery app development solution is to know what’s up in the market. Identify your potential rivals and figure out how they’re doing business. When studying your competitors, take note of the following:

  • Feature set
  • Business model
  • Revenue model
  • Marketing tactics
  • Customer loyalty

This information will help you create a foundation and make things easy for you when you actually go about developing the app. Some competitors to keep an eye on are:

  • Grubhub
  • Door Dash
  • Uber Eats
  • Postmates

Identify hot industry trends

Now, you need to find out what’s popular in the online food delivery market. You can’t adopt a decade-old approach and compete with giants like Grubhub and Doordash. You’ll need to identify and follow the hot industry trends to ensure you provide your customers with what they’re expecting.

Here are some popular trends in the food delivery market:

  • In-house restaurant delivery fleets
  • Increased third-party delivery
  • The rise of online grocery shopping
  • Prioritization of delivery data tracking
  • Increased food delivery subscriptions

Technology is also revolutionizing the food delivery market. New concepts like tweet-to-order systems, drones delivery, virtual assistants, and speech recognition are becoming increasingly popular.

Select a business model

At this step, you’ll need to identify a business model for your food delivery app. This choice can depend purely on your goals and objectives.

Let’s take a look at two main food delivery app models.

Order-only: In this model, your app connects customers to restaurants, but you’re not responsible for the delivery. Once the order is placed, the restaurant will fulfill the order using its in-house fleet. Managing an order-only model is painless, but the earning opportunities are also limited. Some order-only businesses are JustEat and Eat24.

Order and delivery: In this type of food delivery business model, you are responsible for both orders as well as delivery. When a user places an order, your delivery person will go to the restaurant, collect the order, and deliver it to the user’s doorstep. This model is slightly complex, but the opportunities for earning are more.  Apps like UberEats, Door Dash, and Postmates use the order & delivery model.

Design a revenue model

Your monetization scheme will depend on the model of your business. Here’s how you can earn money with your on-demand food delivery app development solution.

  • Merchant fee: You charge a small percentage of the total billed amount from the restaurant.
  • Delivery fee: You charge a flat delivery fee from your customers (applicable to order & delivery model only).
  • Subscription fee (optional): If you want, you can also charge a monthly convenience fee or a percentage of the total billed amount from your users.
  • Advertising fee: You can charge an advertising fee from restaurants and promote them on your platform.

Choose the right features

Once you have your business and revenue model decided, it’s time to brainstorm the features your app will have. The features of your app will depend on the business model.

A full integrated order & delivery app would have three user segments: user, merchant/restaurant, and delivery person. Your app will need to have three versions or panels for each type of user.

Here are the necessary features for each segment.

User Panel:

  • Registration and accounts
  • Search, filter, and sort
  • Order placement and checkout
  • Payment integration
  • Tracking
  • Customer support
  • Order history
  • Rating and reviews

Merchant panel:

  • Registration
  • Accept and reject orders
  • Send notifications
  • Order map
  • Delivery status
  • Delivery history

Delivery panel

  • Registration and accounts
  • Accept and reject orders
  • Update order status
  • Order management
  • See revenue and ratings

Select the technology stack

By now, you have a clear vision of your on-demand food delivery app development solution. You know the business model, the users of your app, the features of the app, and how you will generate profits.

Now comes the technical part as you’re about to start the actual development process. When it comes to developing an on-demand delivery app, you can utilize a wide range of technologies.

The technology stack of your food delivery app will depend on the following factors:

  • Features and functionality
  • Supported platforms
  • APIs and backend systems
  • Core mobile backend services.

To help you understand better, let’s take a look at some commonly used technologies in food delivery app development.

Merchant/restaurant listing:

  • Foursquare API
  • Grubhub API

User location

  • Google Maps
  • Core location

Payment gateway integration:

  • PayPal
  • Stripe
  • Braintree

Push notifications

  • Urban Airship
  • Amazon SNS

Real-time messaging

  • WebSockets

 

Test and launch

Once the development of your on-demand food delivery app development solution is complete, run some tests to ensure there are no bugs and UX issues.

You can run two different types of tests for your app. These include:

  • Internal testing: In this stage, you test an app and identify if any bugs, UX issues, or wireframe issues need to be addressed.
  • External testing: You release a beta version of your app and let your target consumers use the app and give you feedback. Collect the feedback and make changes accordingly.

Now that you’ve thoroughly tested your app, it’s time to launch it. Create robust communication and customer acquisition strategies to ensure your idea turns into a success.

Wrapping it up

With more and more people ordering food online, it’s apparent that food delivery apps are here to stay. So, if you’re planning to launch an on-demand food delivery app development solution, now is the right time.

But be mindful that technology that online food delivery technology is constantly evolving, and so are the expectations and demands of the users.

Author’s Bio: Ritesh Patil is the co-founder of Mobisoft Infotech that helps startups and enterprises in mobile technology. He loves technology, especially mobile technology. He’s an avid blogger and writes on mobile app development services. He works in a leading android development company with skilled android app developers that has developed innovative mobile applications across various fields such as Finance, Insurance, Health, Entertainment, Productivity, Social Causes, Education and many more and has bagged numerous awards for the same.

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