The emerging technologies and increasing shift of digitization have successfully revolutionized the business trends and encouraged food delivery business owners to migrate their retail stores to digital platforms.

With the global market growth projected to jump from $10,196M in 2020 to $14,670M by 2024, the food delivery industry is throwing significant business opportunities to the startups and entrepreneurs in 2020-21. 

Indeed, the food delivery apps are rapidly growing in popularity, and the market is already leading by online apps including Deliveroo, Postmates, GrubHub, UberEats, Zomato and more. But, with the forecasted numbers of online food delivery app users expected to reach 59.5 million by 2023, there is an excellent scope left for the bootstrappers to become the next big online food delivery app.
If you are also planning to launch your online food delivery app, but not sure how much it costs you, what features you need to integrate and how to monetize it, then you have landed at the right place. This post has covered everything you need to know before getting started with your online food delivery app.

When it comes to developing a food delivery app, the very first question probably strikes your mind is “how much does it cost to develop an App?”.

According to the Clutch survey, a cost to develop any mobile application can be starting from $5000 to $50,000+, depending upon its feature, complexity, OS, development team and other factors. If you are surprised to know why there is a sudden rise in the development cost of the Food delivery apps, then you need to take into account all such market share and key statistics of the food delivery industry.

Key Statistics of Online Food Delivery App Market

No matter how unique your app idea is, it is always worth analyzing the market statistics to evaluate and determine the scope of app development idea:

• By 2020, it is forecasted that food delivery app usage will surpass 44 million people in the US and expected to reach 60 million by 2023. 
• According to Forbes, the online food delivery market will soon be $200B by 2025, backed by a cumulative growth rate of 14%.
• According to the survey, 87% of Americans who use third-party food delivery services agree that it makes their lives easier and nearly one-third of this ratio (31% Americans) say they use these services at least twice a week.
• The forecast from the survey report has revealed that 60% of restaurant operators agree that offering delivery has generated incremental sales in their business and has increased restaurant sales volume by 10 to 20%.

To conclude these statistics, it is worth enough to say that the online food delivery industry has a great scope and definitely will rise in future. If you are also planning to be a part of this thriving industry, then it is best to understand what features, functionalities and technologies you need to integrate to develop an outstanding food delivery app like Deliveroo, DoodDash, Postmates, UberEats, GrubHub and more.

While it is a simple option to hire a food delivery software development company to build an amazing app, still every business has different needs; therefore, it is important to customize the app according to your choice of features, budget, app complexity, technologies and more. 

Let’s dig deep into each point for better understanding…

Essential Features to Develop On-Demand Food Delivery App

When it comes to developing an on-demand food delivery app, the first thing you need to know about mobile app development that, it is a three-tier application that that includes:

• Customer-Side Features
• Admin Panel Features
• Courier/ Delivery Panel Features

These three tires make a perfect food delivery platform for your business as your food delivery app is incomplete if you skip any of these aspects. So here are the most important features that you need to include at each phase of the food delivery app:

Customer-Side App Features

The customer-side app allows customers to access the online food ordering platforms to browse a wide choice of restaurants and dishes they want to place an order and make hassle-free payment. Here are the few important features that you need to include to make your app functional:

• Profile Creation and User Registration: Profile sign up is the very first step to allow users to access your app. Try to keep the registration process as simple, smooth and easier for the users. Also, add the feature to make profile registration via social media accounts to make the entire process easier and quicker for the users. With profile management features, users can edit their profile and customize the settings and preferences according to their choice. However, being an app owner, make sure that your user details will remain safe with you, so create a strong back-end to keep the details password protected.

• Search/ Filter Restaurants and Find Food Easily: Once users login the profile, they directly look for the menu to order the food and search for the best restaurants near to their area. Instead of browsing the list right from the starting, it would be a great option to access filters and search options to shortlist high rated restaurants and dishes to make quick food delivery orders. The best way to make this feature work in the best way, it is best to provide a smart list of all restaurants and food organized by location, type of food (diet food, fast food, gourmet dishes, healthy eating), food preference (veg, non-veg, gluten-free dishes), different nation’s cuisine and more. To customize this feature, you can get recommendations from the restaurants and create a perfect list.

• Listing Restaurant and Their Images: In this highly competitive food delivery industry, serving the best food service is one of the most challenging tasks for the restaurant owners. So to make it easier for the customer to choose the best restaurant for their order, you can provide the complete profile of the restaurants along with the images, menu, ratings, feedback and review of their previous customers, pricing, and its locations.

• Add Dish To The Cart: This is one of the most important features of your app. Allow users to add an unlimited number of food items to the action without leaving the existing page and place the order in one go.

• Order Scheduling Feature: Order scheduling is going to help users to order their food ahead of time or whenever they want their food to be delivered to them. This feature can be a great convenience for the users and make them love your app even more.

• Sharing Contact Details of Delivery Person: Once the order is placed and payment is confirmed, the contact details of the delivery personnel will be automatically shared to make the process smoother.

• Add Multiple Payment Option: Include multiple payment options for the ease of payment. The payment options can be ranging from PayPal, COD, Stripe, Credit/Debit card and more.

• Order Tracking: After the order placement, instead of making the waiting time unbearable, it is best to provide a live order tracking option in the app to allow estimate the real-time status of the order.

• Rating and Review of the Food: It can be the icing on the cake which makes your food delivery app really successful. Allow users to rate the service and quality of the food delivered by the restaurants.
  
• Push Notification: To keep the users engaged with your app longer, many app owners use this feature. Also, using push notification features, you can keep the users updated with the latest food offers, discounts and special deals on orders. This feature will not only help you trigger your sale but also increase the customer user-engagement.

Feature for the Admin Panel

The second phase of the online food delivery app is the admin panel that helps you manage and run services smoothly online. Admin panel mainly helps in accepting orders, managing orders, setting price and more.

Here are the few features that you need to run the admin panel of the online food delivery app smoothly:

• Registration and Profile Management: Like customer-side, the same feature is required at the admin-panel phase as well. The different restaurants can access this feature to get yourself registered with the app and add details, including location, pricing, menus, offers, restaurant name, etc.

• Order Assigning: With this feature, you and restaurant use the admin panel to assign the orders to the different delivery personnel without any hassle.

• Dashboard: It is an important feature of your food delivery app as it will help you determine how your business is progressing and help you in managing your restaurant. The dashboard will let you know all about the orders, deliveries and payments and make your business work easily.

• Customize the Content: Right from uploading pictures to handling different profiles of the restaurants, you need to customize the content in the app to deliver a better experience to the users. It can be anything from adding photos, editing menus, adding items, changing prices and more.

• Account And Management: The registered restaurants should be able to manage and edit the payment and financial accounts by using this feature and able to understand what revenues they have gained through the app.
  
• App Analytics: By accessing the app analytics, admin is able to determine how well their app is performing and how much they are earning from the app. Right from getting daily orders to how many customers are accessing their app, the admin can have a clear view of their business through this feature.

Courier/ Delivery Panel Features

• Profile Management and App Registration: The same feature is essential at courier-side for smooth functionality. With this feature, the delivery personnel are verified by the restaurant to ensure you a secure food delivery service.

• Managing Orders: Once the order is confirmed, the delivery person will get the notification for the order request, and they can easily accept or reject the orders from this feature.

• Navigation and GPS Tracking: This is an essential feature, as it will help users in tracking live-location of the delivery person.

Building an online food delivery app with all these features can be starting from $10,000+ depending upon the complexity of the app and choice of operating platform you choose to launch your app and the mobile app development team you prefer to hire. 

After reading all these features, many of you must be curious to know what exactly it will cost you to develop an online food delivery app in 2020-21?

How Much Does It Cost To Build a Food Delivery App In 2020-21?

There are many food delivery app development companies that claim to develop outstanding food delivery apps like Deliveroo, Postmate, UberEats and more under $15,000. However, the fact of the matter is, different apps cost you different price- there is no standard price of app development as every business has its unique needs. But with the careful estimation of each factor affecting the development cost, you can get the approx development cost of the app. 

Here the major factors affecting the cost of the food delivery app:

• Choice of Operating System: Each OS has its different guidelines and frameworks to build an app. Developing a native Android or iOS app can be more costly to develop than building a cross-platform application. Majority of cross-platform frameworks are open-source and provide you with an advanced set of widgets and tools to develop advanced levels of the app. The cost to build Native app can be starting from $20,000+ for each platform, whereas Cross-platform apps can be developed with the starting price of $12,500+, that easily run on multiple operating systems. 

• UX/UI Design of the App: Design is the soul of your app. This is the first thing that attracts the attention of the users and helps in keeping them engaging. So instead, making it look too fancy, it is worth it to keep it simple, useful, and straightforward. You can choose to hire a UX/UI designer, starting with $15+ per hour cost and can ensure you excellent UX/UI design of the app.

• App Development Team: According to the survey, the cost to hire an app development team is starting from $50+ $100, and $150, in India, USA and UK respectively. The price of the app development team depends upon the skills, expertise, knowledge and geolocation of the app developers.  

Conclusion

Developing an online food delivery app for your business can be a brilliant idea in 2020-21 as it will not just accelerate your business growth but also help you reach a wider market and enables you to notice the great shift in your food delivery sale. So this blog has explained to you what features and functionalities it required to create an exceptional food delivery app and how much it cost you to create in 2020-21.

Still, if you have any doubt and are interested in determining the exact development cost, then feel free to drop your details to our experts. They will analyze your business needs and suggest you best solutions that sync your budget and requirement.