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The history of online food ordering applications dates back to 1995 when the U.S.A. got its first online food delivery platform, Worldwide Waiter. Today, we have a highly thriving food delivery app market with spectacular global revenue statistics. This market offers an opportunity for business idea seekers and entrepreneurs to enter.
Before we begin developing mobile applications, let’s learn more about today’s online food delivery market.
If you are planning to build a food delivery app, then here are some of the best food delivery apps that are ruling the global food delivery market:
In 2023, Uber Eats was the most downloaded food delivery app in France and the second most downloaded app in the US. By 2028, the online food delivery market is forecast to generate revenues reaching 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars.
In 2023, food delivery revenues worldwide were estimated at just over one trillion U.S. dollars, of which 400 billion dollars were generated in the meal delivery segment.
A survey reveals that 70% of consumers want to order online directly from restaurants instead of marketplaces.
These figures are enough to clarify doubts about investing in food delivery app development.
Moving forward, let’s consider whether investing in a food delivery app would be a good decision for you in 20204.
Have you noticed how ordering food has become so much easier these days? In 2024, the rise of food delivery apps isn’t just a trend—it’s a fundamental shift in how we dine.
Recent studies highlight a staggering increase in online food delivery orders, with projections showing global growth. The revenue in the Online Food Delivery market is forecasted to reach US$1.22tn in 2024.
It is expected to exhibit a compound annual growth rate (CAGR 2024-2029) of 9.49%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$1.92tn by 2029.
This surge isn’t just about convenience; it’s about meeting the evolving needs of busy consumers who crave efficiency without compromising on choice or quality.
Today, platforms like DoorDash and Uber Eats exemplify this transformation, connecting millions of users with various restaurants and cuisines at their fingertips. These apps have simplified the process of ordering food and expanded into delivering groceries and partnering with local businesses, catering to a broader spectrum of consumer needs.
Behind this success lies sophisticated technology that ensures orders are processed swiftly and accurately, while features like real-time tracking provide transparency and peace of mind.
As we delve deeper into this market, it’s clear that the appeal of food delivery apps lies in their convenience and ability to adapt and innovate. Advances in artificial intelligence are enhancing user experiences and operational efficiencies, and these apps are reshaping how we think about dining out or enjoying a meal at home.
If you’re considering starting in this field, the chances for growth and profit look good. A rising number of customers want easy, diverse dining options. Looking forward, food delivery apps will keep changing how we eat, opening up exciting possibilities for customers and businesses.
Now, how do you make a food delivery app, or what steps should you take while building one? This guide will clarify everything.
Building a delivery app can seem overwhelming, but we’re here to simplify it. We’ll break down the process of creating a food delivery app and the steps that should be considered when building one for your business. In later stages, we will also discuss the cost of food delivery app development, so stay tuned.
Market research and understanding are crucial in developing an on-demand food delivery app. Business owners can’t jump right into the idea of not just a food delivery app, or any app for that matter, without knowing its market (audience, competition, trends, and more).
Knowing the food delivery market would enable you to connect with the customers effectively, gain competitive intelligence, fish outgrowth opportunities, identify gaps, and ultimately make informed decisions.
When researching market research, here are some of the crucial aspects to analyze:
This would allow for understanding key demographics, such as audience characteristics, preferences, target needs, user behavior, and more.
Upon realizing these aspects, the next phase of market research is to:
Market research’s two most important aims are to realize your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and business model. The above realization will help you find your USP.
Let us further understand your business model for an on-demand food delivery app.
The goal of food delivery apps is to generate revenue. These types of on-demand food delivery applications enable you to select the model that best suits your business requirements, goals, and budget.
Here are the types of food delivery app development:
Restaurant-To-Consumer Delivery
In this type of food delivery app, your software development partner must develop the app for a single restaurant or restaurant chain. Customers can order food from any particular restaurant using the app. The restaurant is solely responsible for managing its delivery service and logistics.
For example – Domino, Mc McDonald
Platform-To-Consumer Delivery (Aggregator)
Contrary to the above model, in this type of food delivery app, the aggregator enables various restaurants from a city to connect with customers through a single platform so they can order from any of these restaurants from a single on-demand food delivery application. These platforms charge the restaurant and customers fees for using the platform or their services.
For example – Uber Eats, Doordash, Deliveroo, Zomato, Grubhub, etc
Further, this model is differentiated into two types; one is the app where the aggregator only manages the orders and not the delivery, while in the other, the aggregator also manages the delivery.
Let us explore these models further in detail.
Order-Only Model
In this food delivery app model, the aggregators only manage the orders for the multiple restaurants registered with the platform, while the restaurant must employ delivery services. The aggregator is an intermediary to replace the restaurant’s antiquated phone-ordering system with an optimized web and mobile on-demand food delivery platform.
For Example – JustEat, Delivery Hero, Eat24, etc.
Order & Delivery Model
In this type of food delivery app model, the aggregator retains control over processing orders for multiple restaurants and delivering them either with a fleet of delivery drivers or by collaborating with third-party courier services.
For Example – Zomato, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Swiggy, etc.
One of the most useful outcomes of detailed market research is learning the functional scope of the various food delivery apps available to see what else you can add to offer value to the customer.
An ideal food delivery application ecosystem includes a consumer, Restaurant(merchant), courier, and admin app (in the case of the platform to aggregator model).
Here are some of the essential features to be considered for the on-demand food delivery app development:
App development costs are critical and require careful evaluation and strategic planning. From my experience in the field, I can tell you that app development costs can vary significantly based on several factors, including –
First, break down the costs into two main categories:
Upfront costs include design, development, testing, and initial deployment. Ongoing costs encompass maintenance, updates, server hosting, and marketing.
When budgeting, it’s essential to have a clear scope of work. Detailed planning and precise requirements help avoid scope creep, which can lead to unexpected cost increases.
Consider creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) first to validate your idea and gather user feedback without immediately committing to a full-scale launch.
Another important aspect is choosing between an in-house team and outsourcing. In-house teams offer better control and direct communication but can be expensive due to salaries, benefits, and overheads.
Don’t forget to account for hidden costs, such as third-party integrations, licensing fees, and unforeseen technical challenges. Transparency with your development team about budget constraints can help them tailor solutions that align with your financial plan.
Choosing the right app development company is crucial when creating a food delivery app. Look for a company with a proven track record in developing similar applications. They should have experience integrating key features like real-time order tracking, secure payment gateways, and user-friendly interfaces.
Consider their expertise in UI/UX design to ensure your app is intuitive and visually appealing, which enhances user engagement. Additionally, verify their ability to scale the app as your business grows and adapt to future technological advancements.
Check client reviews and portfolios to gauge their reliability and quality of work.
Communication and collaboration are also vital, so choose a company that communicates effectively and understands your vision for the app.
You can also hire mobile app developers from a reputable company hourly.
Once you have a clear idea of the food delivery app, its USP, business model, and features, the next phase is to bring the app idea to life. To bring the app’s visual architecture to life, prototyping and user experience/user interface (UX/UI) designing would enable you to create a detailed blueprint for your food delivery app.
This step, which involves creating low-fidelity wireframes, outlining the app’s structure and user flow, and creating the high-fidelity design, is crucial for companies providing food delivery app development services, as it creates the customer’s experience of the app.
An expert team of designers and analysts finalizes every detail, from logic to navigation for the product, image placements, usability sequences, aesthetics, brand styling, and other excessive details, to build an app that delivers user engagement and can withstand the test of time. The app’s UI can influence the consumer’s decision-making process, so every small detail of the food delivery application is carefully planned with the customers in mind.
Once your team of UI/UX designers has the design ready, it is passed on to the developer to work on the technical side of the application.
The next step in developing a food delivery application involves defining the tech stack and developing a minimal viable product (MVP). This typically includes decisions on programming languages, databases, servers, APIs, and other development components.
Here is the detailed tech stack for an ideal food delivery app, which every food delivery app development company can use.
The team required to develop a food delivery application:
Tech Stacks, which you can choose to develop your app with –
| Registration | Facebook SDK, Gmail SDK, Auth0 |
| Payment | Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, BHIM, Net Banking, e-Wallets |
| User Location | Google’s Geolocation API for Android, CoreLocation framework for iOS |
| Navigation | MapKit, Google Directions APIs, Routific, TomTomm |
| Messaging | Twilio, Plivo, MessageBird, Nexmo |
| Programming Language | JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Swift, Kotlin, |
| Markup Language | HTML5, CSS |
| Framework | Flutter, React Native, Angular, Vue.js |
| Push Notifications | Firebase Cloud Messaging, Apple Push Notification service, Push.io, Twilio, Amazon SNS |
| Realtime Analytics | Storm, Flink, Google Analytics, Cisco, IBM, Apple Analytics |
| UI/UX | Figma, Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator |
| Storage | Azure, Google Cloud Storage, AWS |
| Programming Language | Python. PHP, |
| Framework | Ruby on Rails, Laravel, Symfony, Django |
| Cloud | Azure, Google, AWS |
| Database | PostgreSQL, HBase, MongoDB, Cassandra, MySQL |
| Caching Tool | Memcached, Redis |
| Server | AWS, Azure |
| Web server software | Apache HTTP Server, Nginx |
The team required to develop a food delivery application –
Now that you have the tech stack ready to build a food delivery app, the next step is to develop the app once the designer has completed their design.
The most efficient way to develop your digital product is to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) first. Then, upon analyzing the response to your MVP, decide whether you want to ditch the idea or improve it accordingly, as you don’t want to end up developing a product that is not liked or used by your target audience.
MVP comprises a minimum/basic/vital feature set in which the business runner intends to test the product-market fit and gain crucial technical insights.
When developing a food delivery application like Uber Eats, the business owners decide which type of mobile app to develop. The business can either go for native, hybrid, or cross-platform app development. Here is how the most popular type of food delivery mobile app development types that plays a crucial role in the development process.
The overall cost of developing a mobile app also varies according to the development type that you choose for your food delivery app.
This type of food delivery application development would enable developers to create apps explicitly for a single platform(iOS/Android), which are maintained separately.
The developers use Android Software Development Kit (SDK), Android Studio, Android IDE, and IntelliJ IDEA for Android development.
Further, the development of native Android programming languages like Java, Kotlin, Scala, and C++ is used. Other tools used in Native food delivery app development include Charles Proxy, AVD Manager, Shake Bug, etc.
On the other hand, the Android codebase can’t be used to deploy apps on the Apple App Store. This is when the iOS developer uses iOS development tools like Appcode, Xcode, or Atom and various other tools like Swift Package Manager, Jazzy, etc., whereas programming languages like Swift and Objective-C are used.
This type of Native application development is mostly chosen by business owners who do not have a budget constraint. For each software platform, the code is developed separately, which is time-consuming and cost-exhaustive.
With it, developers can achieve high reliability and functionality in the application, allowing them to take full advantage of their chosen platform’s capabilities.
On the other hand, cross-platform app development uses the “write once, run anywhere” coding paradigm, which means the developer does not have to write the code separately for the platforms they have chosen without compromising the native app-like feel and user experience.
The rising popularity of cross-platform app development is owed to its lower development costs, shorter time to market, wider audience reach, and more. Cross-platform app developers use popular frameworks like Flutter, React Native, Xamarin, Cordova, and more to develop cross-platform food delivery apps.
Once the MVP or full-cycle food delivery app is developed and ready for use, before it is open for beta testing or use by users, the mobile app development team must ensure that it does not have any bugs in features/functionalities that would impact the user experience.
Testing the code allows the development team to catch the coding errors before the users.
Whether it is MVP, continuous development after MVP, or post-deployment maintenance, testing is crucial to keep your food delivery app bug-free and meet your users’ needs.
As per your preference and requirement for inspecting the code, your QA testers can conduct various types of testing on the code of developed components and functions delivered by the developers, such as user test creation, manual testing, or automation testing.
Types of software testing for food delivery apps:
These types of software testing would enable the developer to test the app’s functionality, usability with real users, compatibility with various devices, app integration with third-party services, and more.
Once the software testing is done thoroughly after the food delivery app development, it is time to deploy the product on the respective platform (Android and iOS) in the case of a native app or a single codebase on all platforms in the case of a cross-platform food delivery app.
Post-deployment, the development team tracks user experience feedback, app functioning, and performance to implement improvements and fix any detected bugs.
The app and the technologies and development tools used to develop it need to be upgraded to the latest version to avoid any security issues that may make the user data prone to cyber-attacks.
Support and maintenance would enable the team to continuously fix the bugs, improve performance, meet the users’ needs, and keep the technologies up to date.
Alongside continuously improving the app, the team also works on marketing the food delivery application to reach the target audience and increase the user base, food delivery app downloads, app usage, and ultimately, the return on Investment (ROI).
In today’s fast-paced world, time management is one of the most prevalent challenges for the current generation. With hectic schedules and numerous responsibilities, finding time to prepare meals or dine out can often be a luxury. This is where food delivery apps step in as a practical solution.
Pain Points of Users
1. Time Constraints: Juggling work, social life, and personal commitments often leaves little time for cooking or dining out. Food delivery apps help by saving time and providing meals at your doorstep.
2. Limited Choices: Depending on where you live, dining out or ordering in can be limited. Food delivery apps expand these choices by offering a variety of cuisines and restaurants.
3. Convenience: Traveling to restaurants or grocery stores can be a hassle, especially in bad weather or heavy traffic. Food delivery apps eliminate this inconvenience by bringing your favorite meals directly to you.
When developing a mobile application for food delivery like Uber Eats, the team plays a crucial role in making your idea a reality and the overall cost of developing the app.
Let us understand how your development team would contribute to the cost of developing a mobile application for food delivery.
A food delivery app saves users the time and effort of physically visiting a restaurant. Whether at home, work, or elsewhere, users can browse menus, place orders, and have food delivered directly to their doorstep. This convenience simplifies meal planning and frees up time for other priorities.
Secondly, Modern food delivery apps offer extensive choices from various restaurants and cuisines. This variety caters to diverse tastes and dietary preferences, ensuring that users can find something they enjoy without limitations. After a certain time, you can also start providing groceries through your app, giving you more traction.
Launching a food delivery app opens up additional revenue streams for businesses. Beyond direct food sales, apps can generate income through subscription models, advertisements, and commissions from partner restaurants. This diversification can significantly boost overall profitability.
Food delivery apps transcend geographical boundaries to tap into a global audience hungry for culinary diversity. Their scalability attracts a broad customer base and facilitates partnerships with supermarkets and specialty stores, broadening the app’s appeal and market reach.
Launching a food delivery app requires minimal initial investment compared to establishing a traditional restaurant. The absence of physical overheads like rent and equipment lowers startup costs, making it a feasible venture for entrepreneurs and small teams.
Finally, the cost of developing a food delivery app will depend on the number of features you want in it.
As you know, there is plenty of opportunity to grow in this market. Here are a few app monetization strategies to help you understand how the food delivery app generates revenues.
One of the most straightforward ways food delivery apps make money is through delivery fees.
Think of apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash. You usually pay a fee to bring food to your doorstep when you order food.
This fee can vary based on how far the restaurant is from you or how busy the delivery drivers are at that moment.
It’s a small price to pay for the convenience of not having to leave your house!
Next up are service fees. Apps like Grubhub and Postmates often add a service fee to each order.
This fee helps cover the costs of running the app and providing customer support.
It’s like paying a little extra for the seamless ordering experience through a well-maintained platform.
Restaurants also pay a commission to these apps for each order they get through the platform.
For example, when you order from your favorite pizza place on Uber Eats, a percentage of your payment goes to Uber Eats.
This can be anywhere from 15% to 30%. It’s a win-win: the restaurant gets more customers, and the app earns a commission.
Some apps offer subscription services. Take Uber Eats Pass or DoorDash DashPass, for instance.
Subscribers get perks like reduced delivery fees and exclusive discounts for a monthly or annual fee.
It’s a great deal if you order food frequently, providing a steady revenue stream for the apps.
Advertising is another big revenue source. Restaurants can pay to have their listings appear at the top of your search results or to be featured prominently within the app.
For example, you might see McDonald’s or Taco Bell running special promotions on these platforms.
This increases their visibility and order volume; the app makes money from these advertising fees.
Food delivery apps often have exclusive deals or promotions funded by restaurant partners.
For instance, you might get a notification about a special discount on sushi from DoorDash.
These promotions drive more restaurant orders and keep you returning to the app.
Some apps also offer white-label services, which means they let restaurants use their delivery network and technology under the restaurant’s brand.
For example, a local pizzeria might use Uber Eats’ infrastructure to offer deliveries, but it looks like the pizzeria’s own service.
The app charges a fee for this convenience.
Finally, there’s data monetization. Food delivery apps collect a lot of data about what people order, when, and how often.
Apps like Grubhub can analyze this data and sell anonymized insights to restaurants. This helps restaurants understand trends, optimize their menus, and improve marketing strategies.
It’s like giving restaurants a secret weapon to attract more customers.
Uber Eats is a global food delivery service that connects users with restaurants through a mobile app.
DoorDash is a US-based food delivery service that partners with local restaurants to provide a convenient delivery service.
Grubhub is a leading online and mobile food ordering and delivery service in the United States. Over 300,000 restaurants in 4,000 cities are partnered with Grubhub.
Zomato is a multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company that allows users to browse menus, read reviews, and order food online from local restaurants.
Deliveroo is a British online food delivery company that connects users with local restaurants.
When developing a mobile application for food delivery like Uber Eats, the development team plays a crucial role in making your idea a reality and in the overall cost of developing the app.
Let’s understand how your development team would contribute to the cost of developing a mobile application for food delivery. The cost of developing a food delivery app depends on these factors.
Let’s understand how your development team would contribute to the cost of developing a mobile application for food delivery. The cost of food delivery app development depends on these factors.
One crucial factor that can greatly affect the realization of a food delivery app is affordability. Business owners must decide whether to build an app in-house or outsource it to an experienced food delivery application development company. Let’s explore both alternatives.
Combining an in-house food delivery application development team is an exhaustive process involving HR’s tireless hours of hunting skilled designers, developers, and testers. It requires expertise and experience and would contribute to a long-term organizational plan.
This team lets the business owner control the project’s scope, technology, development process, and composition. Further, having an in-house team facilitates seamless communication, enhanced geographical accessibility, and the dedication of each team member to one project at a time.
However, procuring an in-house team is much more expensive, has a low retention rate, and only offers access to a limited talent pool.
In contrast to the above alternative, outsourcing the project to a food delivery app development company enables you to hire an individual designer/developer/tester or a dedicated mobile app development team.
When seeking top food delivery application development services, business owners can choose from experts globally, tapping into a vast talent pool.
These dedicated pools of the team are versatile and scalable, with expertise and experience offering faster time to market. This does not involve a dedicated infrastructure for functioning, so the development cost is considerably lower.
Further, this model allows business owners to choose the engagement model based on their budget and preference.
However, due to different time zones, there may be a lack of communication, and the business owners may not have any immediate access to the team.
Most companies in their entrepreneurial stage or just startups often prefer to hire app developers, given their limited budgets and the urge to make the most of them.
To understand the overall cost of outsourcing the development of food delivery applications like Zomato, let’s examine some aspects that contribute to the overall cost of the on-demand food delivery app.
Here are factors that affect the food delivery app development cost:
The complexity of the app varied from MVP to a full-cycle food delivery app based on various features and functionalities included in the app. While a simple app may include basic features and functionalities like
while a high-complexity app would be laden with advanced features like –
Further, integrating third-party services (payment gateways, Google Maps, etc.) and design complexity would increase the cost of developing a food delivery app like DoorDash.
| Level of complexity | Time estimates | Hour rate | Overall cost estimates |
| Simple | 3-5 months | $20-30 | $15,000 – $30,000 |
| Medium | 6-9 months | $50-65 | $50,000 – $70,000 |
| High | 10+ months | $100-120 | $70,000 – $90,000 |
Whether hiring an hourly developer from a mobile app development company or having an in-house team, development time is crucial in determining the food delivery app development cost. Each phase and even the features take approximately time to develop and test.
Here is the cost incurred to develop a mobile app like Zomato based on development time:
| Function | Time | Approx Cost ($30/hour) |
| Development | 1000 hours | $30,000 |
| Quality Assurance | 168 hours | $5,040 |
| Project Management | 112 hours | $3,360 |
| Total | 1280 Hours | $38,400 |
When you outsource your food delivery mobile app development project, the hourly rate for hiring mobile app developers, designers, and QA testers varies depending on their region.
Here are the hourly costs from some countries:
| Country | Development | UI/UX Designer | QA |
| India | $20 – $40/hr | $15 – $40/hr | N/A |
| Europe | $30 – $100/hr | $30 – $100/hr | $20 – $60/hr |
| USA | $80 – $170/hr | $20 – $60/hr | $20 – $40/hr |
| Australia | $80 – $200/hr | $20 – $100/hr | $20 – $60/hr |
| Ukraine | $30 – $100/hr | N/A | $5 – $25/hr |
The business model that you pick will affect not only the revenue you will earn from it but also the cost of developing the food delivery mobile app, as the food delivery development cost of apps like Uber Eats varies greatly from the cost of developing a food delivery app like Dominos.
Here is the cost of developing a food delivery app based on its revenue model:
| Type of app | Cost Estimates |
| Order-Only Mobile App | $50,000 – $55,000 |
| Order & Delivery Mobile App | $70,000 – $80,000 |
| Fully Integrated Mobile App | $60,000 – $65,000. |
Developing a food delivery app does not involve developing a single app. It’s an ecosystem/marketplace that uses applications by customers, partner restaurants, delivery partners, and admin.
Here are the cost estimates for developing an on-demand food delivery app for each of this particular segment of end users.
| Type | Hours | Cost Estimates |
| Courier Application | 700 – 900 | $35,000 – $50,000 |
| User Service Application | 700 – 900 | $35,000 – $65,000 |
| Restaurant Application | 700 – 900 | $9,000 – $15,000 |
| Admin panel | 400 – 500 | $10,000 – $12,000 |
When outsourcing a project like developing a food delivery app to an on-demand mobile app development company, the development cost will vary depending on the platform compatibility you choose for your app.
Unlike Native apps, which require different code bases for each platform, cross-platform apps are cheaper as the single code base works on most platforms.
Here is the cost based on the compatibility of the food delivery apps’ platform.
| Platform compatibility | Cost Estimates |
| Native apps (Android & iOS) | $50,000 – $100,000 |
| Cross-platform apps | $25,000 – $60,000 |
| Web apps | $15,000 – $50,000 |
| Hybrid apps | $10,000 – $150,000 |
Just like the cost of development can be bifurcated based on whether you want to hire mobile app developers, hire a UI/UX designer, or hire a software tester from the software development company, you can also break down the cost based on various phases of on-demand food delivery app development.
Here are the cost estimates that your business will incur in each phase of developing a mobile application like DoorDash.
| Phase | Cost Estimates |
| Research and Planning | $2,000 – $5,000 |
| Design | $3,000 – $10,000 |
| Backend development | $15,000 – $40,000 |
| Frontend development | $10,000 – $25,000 |
| Testing | $10,000 – $20,000 |
| Branding & Marketing | $5,000 – $20,000 |
| Maintenance | $1000 – $5000 |
| Patent | $3,000 – $10,000 |
Though the new startups have a revenue generation opportunity, the increase in the number of food delivery apps in the market has saturated the market, making it tough for a new food delivery app with a unique USP to complete and sustain.
Having said that, business owners can gain a competitive edge with the right strategy and a well-designed product.
Here is a quick overview of the food delivery app development process.
An off-the-shelf food delivery application may not always work, given the unique offerings business owners want to offer in their app. This is when custom on-demand food delivery application development comes into play.
With more than 36 years of experience in custom software development, we at SPEC INDIA offer top-notch food delivery app development services crafted to suit your every development requirement.
SPEC INDIA, as your single stop IT partner has been successfully implementing a bouquet of diverse solutions and services all over the globe, proving its mettle as an ISO 9001:2015 certified IT solutions organization. With efficient project management practices, international standards to comply, flexible engagement models and superior infrastructure, SPEC INDIA is a customer’s delight. Our skilled technical resources are apt at putting thoughts in a perspective by offering value-added reads for all.
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