The average American pays $152 a month for meal delivery—did you know that? While this information might not appear significant at first, it makes sense when you consider that meal delivery services receive between 15% and 30% of each order.

Even if UberEats, DoorDash, and GrubHub dominate the food delivery business, entrepreneurs can always find a way to build a food ordering app and carve out a niche. Thus, if you too want to invest in food ordering app development, now is the perfect time!

For all the information you need to design a meal ordering app, read this blog. It covers features and functionality, development steps, benefits, monetization model, and the expense to build a food ordering app.

So, let’s begin!

 

Future Predictions & Projections of Food Ordering Market

 

 

• It is anticipated that the online food delivery sector would generate US$1.20 trillion in revenue by 2024.
• With a predicted 9.04% compound annual growth rate (CAGR 2024–2029), the market is likely to reach a value of US$1.85 trillion by 2029.
• A revenue growth of 20.0% is projected for the grocery delivery market in 2025.
• In 2024, the grocery delivery sector is expected to generate US$0.77 trillion in revenue.
• By 2028, the Meal Delivery category will have reached its greatest value of 2.5 billion users.
• As of January 2024, DoorDash was the second most valuable e-commerce startup acquisition, having paid an incredible eight billion dollars to purchase Wolt, a company based in Helsinki.
• Most respondents to a Rakuten Insight survey on Indian meal delivery apps in April 2023 reported spending between 200 and 499 Indian rupees per order.
• Furthermore, it is projected that by 2029, there will be 1.5 billion users in the restaurant delivery sector.
• This suggests that in 2024, the major user penetration rate was 15.7%; by 2029, it is expected to increase to 18.1%.
• Furthermore, it is anticipated that the average revenue per user will be US$120.40.

What is a Food Ordering App?

Users can order the meals and dishes they want delivered directly to their door using an online food ordering application system. In recent years, these apps have grown in popularity.

This is particularly true in cities, where they offer a handy option for residents to have meals of restaurant quality without having to leave their homes.

White labeling, which displays your brand name on the application, is included with SaaS-based solutions. Since you are only paying for what you use, the monthly subscription option is very affordable.

For their on-demand food delivery service, companies typically go for SaaS-based solutions. Therefore, you should speak with a food delivery app development company if you intend to build a food ordering app for your business.

 

 

How Does A Food Ordering App Work?

Do you want to know the working mechanism of a food ordering application? Well, if yes, then you must go through the below steps explained by a mobile app development company.

 

1. User Registration

When creating an account, the user enters their name, phone number, email address, and maybe more pertinent data.

 

2. Search and Browse

The customer has the option to look up restaurants by category or by cuisine. For example, Indian, Chinese, Italian, etc. In addition, they can refine the results according to price range, cuisine, region, and other preferences.

 

3. Menu Selection

Next, the user can pick their favorite food to order from the menu. They can see item details, comments, and make changes to their orders.

 

4. Checkout and Payment

The user can move to the checkout page, where they can choose a method of payment, review their order. They use any coupons or deals that are available. Their payment options include smart wallets, cash on delivery, and credit or debit cards or they can even use the app like Paypal.

 

5. Order Placement and Tracking

After paying, the user makes an order and sends it to the restaurant. Usually, the tool lets you track your order in real time. It lets the user see how their order is doing from the time they place it until it arrives.

Why To Build A Food Ordering App?

Ordering food is a common way to pass the time, learn, and share knowledge. Apps designed specifically for food delivery are in high demand as food delivery app development solutions have gained popularity. If you want to develop a food ordering app like Doordash or another food delivery service, here are some good reasons to do it:

 

 

1. Opportunity To Earn Millions

Every day, millions of people order food online, which shows that more and more people want food delivery services. So, if you develop a food ordering app, it can be profitable because you can keep a sizable percentage of the money that is made from each order. By using effective marketing and business techniques, you can make significant earnings from your app by making it a popular choice for users.

 

2. High ROI

The ROI of food delivery app development solutions are usually high. The consistent flow of income the app generates can cover the early costs to build a food ordering app and promotion. It’s a worthwhile investment because your profits will increase in tandem with your user base growth.

 

3. Demand For Food Ordering Solution

Convenient meal ordering options are in high demand. Due to their hectic schedules, people would much rather order food online than go out. Investing in meal delivery app development or food order app development solution will enable you to meet this increasing need and offer your clientele a useful service.

 

Step-by-Step Process To Build A Food Ordering App

Let’s get to the main question: how do you build a food ordering app? A food delivery app like Deliveroo and other UberEats are made in a number of steps, from coming up with ideas to promoting the app. It’s easy to make a food reservations app with this step-by-step guide.

 

 

Step 1: Conduct Market Research

The first thing you should do when you build a food ordering app is to learn as much as you can about your target market, your key competitors, and any new changes in the on-demand food delivery market. This is what you have to do:

• Find out what food delivery services are in the area you want to go to. Look at what they offer, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how they make money.
• Look at how your competitors set their prices and see which ones make the most money.
• Keep up with changes in what customers want and how they buy things so you can make features that give them a better experience.

Step 2: Choose a Food Ordering Business Model

The next step is to choose a business plan for your on-demand food ordering apps. There are three main types of business plans for getting food:

 

• The Order Only Model

According to this model, your platform’s main job is to take orders from customers and send them to places that are linked with your platform. Only the restaurants are responsible for making and delivering the food.

 

• The Order and Delivery Model

In this model, you are in charge of both taking customer orders and managing the shipping process. When your business works with restaurants to make food, it takes care of the delivery details. You can hire a team of drivers or use outside delivery services to make sure that orders are made on time and correctly.

 

• The Fully Integrated Model

The fully integrated approach includes every part of the food delivery process, from taking orders to making meals to planning when to send them. In this model, you could run virtual restaurants or computer kitchens to make sure quality and regularity.

 

Step 3: Pick the Right Technology Stack

What you need to build a food ordering app is called the “technology stack.” It includes databases, frameworks, libraries, computer languages, and other tools. Picking the right tech stack is very important to create a food delivery app.

It’s the main thing that makes sure the user experience is smooth. Depending on whether you want to make a food ordering app only for iOS, Android, or both, you may need different technologies to make your idea come true.

 

Step 4: Hire A Development Team

To make sure to build a food ordering app, launch, and ongoing use of a food ordering app goes smoothly, many tech professionals are needed, such as QA and testing engineers, business analysts, iOS and Android developers, and UI/UX designers.

A good on-demand app development company can do any job because they have a big development team that can help with everything from building the app to putting it into use and keeping it running.

 

Step 5: Develop An MVP

You should hire an on-demand food ordering app development company that focuses on making MVPs for new businesses. As the name suggests, an MVP is the “minimum viable product.” It only has the most important features that explain the software’s main goals, without all of its more advanced features.

MVP app development is a quick and cheap way to find out if users are interested and if the market needs your product. Before you spend a lot of money on full-scale development, it’s a good idea to see if your app idea will work for people.

 

Step 6: Perform App Testing

On a tight budget, it may be tempting to skip thorough testing, but quality assurance is still necessary for an app release to go well. Because there is a lot of competition among food ordering app developers who make on-demand food delivery apps for getting meals on demand.

Testing for speed is important and should be a part of the whole project process. You can find bugs and fix them this way. To be more specific, it says that the app can change before anyone can use it.

 

Step 7: Final Release

After testing your app, you may need to send it to the Google Play Store, the Apple App Store, or both. This depends on the devices you want to target. But when you send your app to the Google Play Store or the Apple Play Store, you have to follow their specific food delivery app developers guidelines.

If you’ve successfully launched your food delivery app on the Play Store or the App Store, the next step is to keep it up to date, make sure it works right, and adapt to changing customer needs.

 

Essential Features That You Would Require In An Online Food Ordering Application

Any IoT application development platform undertakes the features at first to make any on-demand food ordering application. Basically, these features are categorized into four broad aspects which are-

1. Customer panel
2. Restaurant panel
3. Admin panel
4. Delivery boy/person panel

In the below-mentioned segment, we will explore the features that you can integrate into each and every panel of your online food ordering application.

 

1. Customer Panel Features

The vital factor of any on-demand food ordering application is its users. Hence it must be your top priority to make them feel comfortable and easy at your application interface such as right from searching for a meal, initiating payment and ordering food, to receiving the delivery.

 

 

The major features are-

• Sign In

Through this feature, you can allow users to sign in to your application using their mobile number or email address. It will help them to quickly register on your platform.

 

• Location

When the users have successfully registered themselves on your platform you can enable the location (auto-detection) feature. You can also ask them to enter the nearest locations, landmarks, or popular buildings to ease the delivery boys’ task.

 

• Homepage

The homepage of any food delivery application driven by augmented reality solutions has the nearby restaurants list. You can also provide many filters to the users through which they can sort the restaurants by their reviews or locations.

 

• Searching

This feature will allow customers to search for their favorite meal or food from their favorite restaurants easily. You can offer many customizable options and filters here.

 

• Ordering Food

Customers can go through the restaurant menu and select the meal accordingly. This feature will allow them to initiate the order by placing and confirming the same. It will also allow them to check their order along with its price in the cart to increase or decrease the meals if they require.

 

• Payment

Through this feature, users can initiate the payment online as per their convenience.

 

• Tracking Orders

This feature allows users to track the status of their ordered food or delivery boy. It will also help them to know the time that is required to deliver the order.

 

• Review

The best food ordering app development companies or platforms always provide this feature where customers can rate the food or the delivery of the restaurant.

 

2. Restaurant Panel Features

The restaurant panel features refer to the components that are required from the restaurant owner’s end. They are as follows:

 

 

• Menu Management

You can add or delete the food menu of your restaurant as per the availability of the food. In menu management, you can also highlight the new items, food combination packages, and special deals of the day to customers.

 

• Dashboard

The dashboard feature will help you to view multiple orders along with their status such as pending, accepted, canceled, or upcoming orders.

 

• Order Management

This feature will allow you to view the information on multiple orders. Through this, you can ensure the exact order like the quantity and the specifications mentioned along with the order.

 

• Cancel Orders

Through this feature, you can easily cancel the order along with mentioning the reason to customers.

 

• Restaurant Profile

The restaurant profile feature will allow you to create or update the profile of your food business along with its relevant information.

 

• Chats

This feature will allow you to quickly respond to customer queries and resolve them at the earliest.

 

3. Admin Panel Features

The admin panel features are critical for any food application. The top ones are-

 

• User And Menu Management

This feature will allow admins to manage multiple users of the same application along with monitoring their activities and orders.

 

• Food And Payment Management

The admins can easily view the current, upcoming, or cancel orders from specific restaurants or customers’ ends. They can also keep a check on the payments or transactions done by the users.

 

• Push Notifications

The admins of the food delivery app development solution can send push notifications to customers about seasonal offers or updates.

 

4. Delivery Boy Features

These are some of the most important panels that you have to consider in your online food ordering application. You have to especially integrate the information of the delivery boy of your restaurant. The top features that are required for this panel are-

 

 

• Sign In

This feature will allow a delivery boy to easily sign in to the application through their email id or phone number.

 

• Order Status

This feature indicates if the person can take the order or not. The delivery boy can easily accept or reject the food order that is initiated from the customer’s end.

 

• Chats

In this interface customers can contact the delivery person to resolve their queries related to the order. This interface may have call or messaging features.

 

• Location And GPS

A delivery boy can reach the location of a customer or a restaurant easily to collect or deliver the order as initiated.

 

• Delivery Boy Dashboard

This dashboard has the complete details of the order along with the current, canceled, or upcoming orders.

Best Food Ordering Apps In The Market

Before you build a food ordering app for your restaurant business, it is crucial to know the competitor apps. It helps you in knowing their USP and also you must perform a SWOT analysis. Here we have jotted down the best food delivery applications.

 

Top Food Delivery Apps	Available Platform	Downloads	Ratings
Doordash	Android | iOS	50M+	4.7
Grubhub	Android | iOS	10M+	4.4
Uber Eats	Android | iOS	100M+	3.7
Just Eat	Android | iOS	10M+	4.6
Swiggy	Android | iOS	100M+	4.2

Challenges and Solutions of Food Ordering App Development

When you build a food ordering app, it takes time and good advice, just like making the right dish. We’ll take care of you. Let’s have a look at the challenges and their solutions of food ordering app development for restaurant​:

 

 

1. Intense Competition

It can be hard for new food businesses to stand out in the food delivery market, which is full of big companies and new food delivery startups all trying to get customers.

Solution: There’s always ways to get better. Do some study to find holes in the market and ways to meet customer wants. You might even build a restaurant mobile app that doesn’t delete the whole order if you click it by accident.

 

2. Diverse Payment Options

Some customers like to use credit cards, others like to use digital wallets or mobile payment apps, and some still like to pay with cash. It can be hard to keep track of all these payment options, but you need to make sure that everyone can pay safely and quickly in your delivery app.

Solution: Help people give you money. In business, this is a very important rule. Plus, giving people more ways to pay keeps them from leaving at the last minute. There should be a number of ways you can add to your food service apps. To make it easy for customers to pay, give them clear steps on how to add and manage payments through payment gateway  methods.

 

3. Quality Control

It can be hard to ensure that the food quality is the same in all places. Strong contact and close supervision are needed to make sure that every order is just right.

Solution: You can consult with your business partner about what they want, and set clear standards for food delivery apps. Check the quality for yourself and read what other buyers have said. Fret not, if there is an issue, they will state it on all review sites.

 

4. Sustainable Revenue Model

It can be hard for restaurants to find the right mix between charging fees and keeping prices low. Still, it’s important to make sure that when you build a cross-city food ordering app, there must be a way to make money that will last.

Solution: Once more, do the work. Find out what people want and how much they’re willing to pay for it. It’s better to think about the long term than to try to make quick money, so the transport app development pays off.

 

How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Food Ordering App​?

Now comes the main part – food ordering app development cost. Well, if you are ready to build a food ordering app, then you must first allocate the resources. Also, you must know the mobile app development cost and other expenses.

 

 

There is a basic cost to create a food ordering app in the range of $10000 – $25000, but you should be aware that it is not the actual cost since it depends on the project requirements.  Factors like app complexity, features, etc., also affect the cost.

The cost to build a food delivery app is also affected by factors such as app complexity, features, etc. Here is an example table to illustrate the food delivery app development cost:

 

App Complexity	Cost Estimation
Simple Food Delivery App	$10000-$15000
Medium Food Delivery App	$15000-$20000
Complex Food Delivery App	$25000+

 

Besides, the formula given below will help you calculate the actual food ordering app development cost​.

Total Food Delivery App Development Cost = Developer’s Hour Rate * Development Team

 

Now you know the cost to develop a food ordering app, it is time to turn your idea into reality. All you need to know is to consult with an iOS or Android app development services provider and discuss your project requirements with them.

Why Is It Important To Fix A Budget For Your Project?

In this section, we will learn why setting a budget is important after we get into the specifics of food ordering mobile app development cost. Setting a budget helps you understand how everything fits together and helps you take the right steps to build a food delivery app like Menulog or other. That’s why you should remember these things before you start working on the growth of your business:

 

● Helps Identify the Actual Needs

The budget you set to build a food ordering app helps you think about what the end users want, so you can give them what they need right now. This will make it easy for you to understand what features your app needs and help you make the right choices.

 

● Aids in Market Research

As soon as you think about your budget, you have to go out and do a lot of study on the market to find out what the going rates are for food ordering android app development​.

 

● You Need the MVP

That meeting with the funders will only happen if you have a minimum viable product. To figure out how much and how long an MVP app development will take, you need to have a budget.

 

● Need to Save for Marketing

There is no way you can be sure that your job and expenses will end when the app is finished. The production process has a few steps left. The big challenge is getting the app out there, marketing it, and getting it to the right people. You can figure out the cost to build a food ordering app, but what really matters is the cost to keep the app running after the app has been made.

 

 

How To Monetize Your Food Ordering App?

You’ve made an absolutely beautiful app. Check! What will happen next? As soon as your app is out there and people are steadily downloading it, it’s time to start making money. Let’s look at the main ways that apps can make money.

 

1. Commission Fee

Every time a food delivery app brings in an order, they get paid some money by the businesses. If you use the app to order pizza from a restaurant, the restaurant will be charged for the introduction. Yes, this fee is reasonable because it helps keep the app going and lets restaurants connect with more people.

 

2. Delivery Fee

For this price, the food is brought from the restaurant to the customer’s door. So, while you enjoy the ease of having your package delivered right to your door, the app makes a little extra money. A lot of the time, a food delivery app like Just Eat or other charge a small fee, like 30% of the order price. The delivery fee may change based on the location and order cost.

 

3. Advertisement

You can see ads from nearby restaurants or food businesses on some food service apps. This helps businesses to advertise their food or deals to get more people. You can also use this model. These ads pay restaurants extra to be in them. It is good for both the app and the businesses as it allows users to use them.

 

4. Subscription

It’s not just Netflix that has membership plans. Customers of food service apps can also get special passes that let them do special things. As an example, free shipping or lower prices on sales. Customers have to pay a monthly fee to get these perks.

 

Final Thoughts

The market for food ordering apps like Zomato or Doordash allows you to buy food online. But that doesn’t mean your app for delivering food won’t work. If you want to build a food ordering app, you should think about adding some cool extra features that will make it popular.

Besides this, you need to hire a reputable food delivery app development services provider like Dev Technosys to make your mobile app. We think that digital innovation can help us make all of our clients happy.

We are distinct from our competitors because we focus on the needs of our clients. Our skilled food ordering app developers deliver the project on time and offer help after it’s launched. Get a quote on your project from us right away.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

1. How Long Does It Take To Build A Food Ordering App?

The time to create a food ordering app can take between 2-8 months. However, your project requirements will affect the online food ordering app development solution time.

 

2. How Much Does It Cost To Make A Food Ordering App?

The cost to build a food ordering app can vary depending on multiple factors like app intricacy, features, tech stack and so on. Generally, food ordering app development costs you around $10000-$25000 or beyond.

 

3. What Are the Benefits of Food Ordering App Development?  

The benefits to create a food delivery or ordering app are mentioned below:

• Customized user experience.
• Brand visibility and recognition.
• Global reach and scalability.
• Efficient order management.

4. How to Build a Food Ordering App?

You can build a food delivery app in just a few simple steps. Let’s have a look at them:

• Conduct market research
• Know your competitor apps
• Create a feature list
• Design the UI/UX
• Develop the app’s backend
• Test the app
• Launch the app

5. What Are the Best Food Delivery Apps?

We have researched the most popular food delivery apps for your reference.

• Zomato
• Doordash
• Swiggy
• Uber Eats
• Just Eat