Food Ordering App Development: Essential Features and Cost

Narender Yadav / December 18, 2018

We can define eating as something that is loved and embraced by people of all age groups. Therefore, in such a scenario, what else can be a better option than getting your delicious meals from your favorite restaurants within just a few clicks.

So, while you are enjoying your favorite movie or having some chilling time with friends and family, you are not at all required to engross yourself into preparing meals. All you have to do to combat the situation is: Open up for food delivery apps, select the appropriate dish and where your food is being delivered right at the doorsteps.

The concept of food delivery has provided a total transformation to the food industry and restaurants are making optimum use of such apps for generating impressive revenues. The popularity earned by the food delivery apps such as foodpanda, swiggy etc had left the whole food business spellbound and thus more and more of restaurants are collaborating with such apps for serving their clients.

So, if you are looking forward to offer something with a difference, get your own food delivery app and serve your clients in a way they admire.

Before proceeding towards the Food delivery app development, let’s find out the some of the major differences between the top existing food delivery apps.

Needless to say, an appropriate research, documentation, and analysis is required before processing for any mobile app development.

It is best to infuse your own idea or the innovation into the app, just in order to make it stand out. You can even learn something from the competitors as well. This way, it gets easy to lead the market as well.

So, Let’s Explore the Prospects that must be taken care of while Building a Food Delivery App:

Engineering a food delivery app demands a lot of research and analysis. Right from the documentation till getting the app published, one must remain updated throughout all the procedures.

Thus, before embarking on the developmental procedures, remember to target on the goals and insights attuned to your businesses. In the below points, find a perfect ladder via which you can make the dream of food app development come true.

Food Delivery App Development Solution

➤   Initiate locally, analyze, test and visualize your idea. Create a buzz about the app launch in the defined area and then you and gradually proceed to the larger scale.

➤   The next step includes: Hiring the skilled and proficient mobile app developers and designers. You can consider hiring a mobile app development company as well.

➤ In the further step, decide the appropriate pricing models so as to provide the right app development standards.

➤   Prior to app development make all the necessary arrangements for creating the eagerness about your app. Set the appropriate promotion fundamentals for capturing the users. Using Instagram and other social media platform can also be considered as a good way our for reaching to the users.

➤ Remember, to develop a communication platform within the app to get in touch with the customers and accumulate their reviews. This will greatly help in improvising your app standards.

Needless to say, there are rampant of mobile apps that are existing in the market nowadays. Thus, before proceeding forward, decide the type of food delivery app you are looking forward to build.

Online Food Ordering System

  •  You are seeking an app that focuses on delivering food from the various attuned restaurants just like Swiggy or the UberEats.
  •  You focus to build an app that solely works for your restaurants. This implies that users can set their own ingredients for preparing their food and can select their own customized meals.
  •  The apps that delivers the complete range of groceries, cooked food etc as per the users’ requirements such as postmates.

Features that Must be Added into the Food Delivery Mobile App

Firstly, anything that sets apart your apps is the features and the functionalities that you are adding into the app.

Secondly, the app must be able to make the user feel comfortable. He or she must be able to navigate through it in a seamless way and at the same time easily customizable according to dynamic users’ requirements.

Features that Must be into your Food Delivery App to make it Top-notch are as follows:

User registration/login:

This is the basic feature of the app. Allow the users to register themselves by the Email id or by creating their new account.

Browse the Restaurants

As soon as the user registers over the app, allow him to search for their favorite restaurants and the meal, combos, deal, discounts etc that are associated with it.

Restaurant Searching option

Add to Cart

Once the users have selected their meals, they can keep adding the meal packs into the cart along with the desired quantity. This way they can easily proceed for check-out option and it helps in making the overall users experience superior.

Geo Location

As soon as the user gets on the app, it should be able to determine his or her current location. Based on that, the app must display nearby restaurants. This help in cutting the browsing time of the user and helps in making their food ordering experience very seamless.

Live Tracking

The users must be able to track the location of the delivery boy. They can suggest him the most optimized route as well for making the delivery less time-consuming.

Track Order Status

The user must be able to track the status of their order as well. They must be able to analyze that whether their order is still in process or if it is out for delivery.

Food order tracking system

Payment Gateway Integration

Integrating the payment gateways such as stripe, Paypal etc into the app is necessary if you are looking for gaining the maximum user attention. In the current scenario, people tend to pay via going cashless, thus allowing the users to make payment via the app can prove to be quite useful for attracting the users.

Push Notifications

This is a great way for keeping the users attuned to the app. Notification related to the latest deals, discounts, offers etc can be sent to the users to keep them updated.

Social Media Integration

Allow the users to share the experience that they captured on their app. This feature will not only augment the visibility of app but will also encourage the users to stay over the app as they publicize their pictures and food snaps amongst their friends and family.

Reviews and Ratings

Under this feature, the users can assign ratings and reviews over the app as per the services provided. They can leave their experiences over the app and can suggest the

review and rating

Loyalty points and rewards

Under this feature, the users can redeem for the loyalty points and rewards and can avail the discounts while ordering food. This is a great way of attracting users and helps in user retention as well.

The Team Structure:

It consists of core members only needed to complete the job.

  • UI/UX designer
  • 2-4 Mobile app developers
  • 1-2 Quality Assurance Engineers
  • Backend Developer
  • Project Manager

So, How much does it Develop to Cost a Food Ordering Delivery App?

Deciding the price for engineering the food ordering app is indeed a toil task, therefore, you need to invest proper time and research before landing into app development. There are a few points that must be considered before deciding the price. Let’s find them here:

Whether you are hiring a mobile app development company or the squad of mobile app developers. Also, check the region from where they belong as the price for app development differs with the geographical location.

  • The features you want to integrate into your food ordering app
  • The app development platform you are selecting (iOS or Android)
  • Are you picking up the backend development or third-party integration? Usually, backend cost more but is highly recommended if you are planning to run longer, and third-party integration is best, in case you are landing up for some time in the market.
  • Whether you are looking for the native app development or cross-platform app development. The cost of development for the latter one is high when compared with the former one.
  • The designing parameters you are selecting. In case you are looking for extraordinary UI and UX development for your app, the developmental cost is likely to increase.
  • If you are looking forward to availing any app maintenance or upgrade services, again you may have to pay a little extra.
  • Based on the aforementioned factors, one can easily analyze that there is no way to determine the cost of an app until you meet the developers or the mobile app development company one on one.
  • However, in this post, we have outlined a rough idea about the cost of developing a food delivering app with basic and advanced features.
  • A basic app with simple UX/UI, and minimal functionalities will cost you around $5K- $8K.
  • Apps with the advanced features and with the extraordinary UI-UX can cost you somewhere in between 15,000$ to 25,000$.

Well, food delivery app development is the best revenue makes for all the existing restaurants and food serving corners. People just love to receive their favorite meals at their own places whether office or home.

Undeniably, it is the high time for any food delivery business to indulge in food delivery app development for satisfying the user cravings and also to earn an impressive turnover in this hyper-competitive marketplace.

Thus, if you are looking for a similar kind of app with the above features and team, all you need to do is get in touch with Darkbears, for meeting all the food business insights true at the reasonable price.


Author Bio

Narender Yadav

Narender Yadav is the Chief Technology Officer for Dark Bears. He has several years of experience in working on high-performance networking and storage devices for different OEMs like HP, IBM/Lenovo, Dell/EMC, Cisco. He believes in "Fortune favours the brave" and is never afraid of taking risks worth taking in his professional and personal life to provide the finest services with best standards.

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