When it comes down fastest-growing and ever-expanding businesses in the hospitality industry, the restaurant and eatery industry comes at the top. Owing to the overall increasing demand for pristine and healthy eating, more restaurants are propping up every day.

Also, customers have duly found a plethora of convenient ways to search and find the best cuisines out there. This has certainly led to the rise of food delivery apps as people like to order their food at the comfort of their homes.

It has allowed almost every mobile application development company to venture into the lucrative market of food delivery app development.

In this regard, Swiggy and Zomato have been right at the center of assisting customers to find the right restaurant and order their favorite dishes and easily have them delivered right to their doorstep.

Also, these particular apps have been quite able to meet the overall user expectations in almost every way owing to their best quality features. One can easily leverage this huge demand for food delivery apps by developing an app such as Swiggy or Zomato.

However, to develop such an app, you should know the cost of running any food delivery application and its cost of development along with development hours as well as its features.

Here, we will discuss some of the crucial factors which will determine the exact development hours as well as the cost of the food delivery app. But before we proceed to it, let’s check how these apps make money.

How Do Food Delivery Apps Generate Revenue?

Essentially as an entrepreneur and a businessman, you ought to know the exact revenue model for any particular business idea. Also, a business idea needs to have the inherent potential to generate much-needed revenue as it is essentially the bottom line. Hence, let’s see various ways one can generate revenue from any food delivery app.

Mostly, food delivery apps act as a mediator among restaurants as well as customers. As customers subscribe to the app, then search for the restaurants, simply place an order and then pay online, hence this is the exact working cycle of most of the food delivery apps.

• Premium Ads Services
• Third-Party Ad Services
• Commissions from Partner Restaurants
• User Subscription
• Delivery Charges

Premium Ads Services

One way to earn revenue is to provide premium service to the various restaurants by highlighting their particular profiles at the top of the app’s search listings.

Third-Party Ad Services

Food delivery app owners can easily generate revenues by easily allowing third-party ad services in order to post their ads on the app like Google AdSense. Essentially, it remains to be among the most powerful as well as most utilized revenue models that apps often refer to.

Commissions from Partner Restaurants

A food delivery app can charge a commission from a restaurant, whenever a customer places an order through the app on the restaurant.

User Subscription

Through this option, users can easily achieve special discounts from restaurants along with free delivery as well as other lucrative offers.

Delivery Charges

A food delivery app can charge a customer with an extra delivery amount in particular scenarios.

Now, let’s consider the business model of these food delivery apps that you need to be aware of before you consider the cost of running and developing such an app.

Business Model: Food Delivery App

The high potential and most lucrative business model of food delivery apps have certainly set a huge benchmark in the entire food delivery vertical all over the world.

At present, there are various players who are planning to enter this particular market with something unique to offer. Here we discuss the business model where the apps have two major roles to play essentially.

• Delivery Service
• Restaurant Finder

Delivery Service

One of the key roles is the delivery service provider. Few of the apps have their own food delivery facility, and some of them rely on the food delivery facilities of the restaurants. However, the future of restaurants is bright as they have realized the importance of the inherent virtual presence in the current era of digitalization.

Restaurant Finder

The users need to be easily able to find the restaurant of their favorite cuisines effortlessly as well easily. It is quite a primary thing that users look for on the basis of the area in which the actual delivery service is certainly provided. Being a developer of restaurant app development, you have to ensure that the users can easily obtain a relevant as well as a perfect list of all the restaurants with quite an accurate geographical location.

In case you wish to expand the food delivery services, you can easily add features like a restaurant directory along with ambiance photos as well as relevant information like opening hours, the accurate location on maps, the approximate costs of the dining, and finally the contact details which includes a physical address. Also, people like to read reviews and even see photos of the restaurant’s ambiance before making any decision.

Food Delivery App Components

Food delivery apps have four main components. They consist of the following categories

• Customer Side
• Delivery Side
• Restaurant Side
• Admin Side

Customer Side

This particular element is what the customers will view on their own app screen whenever they log into their app. It includes searching for restaurants, booking, ordering the food, paying and leaving reviews.

Delivery Side

This particular side ensures ease of delivery of the food ordered. The delivery login allows the delivery boy to track all of the orders from the customers. It has additional features such as, check orders, accept or reject any order, delivery history, call to customers, geolocation, e-sign page.

Restaurant Side

It is pertaining to what the restaurant owners view whenever they log into the food delivery app. A few of the features they see consist of customer profiles as well as requests. In most of the apps, the customers, as well as restaurant owners, share most of the app features.

Admin Side

Now, finally, the admin panel is utilized to manage the entire app, which includes all the activities of the app users.

Once we have learned all the major components of a food delivery app, now, it delves into the variety of features of the app, mentioned below are the features along with the amount of time to develop them.

Features of Food Delivery App and Development Time

1. Access Control Page
2. Home Page
3. Admin Page

Access control page

Every food delivery app needs to have an access control page where the users can easily sign up. The users can easily register to utilize their email address, or social media account by simply using OTP. Also, both the customers, as well as restaurant owners, need to enter their details which are duly captured in the application.

In order to sign in, they can easily use their social media account like Facebook or Twitter. As a Food delivery app developer, you can easily include other log in options such as emails, mobile number or usernames.

Home Page

The users will see this particular page whenever they log in to the application. Mentioned below are a few of the features of the homepage of the food delivery app.

Basic Features

Restaurant Details

In the food delivery app, the customers ought to be able to see all of the necessary information regarding the restaurant. It includes restaurant names, addresses along with cuisines offered, as well as the category of the restaurant, time of operation, photo gallery along with the type of services offered.

Reviews and Ratings

It’s another crucial feature of the food delivery app. It allows customers to provide feedback about their own experience with the restaurant. It assists other customers to settle for better restaurants whenever they are searching with the app. Also, the reviews are given by the customers also depend on the overall efficiency of the given restaurant in their service delivery along with the taste of their food.

User Profile

Make sure you inculcate a user profile in food delivery website development. In this, the user can easily share a list of their own favorite cuisines, dishes, and restaurants. It saves a lot of searching time for users. It is also vital to the owners of the restaurants. It assists them in collecting data to understand their customer’s exact preferences easily. By this, they can easily send customized notifications to their own customers for all the available discounts and offers.

Features To Include while Developing An Outstanding Food Delivery App

Advanced Features

Geo-location with Map

It is a must-have feature in any food delivery app. It services together with the map facilities such as Google API which assist users in doing their search within the food delivery app and finding the appropriate restaurants. Also, the search can easily be based on the particular keywords where the users can easily type a particular relevant keyword, and a relevant list of restaurants pops up. Various keywords can easily be located or dishes based on which the customer may be actually looking for.

Menu with Price

The users ought to be able to find the menu along with corresponding prices easily. Hence, a factor in the restaurant mobile app development. Also, the users can easily type the name of a particular cuisine or go through a particular drop-down list on a given restaurant.

Booking and Ordering

The food delivery app should provide users with an option to book any table at the restaurant in advance. It is done to reduce the inconvenience of actually arriving at a completely fully packed restaurant and reduce waiting time. Also, the users should be quite able to food from the application from a given restaurant.

In-App Payment

A key feature of any food delivery app is payment gateway integration. Implementation of this feature allows the users to pay for their food after delivery or after eating easily. It should include different payment options like PayTm, PayPal, or even credit or debit cards.

Must-Have Features For Your Restaurant Delivery Management Software

Admin Page

In this section, the entire user data on the entire application is controlled. This particular page allows the app admin to make and add additional features and even block others. Some of its other functions inculcate:

• Usage Analytics
• Intercom Support
• Cash Report
• Reporting

Cost of Development of Food Delivery App

 

When it comes down to the development cost of the food delivery app, it may vary for every mobile application development company. It depends on a plethora of factors which include the features we have discussed above along with their development time, app layout, the total number of working hours as well as many other design and development aspects.

However, approximately, the estimated cost of a food delivery app can range from $12,500 to $30,000 for a simple and basic food delivery app. However, if you wish to make a feature-rich and sophisticated food delivery app, the cost can easily extend up to $50,000. The average running cost can reach up to $1,000 per month for a food delivery app.

 

Conclusion

In recent times, food delivery apps have become quite a in demand as people are getting used to ordering food online from the comfort of their homes. In this regard, and from a business’s perspective, this proposition is quite a lucrative one for entrepreneurs. A food delivery app studded with impressive design helpful and innovative features along with an easier payment system, which is also secure, can easily garner a huge number of users. Mentioned above are the business models that food delivery apps can follow, the features it should have and the cost of development to create such an app.