So why should you create a food ordering App today? Let’s face the truth that good food is everyone’s weakness. Nobody dislikes having some yummy food just at any time of the day. However, it is not always feasible to get up from the couch and cook yourself and other times, you just might not know the recipe. One easy way to have finger-licking good food just any time of the day is through the food ordering apps. With technology by our side, gone are the days when one would keep craving to eat something just to end up getting the recipe book and cooking it himself.
Today, the world has a lot of people who love having good food just a click away from the food ordering apps. This makes the industry of food ordering apps vast and full of potential. While a lot of people are busy coming up with the idea of developing either gaming, banking, or real estate mobile apps, we would love to welcome you to the club of the owners of the food ordering app. If you are worried about the steps you need to take to create a food ordering app, you are just at the right place. Our inclusive guide will give you a walkthrough of all you need to get started.
Why Are The Food Ordering Apps Becoming Popular? Market Overview
If you are wondering about how vast the industry of food ordering apps is, we are glad to share that you are not going to be the first one to enter it. This industry is full of giants that are targeting and catering to the needs of billions of people all over the globe. By now, you must be questioning yourself about the factors that are making this industry so huge. Well, for starters, people love to have delicious and hot food delivered to their doorstep without even having to get out. With the ever-growing list of tasks, one has to do every day, it has become nearly impossible for people to find time for themselves. Food ordering apps give such people a chance to save time, money and have good food without even entering their kitchen.
The Covid-19 pandemic only fueled the growth of the food ordering app industry as the trend shows that around 43% of the consumers started using these apps more frequently rather than stepping out. Even after the vaccinations were rolled out, the number of these consumers kept growing. This trend helped a lot of food ordering companies grow their size and revenue. For example, the value of the average order size from DoorDash grew from $33 to $36 in just the first 6 months of the pandemic. Similarly, Grub Hub’s consumer base increased roughly by 40% in the last 2 years. Moreover, according to the experts, the revenue is supposed to grow to US$339,257m this year.
The competition in the industry is getting tougher day by day and customers are benefitting from it. A survey was done to know the things people love about food ordering apps showed that the majority of them voted for being able to get food delivered in a limited amount of time. This can also be backed by the recent developments done in the route optimization technologies by the famous giants DoorDash and Uber Eats. These giants have enabled their customers to have faster delivery at cheaper rates by showing the delivery team the fastest and the nearest route. Just Eat, another food ordering giant, has made its services better by taking over the complete responsibility of ordering and delivering the food in the promised time.
A recent study was done to see the growth of the industry helped experts to map its growth. They shared that the number of consumers on each food order app is expected to grow to 2,655.9 million in a span of 4 years. This clearly tells the huge potential it has to grow and help the businesses grow alongside. What else do you need to start building a food ordering app today?
Create a Food Ordering App With The Following Features
A food ordering app is a lot different from just any other app you find on the app stores. It has a certain set of features and functions that make it different and help it cater to the needs of the users. Now, that you are willing to develop an app for the people wanting to order food, here are some features you must think about including in your app:
Customer Profile Building / Order as a Guest
What is the first thing that a user would do when they get on a food ordering app? The most common and reasonable answer is that they would make a profile. Food ordering apps allow their users to make a profile to have a customized experience. They can provide details like name, address, contact number, email address, and a few similar things to have an account made. While creating an account, most of the apps like to have their users define a password and an activation email is sent to the given email address.
There are also times when a user does not want to make a profile by providing details. He is more interested in just going through different menus, placing an order, and receiving food. These users are allowed to surf and order as a guest by giving just their number, name, and address.
Tracking
Another compulsory feature of food ordering apps is the delivery tracker. Every time a user places an order and it has been picked up by the delivery person, a tracker starts. The user can see the delivery on the map with the user’s delivery pin location tagged. Some of the apps even show the estimated time of delivery for the user to get ready beforehand. This feature allows the user to stay updated with the order on way to them rather than calling the delivery person repeatedly to get an update. It also helps to keep the customer updated about the location and speed of the delivery person.
Delivery Time
Customers love to know the estimated delivery time of their order. Most of the apps designed to order food use this demand to lure more customers. The estimated time to deliver the food is shown on the profile of the restaurant opened. Mostly, this time is estimated by putting the pin location of the user and the restaurant at the Google Map and finding the right route with the least time. Some apps even show the delivery time on the order tracker as well.
Review and Ratings
The majority of the food ordering apps have multiple restaurants hosted. For every order delivered, they ask the user to drop their review and rate the overall experience. This review is placed on the profile of that particular restaurant with the rating. This feature allows the restaurants to access their performance based on the reviews and help future customers know what they should order and what they must avoid.
Restaurant Registration
Since the people ordering food are not the only users of the food ordering apps, they look into catering restaurants as well. These apps allow the owners of the restaurants to make a profile by entering details like address, number, menu items with prices, and details of the owner. They can even select the category their restaurant lies in to help categorize the options for the people ordering food. Once the account has been registered, the menu of the restaurant is displayed on the app for the users to see and order food.
Home Chefs
During the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of people were forced to stay back at home. This time helped some of them to discover their passion for cooking or baking and they started a business as home chefs. Luckily, some of the food ordering apps have started catering to home chefs as well. They are treating home chefs no less than a restaurant giving them a chance to make a profile and sell their menu to the foodies out there. This trend of food ordering apps hosting home chefs has started getting a lot of attention all over the world and we might see these home chefs on all food ordering apps soon.
Payments Options and Integrations
Most of the food ordering apps today come with multiple payment options for their users. They allow the user to pay through cash, bank transfer, or other popular local payment terminals. While some people love to pay in cash at the moment food is delivered, the recent pandemic has hit the world hard enough to push a lot of people towards accepting online pay more. However, given the rise of bitcoin and similar currencies, some experts say that soon they would be added to the payment options as well.
Start Building Your Food Delivery App
We believe that with the information provided, you are ready to start working to create a food ordering app. There are multiple ways to create a food ordering app and you might see people suggesting the same steps in different ways. However, we have composed the steps in the way suggested by the majority of the industry experts. We would encourage you to start working on your app as soon as possible so you can get out in the market and win the bigger chunk of the customers before your competitors claim it.
Check Market Trends
To start on the right foot, it is necessary that you get the hang of the market. You need to understand the graphs of the market you are entering and view it from different angles to have a better knowledge about it. Even though we provided you with a few details about the market of food ordering apps, we suggest you do in-depth research. Learn about the growing or declining figures, the famous trends, reviews of the customers, and the predictions by the experts. All of these details will help you prepare an app that is beat the market in present and be the leader in the future as well.
See Your Competitors
Even though the prediction is that every food ordering app will have a good number of customers in the years to come but businesses are always planning to win over the customers of their competitors as well. This helps them to thrive well, generate good revenue, and probably, have a competitor removed from the market as well. It is time for you to become a detective and keep an eye on your competitors, see the current food ordering apps, get into the details of their features and functions, and check what their customers love. Based on all the findings, design a strategy that will aid you to overcome your competitors.
Shortlist Features for App
Based on all the research done in the last two steps, you are in a good place to finalize the features you would develop in your app. There are some basic features that you must have including profile building for customers and restaurants and giving estimated time for delivery. Some of the features are totally optional like reviews and ratings, tracking, and home chefs. There are chances that you might have found some optional features loved by the customers through your research. You can include those features in your app as well. On the other hand, you can decide to polish some other features that are frequently complained about and have them in your app.
Select Technology Stack
The continuous development in the industry of mobile app development has given birth to multiple technology stacks. The research done on the market and your competitors along with the decided features will help you decide the technology stack you would like to use to develop your app. The most famous technology stacks used these days include Swift and XCode for iOs, Kotlin, and Java for Android, and Flutter and React Native for cross-platform apps. We suggest you make an informed decision by digging a bit more into the market or seeking suggestions from the experts.
Divide Development into Phases
One mistake a lot of people make while developing an app is not dividing all the features into multiple phases. This causes the crash of one feature into crashing of the entire app. Divide all your app development plans into multiple phases before you start developing. Develop features and functions slowly for the customers to use and provide you with some healthy feedback. This would help you deliver something new to your customers after a few intervals, make the app better along with the feedback, and have customers involved every step of the way. It will save you time, money, and effort while your customers feel they are cared for and heard. This completes all the stages to create a food ordering app.
Test, Deploy and Repeat
Right before delivering any new development or version, you must test the whole app in a testing environment. Write multiple use cases testing the app from different perspectives. It will help you discover the ways a user might use your app in different circumstances. You will also uncover any vulnerabilities in your app and fix them before the customers find and report them. It is suggested that you test the new features individually and as a complete package with other features as well.
Driving Conclusions
Given the current trends and growth of the market of food ordering mobile apps, it is just the perfect time for you to enter the market. There are thousands of consumers and the number is expected to increase by multiple folds in the coming 4 years. However, just aiming to develop an app catering to the needs of the people wanting to order food is not enough. One must be aware of multiple factors to have an app developed destined to be successful. You must be aware of the basic and additional features of these apps. Some of these features were shared previously, however, it is best for you to do research on them as well.
Begin with reading about the trends of the market, see what your competitors are doing right and where they lack, decide the features and functions you want to have in your app, finalize the technology stack for development, and test your app once it has been developed. Well, this sounds like a lot of hard work so, why not have someone else do it for you?
You must have heard about Cater Bee, Sweden’s favorite food catering and delivery app. It serves as a platform for the people wanting to host an event and catering companies promising to provide the best catering services. This app has a 5-star rating backed with hundreds of positive reviews by the customers. Origami Studios is the mastermind behind the development of this app. They have developed dozens of other apps for the food industry as well. We bet they can deliver you an app carved especially for the needs of your target market and aligned with your expectations.