There are two sides to jumping into a startup idea: having a clear, concise, and successful business plan and not researching enough about the concept and failing miserably. As a startupper or entrepreneur, it is up to you how you choose the right business plan. Everybody will tell you the success ratio and the alluring statistics, but no one will tell you the challenges you’ll face after the development.
We are talking about the food delivery business here; we have been talking about how to create an online food delivery app and how it can be beneficial to your business. But what you don’t know is that developing an app won’t solve your problem entirely. The real challenges will come after the development phase. We will have a look at those challenges.
In this article, we will explain to you how you can build and run an upscale food delivery app. We will be covering everything here, which includes Challenges, Benefits, Features, and cost. For your better learning, we will take Menulog as an example.
Why Make food delivery app like Menulog?
Menulog is Australia’s largest online takeaway and home delivery platform that provides food and beverages to its users in real-time. You can have any cuisine or dish you want straight on your doorstep. Menulog has satisfied 3 million hungry customers. Menulog has more than 16,000 restaurants across Australia and New Zealand, serving 80 types of cuisines all in the single app.
To your surprise, the number of people ordering online is increasing to 60% according to statistics. Here is the list of some online food delivery companies that are incredibly successful.DoorDash
- Postmates
- Uber Eats
- McDonald’s
- Starbucks
Read the linked article if you wish to know more about preparing a Lean canvas model for your application.
Challenges you’ll face when you go for Online food delivery service app development.
When you plan to develop a food delivery app like Menulog, you should know what challenges you’ll face and work on those challenges.
- Unfaithful customers
Since we are talking about mobile apps, it will be hard to keep up with your app users. Because many market options provide the same services as you do, the chances are high, and your customers will lose interest. If you don’t concentrate on maintaining your audience, then you will suffer.
- Unreliable delivery
The most challenging part of developing an on-demand food delivery app is an unreliable delivery. If you provide cold food or if you arrive late, then the estimated delivery timing, the customers will not rely on your app again. Such issues will make a negative impact on your customers and restaurant owners both.
- Logistics reliability
Food ordering apps have been in severe problems in terms of logistics reliability. For example, What areas you want to cover, the number of vehicles you’ll need for delivery, and the most challenging part is keeping the food fresh during delivery.
- Order volume
Managing the chunk of orders is the trickiest part of creating an on-demand delivery app. In this matter, the best solution is you can calculate the demand and use data analytics to see when the market will grow.
The minimum set of features you’ll require (How does the app work?)
The app is very easy to use; all you need to do is install the app, enter your address via google map integration, select the restaurant/outlet you want to eat from, choose the cuisine or dish. After you choose the dish, it will appear in the cart, and you can choose the payment method. Lastly, the delivery person will get your food at your door-step. That’s it, Period.
Food delivery app development can be very tricky if you don’t keep it accessible to every generation. No matter which platform you create a food delivery app for iOS and Android, you must build an app that even 60 years old can operate to order food.
To make an easy to access the application, you must consider the feature set. The more comfortable your app to navigate, the easier it will be for your users to come back again on your mobile application. That is why preparing a product requirement document is essential.
So, let’s check what (minimum) features you’ll require to build a food delivery app.
Log in: Your users will be able to fill up the personal details such as name, phone number, email address, and phone number. After filling out the details, they will be able to create their account.
Select the address: With the help of Google map integration, your users will be able to enter their address where they want the food delivery.
Select the Restaurant: After entering the address, the users can select their favorite restaurant from the restaurant list in your app.
Select the dish/cuisine: Later on, users will be able to select the desired dishes or cuisine.
Payment method: After providing all the delivery details, users can select the payment method from various payment options like Net banking, credit card, debit card, and cash on delivery.
Please note that when you develop an on-demand food delivery app like Menulog, there will be two more apps to create. The admin panel and restaurant apps. Each application will have its separate feature list, and the technology stack will depend on that.
Some advanced features to look into
Rating and Review: Users can give their valuable feedback about your app, restaurants, food quality, etc. According to those ratings, you will be able to see where your app lacks (just in case there are negative reviews) and which restaurant is not paying attention to food quality and work on those issues.
Estimated time: The most interactive feature you can select is “Time estimation. In this particular feature, you can show how long the food delivery will take; the hungry users will keep on checking how long their food will take.
Filter option: For the significant user experience and ease, you can integrate the filter option. What this filter will do is, users will be able to filter by Rating, particular restaurant or cuisine, name, and discount rating.
Reorder: If your user is an existing customer, then he/she can reorder a dish they liked in the past. All they have to do is slide into the order history and place the order again.
Offers and discounts: When you launch an app in the market, you must launch it with a bang! Launch your app with some attractive offers and discounts. You can add a buy 1 get one offer, Certain bucks off on first orders, refer-a-friend, etc.
In-app customer help: Menulog has this feature where the users can directly reach out to your app’s help section. In this section, they have a guide of Frequently asked questions, payment issues, Food safety, the order process, and general help.
Push notification system: Last but not least, the marvelous Push notification system. If you use this feature correctly, this feature can do wonders for your app. With this feature’s help, you can remind your users about the ongoing offers, discounts, new addition of restaurants and dishes, and whatnot.
Cost to make an app like Menulog
This is probably the most frequently asked question: how much does a food delivery app development cost? And we have only one answer to this question: it will solely depend on the business model you have in mind. But in this article, we will explain this in detail. So, let’s see how to define the cost variations.
To your surprise, many factors affect the price of creating an app. And we will discuss each for your better understanding.
- App platform
The very first question will be Where to launch the app? There are two major operating systems in the mobile world, android, and iOS. It can be quite confusing about where to launch the app initially. Because developing an app for both the platforms can be costly and lengthy. You can choose the “Cross-platform app development,” where you can have an app that will run on both the platforms.
- Design and visuals
The most important part of your app development services is Designing and visualizing. Loud colors, the logo’s poor design, and a bad mood board are the last thing you want in your app. Hence dig a little deeper and see how you can adapt the best way to create fantastic design and elements in your app.
- Hourly based charges
There is a pool of mobile apps development companies worldwide, and each region has different hourly price tags. It depends on you which app development company you choose and how many working hours your app will consume.
- Team requirement
Every client has different requirements for the app development process. For example, some clients will only need an Android app developer, some will not need a project manager and on the other hand, some won’t need developers at all (In case they know how to code).
- Technology stack
To make your online food delivery fly high, you must include new and advanced technologies. To stand out from your competition it is vital to make your app unique and interactive and technologies will help you with that. So, checkout how you can select technology stack for your online food delivery app.
So, keeping all the factors in check, the Online food delivery app development can cost you around $15,000 to $50,000 according to your preferences, choices and customizations.