Online shopping and food delivery might have stolen the thunder of offline businesses, but delivering fresh groceries is not everyone’s cup of tea. Not to mention, grocery customers are quite sensitive to the price in the market. In contrast, it requires modern technologies to store them in a particular environment, increasing the cost to sustain.
Nevertheless, by developing a grocery, food, and alcohol delivery solution, FreshDirect has achieved significant success in the market.
Stay tuned if your target is to disrupt grocery and alcohol delivery apps, empowering local liquor stores and perishable food providers. The post reveals the secrets of FreshDirect, which can help you steer your liquor and grocery delivery app development.
Because about half of Americans cook their meals 3 to 6 days weekly as scratch-home-cooked food is wholesome, fresher, and more satisfying. I bet no one can argue with that.
Besides, it won’t be wrong to say; the pandemic has stimulated the fondness for cooking in people. Didn’t you try to bake your favorite pie during quarantine? Right!
Therefore, fresh produce sales were up $4.5 billion between January and August 2020 compared to the last year.
Take FreshDirect for example. Founded in 1999, FreshDirect became essential during the pandemic, and its sales augmented by 60%. FreshDirect’s spokesperson said. “ In addition to curry powder, whole cloves, active dry yeast, meat, and seafood, customer carts included fine cheeses and bagels. Inside the adult beverage department, Vodka was growing very fast.
So, how does FreshDirect operate?
FreshDirect had its charm in the form of its business model that focuses on “fresh food sold at low cost and delivered to your doorstep.” The icing on the cake, its website, and the mobile app’s easy-to-use user interface. It lets users know more about what they’re buying. They can compare price, nutrition, and flavor as well as get food recommendations as per their taste.
However, knowing how to develop a liquor delivery app like FreshDirect, you can find your own charm in this post. So, let us begin with the business model to create a grocery delivery like FreshDirect and how it works.
All About FreshDirect Business Model
The crux of FreshDirect’s business model is Sourcing local food, storing all inventories in a temperature-controlled environment, and delivering food via refrigerated trucks.
Its value proposition is high-quality online groceries at the best price with the assurance of maximum next-day delivery. Moreover, the availability of the FreshDirect app for both iOS and Android platforms dissolves the limit for customers ordering fresh groceries and their favorite beer from any device.
FreshDirect moved its facility from Long Island City, Queens, to a new and automated warehouse in the Bronx, New York, in 2012 to serve its customers better.
FreshDirect products range from seasonal farm-fresh food, high-quality meat, local items, chef-prepared meals, top grocery brands, beer, wine, alcohol, and liquor.
Fun fact, 5,000 of total perishable products account for approximately 75% of FreshDirect’s sales. In contrast, only about 3,000 items make up the remaining 25%.
Food delivery is carried out through one of FreshDirect’s refrigerated trucks within a scheduled two-hour delivery window from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.
The minimum order value on FreshDirect is $30, excluding tax and delivery charges. Yet, its delivery charge ranges between $5.99 to $15.99 per order based on the order amount and delivery location.
Furthermore, to appeal to and retain more customers, FreshDirect offers a premium service of a DeliveryPass. Depending on their delivery preferences, customers can purchase this pass/subscription for a monthly $6.50–$13.17.
You should know by now that FreshDirect’s business model includes direct deals with producers and customers, avoiding intermediaries. So, you can say it’s a Direct-to-customer grocery eCommerce business.
Everything about On-demand Grocery, Food & Alcohol Delivery Solution development
Pick out the Right Business Model for your FreshDirect app
Despite providing customers with fresh groceries as a USP, FreshDirect can’t operate without grocery suppliers. Their competitive advantage is their huge network of professionals who go from Pennsylvania to Patagonia to find spectacular fresh food.
Therefore, you need to take business model development as a priority to start a business like FreshDirect. It’s a straightforward practice to put your target audience, market, channels, value proposition, and cost structure into a digestible format. Thereupon, you can define what type of food & liquor delivery business you are. For example,
- If you want to sell grocery products of your own, it will be a single store model;
- If you own a chain of retail grocery stores, it will be a grocery chain model;
- If you bridge the gap between producers and consumers, letting vendors join your platform, it will be an aggregator model.
Defining the business model is imperative as the rest depends on it, such as app features, platforms, cost, etc.
Make an app like FreshDirect with cool features
Do you want to create an app that customers love to use with pleasure? Focus on your project requirements, specifically the feature list. With the right feature set, your app can look inventive, enlightening, easy to navigate.
Moreover, you must bear in mind the user interaction and simplicity and try to include functionality users can expect. Because it satisfies the user when the app brings up precisely or nearly what they expect. Noteworthy, with advanced features, you can beat your competitors as well.
Despite the user/customer app, you may need a transportation and administrative panel. The former app ensures timely and secured delivery, whereas the latter handles your entire online fresh produce delivery business.
Want to see how such feature sets look? Let’s dive in,…
Features for customers app
- Registration / login / profile management
- Interactive home page
- Ongoing offer catalog
- Search bar with advanced filter
- Add to cart & buy now
- Product description & availability
- Notifications for order updates, product availability, deals, etc.
- Order details
- Checkout and online payment options
- Real-time tracking
- Order history and order repeat
- Review and ratings
Transportation app for drivers
- Login & Driver profile
- Assigned order list
- Route optimization & multiple deliveries
- Mark order delivery as done
- Delivery history
Admin app
- Analytical Dashboard
- Manage customer and driver profiles
- Order and delivery management
- Payment & subscription management
- Inventory management
- Ensure 24*7 customer support
Grocery mobile app Design and development
Achieving good app design is the most critical part of app development. Because it’s the first thing your users will interact with and decide if to continue. So, of course, you have to go the extra mile just to ensure whether your app looks attractive for your particular customers.
As far as the designing procedure is concerned, practicing wireframing and prototyping is an efficient way. You can iterate app features layout without much hassle and cost during the wireframing. On the contrary, turning wireframes into prototyping lets you test if your app is interactive enough.
For app designing, you need designers and hire mobile app developers for backend development. So that while designing is going on, developers carry out backend development in the meantime. Hence, your app will get ready to deploy.
Launch and grow your online grocery delivery services
Now that your fresh produce and liquor delivery app like FreshDirect is about to launch, start framing a good marketing strategy. Create a buzz before launching and promoting your brand in the market, aiming to enhance organic traffic on the application.
Appreciate early adopters and always keep an eye on the feedback you receive to work on. Listen to your customers, improve your products/service quality, and sales will rise ultimately.
Alright, the most awaited question is, What does it Cost to Develop an App like FreshDirect?
You probably have heard about the herd of factors that directly affect the app development cost. Let us recall them once.
- Target platforms, iOS, Android, Web,
- Native or hybrid app development approach
- The number of app features
- The complexity of the app design
- Technology stack
- Developer expertise & experience
- Hourly development rate by geolocation
So, when you make any choice related to any of the above factors for your liquor delivery app, it significantly sways the cost.
Say, for example, you want to launch your app on iOS and Android and choose a native approach. In that case, developers will code and create apps for both platforms separately, using platform-specific technologies. Consequently, there will be two apps to build, and so the cost gets doubled.
Okay, if we ballpark a budget to develop a food & liquor delivery app like FreshDirect, you may need about $50000. The reason is, the app doesn’t get here where it’s right now overnight. They would have created an MVP and improved it ever since and what you are seeing is a hard work of years. It makes sense, right?
Wrapping up
Many people can do shopping all day, err day literally, and may barely hit the kitchen instead order food online. Likewise, many people love cooking various dishes with fresh veggies and meat with their favorite vodka to serve. When such cooking enthusiasts need to go to the market to find fresh groceries, however, they probably put off their cooking plan. It may be because shopping is just ain’t their thing.
So, it’s your chance to alleviate their pain points, making fresh produce delivery as simple as online food delivery.