When you feel famished- you order your favorite pizza, burger or sandwich. Each time the savior is a food delivery app.

No doubt, on-demand food delivery apps like Zomato have simplified our lives to a great extent. In a hectic schedule, when everybody is hustling 24/7, it becomes difficult to cook at home.

Moreover, the data from statistics say that in 2020, top food delivery apps in the USA made a huge profit of $26.5 BN in total revenue. The number was $8.7 Bn only five years ago, and now the figure says that the food delivery industry is not just growing but booming! This has increased by 204% in the last five years with the presence of platform-to-consumer services.

The owners of these food delivery apps have understood how these will be game-changing in the future business market. It will help to deliver your favorite hot food to your table in a convenient way. Numerous startups have already planned to enter this business and experience the market.

Where is your stand? If you are wondering how to make a grand appearance by creating a food delivery app like Zomato, then this guide is for you. This piece of information is curated to clear your probable scope of building a unique food delivery app that can meet the market news and rake in high revenue.

Steps to Develop a Food Delivery App Like Zomato

Steps to Develop a Food Delivery App Like Zomato

This is the fundamental part of giving your concept a real shape. You need to follow the steps like,

  • Authenticate your idea
  • Determine a food delivery model
  • Fix the requirements of the aggregator model
  • Decide some crucial features
  • Choose the robust tech stack
  • Consider the UX UI tech factors
  • Contact the expert food delivery app partners
  • Finalize the cost of building your food delivery app

Why Is Creating a Food Delivery App Worth it?

Before explaining the nitty-gritty details of how to create a food delivery app like Zomato, let’s trace the market and why on-demand food apps are getting so popular.

Booming market value

The food delivery market has gained around $108 billion. It includes 1% of the food market and 4% of the restaurant markets. Market experts are estimating that the food delivery market will accumulate a staggering amount of $300 billion by 2030.

The further advancements in smartphone technology and an increase in the number of apps for food on demand will witness 16% more growth in the next five years. The reasons behind this massive success are-

  • These apps are time saver
  • Easy to use and contain quick option to order food
  • Brings a wider customer reach
  • Enhance the business ROI.

Different types of food delivery apps

Different types of food delivery apps

If you focus on the market, you can see a vast range of food delivery apps do exist following the accurate model.

The aggregator model

This follows a third-party food delivery app, and this has been in the market for more than a decade. These apps bridge the gaps between the customers and the restaurants.

The aggregator model lets the customers browse a number of restaurants and their menus. In this step, the customers need to create an account to get the list of restaurants and consider the reviews of the customers.

This helps the customers to place at their preferred place, and the order information is processed accordingly. The role of the third-party app is to create the connection between the restaurants and the consumers. Food delivery apps like Zomato follow this type of model to operate their business.

Logistic model

This is the latest model launched in 2013. It is more or less similar to that of the aggregator model and only has a few new facilities.

In this model, the order delivery is processed by the app itself. Compared to the aggregator model, this is a profitable deal for start-ups. These do not maintain a distinct delivery system for the orders, and it comes with incredible savings in expenses. The established restaurants can utilize this model as they can cut down the expenses on manpower extensively and focus on their internal functions the most.

The aggregator model establishes a connection between the restaurants and the users, and the logistic model needs an additional platform for delivery services. Apps like UberEats use this model.

What are the requirements of a food ordering app?

To develop a partnership for an on-demand food delivery app like Zomato, you need to carefully handle

  • One customer app
  • An admin app
  • And a delivery person app

The Customer App

The customer app is the pivotal part of the entire tale. This app will be installed on the device of the customers. They can order food using this app from the restaurants listed.

This app needs to be flawless and carefully curated. Behind every successful food delivery app like Zomato, there is an unbeatable user experience without bugs. The app makes the food ordering experience better and results in customer retention.

The Admin App

The admin app will be created for the authorized personnel of the food delivery service or of the restaurant. This app will be used to accept customer orders, dispatch the requested orders, properly maintain the payments, track orders by the real-time GPS tracking technology, and keep the path of logistics transparent for all.

It can be web-based software. An issue can crash the entire function and cause serious downtime to a business. The admin is going to add a brain to the entire operation, so you need to carefully handle the development and maintain the app to hold an intact revenue and reputation for your service.

The Delivery Person App

The delivery person app is built for those who are making the delivery. With this app, they can trace new orders and accept and reject the order. Along with that, they can find the drop location of the order. This app helps to deliver the food smoothly to the users.

Features that need to be incorporated in your food delivery app like Zomato

For Zomato, like food delivery app development, you need to add a range of top features for customer retention.

What do you need to add?

For on-demand food delivery apps and third-party apps, both of these must add up top features resulting in an elevated user experience.

So, jot down the features to build a food delivery app like Zomato, and before planning those create the MVP for your food delivery app. This will help you to grasp the features your app needs.

Once you create a custom food delivery app adding up those features, you can make sure your app will appear unique from that of its counterparts that are already present in the market.

Create a profile

When you have your food delivery app, you must go through the registration process. To appear in this process, the users create a profile in this app and utilize every service present in the app. It is an important step for both the admin and delivery person also.

Manage the profile

Profile management feature helps the users optimize and update their profiles with the right and correct information. The admin app also must be able to update the profiles for their business, and the delivery partners also must update their profiles with relevant credentials.

Add easy search option

You must implement an easy search option in your food delivery app like Zomato. An easy search lets it appear first as none will be going to spend hours searching an app when they are hungry.

Add offers, coupons, rewards and loyalty benefits

Customers enjoy offers, discounts and coupons when they buy something.

You need to provide plenty of lucrative offers and coupons for the users. These special offers help you to retain your users and bring in more leads. If you collaborate with the restaurants, you can add up something more attractive and interesting to the users. Once you become successful in customer retention, they, in turn, will become loyal customers to the restaurants and your app and stay with you for a long time.

Push Notifications

Make sure you have enabled push notifications with your Zomato-like food delivery app. This feature is vital because, without this, the users can’t be able to know when they can have special or seasonal discounts or offers or about the must-buy food with a higher rating etc.

However, avoid bombarding your users with annoying notifications all the time. Give enough room to your users and let them choose the notifications they want to see and when they want to see them according to their preferences. This will take the user satisfaction of your food delivery app to the next level.

There are vital features you need to consider for all your admin and the delivery person’s app. For example, you need to create a dashboard for the admin app, just like the GrubHub dashboard.

The cost of developing a food delivery app like Zomato

App Development Cost = Total Number Of Hours * Hourly Rate.

Before an estimation, you need to know the factors that can impact the on-request food delivery app development cost like,

  • The Complexity lies in the UX (Higher expenses for complex plans)
  • App testing and publication (like finding the bugs and troubleshooting)
  • Adding up additional features (it includes the extra charges for each add-on feature)
  • Advanced technology integration (like if you add voice command like Alexa, it will result in higher expense)
  • Charges of maintenance and updates (A higher charges will be needed for extended maintenance and periodic updates)

These factors can impact the estimated cost of a food delivery app like Zomato. The app development cost varies due to the additional features and functionalities included in it.

The cost of spending on developing online food delivery apps like Zomato, UberEats or GrubHub would be about $30,000 to $40,000. Adding up the additional requirements in a web app automatically would raise the price from $50k to $60k.

If you want a customized food ordering app development, it will include Mobile app design, both Android and iOS version app development, application testing, and deploying it on platforms like Google Play Store or App Store.

The Robust Tech Stack Behind the Food App Development

API is a set of protocols or software development software requirements. It provides a bunch of required resources that developers can use. These help to provide an overview of what each one does. Developers don’t need to consider how the OS builds and launches a Chat function. They only consider if the users can access it in a time-saving manner to create a food delivery app like Zomato.

The benefits of using third-party API outweigh the risks, and the reasons are it

Money saving– It lets the buying or getting coupon code at an affordable price than following built-in software.

Time-saving– it saves your time in creating a web app. So many businesses choose to integrate third-party customized APIs.

Tailor-made – The APIs are customizable that come with added advantages for developers who may need to generate code during integration.

Google Cloud Platform into API:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics helps to gather personally identifiable data of the users from the websites.

Helps to reach optimum ROI.

Google Captcha

Captchas interfere with your Web forms with the appropriate guidelines.

Google Maps Platform

The embed Google Maps API integrates with iPma Plasma Map plugins. It helps to display Google Maps, which allows Web users to find directions or see a location.

Other Google Maps APIs integrate modules are Directory Module, Event Module, Locations Module, Property Module, and Assembly Module.

Prototyping

After completing the previous steps, the next steps are performed to decide the plan for the project. Prior to writing the first line of code, it is pivotal to determine the tasks and manage the allocation of resources involved in designing a food delivery app like Zomato.

These steps are comprised of

  1. Wireframing
  2. Defining Site Architecture
  3. Selecting the Technical Stack
  4. Milestone Bifurcation
  5. Deciding on Resources and Estimates
Sitemap

A sitemap consists of a set of web pages and helps the development team to build it. Designers and developers create the entire structure, including the distribution of pages on the site. Without a site map, a site will be paralyzed.

Wireframe

A wireframe helps to visualize the design of the website at the site level, and it helps to identify the issues in a website in advance. Before making your site live, it helps to find the complete user experience and select the appropriate UI items.

To develop a food delivery app like Zomato successfully, a proper projection is necessary. A well-defined project planning leads to the company’s success in utilizing the resources and ensures that the allocated time will be utilized in developing a Zomato like food delivery app.

Different types of food delivery apps

Software Development

The previous steps have added meat to the bones, and now is the time to make it work. In this stage, the developers begin the coding and static pages of a food ordering app like Zomato and make it functional.

The development team will apply style and functionality to the entire application and assign the whole thing to the project manager or Q inspector to review.

The vital steps involved in developing a food ordering app like Zomato are

  1. Idea Generation & Verification
  2. Application Design
  3. Development of Application
  4. Application Testing
  5. Launch Application
  6. Application Marketing and Maintenance
Software development is based on two components:

Front-End Development: It is also known as “client-side” development. Users interact and see this within the browser. User interaction is a crucial part of it.

In designing the website, the front-end developers are also responsible for bringing this design to life. They transfer the static elements into fully functional websites.

Back-End Development: Back-end development remains completely invisible to the users. Thebackend stays connected to the front end and sends information back and forth so users can interact with website features.

Backend software engineers look after all the business logic, and data storage is managed and carried out properly. The backend part involves data processing and integration, API development and integration, security testing, etc.

Developing an orderly sophisticated food ordering app like Zomato will require approximately 3 to 6 months of time. The Highly Complex app will somehow require from 6 months to about a year to build the required food app.

Create a Robust Zomato-like Food Delivery App by The Professionals

To build a responsive product, you need to cultivate the best food delivery app maker like Zomato. Only the experts having years of experience creating an on-demand food delivery app are worth your project. The adept developers only can understand your objective and implement updated or updated software systems and agile techniques to shape your ideas into reality.

Only experienced food app developers can ensure the future success of your app. Among a vast range of freelancers and agencies available in the market, you’re always advised to work with the latter. Only highly acclaimed agencies have a team of experts who have brushed up their knowledge with the latest development tools at their disposal, which the freelancers mostly lack. The professionals of food delivery app companies like Zomato will deliver the product to the stipulated deadlines and make sure that everything is done within your budget.

To jumpstart your food delivery app project, you must rely on the experts of the top companies with proper product licensing, guarantees and commitment that freelancers might fail to meet. You must contact the agency if you want quality service delivered at a given time frame and budget. The experts will provide you

  • A scalable mobile app for customers
  • A user-friendly admin dashboard for management
  • Top curated UI/UX designs with your branding
  • A customized solution with a white-label
  • The guidance of top experts
Final Words

Having a seamless app helps you to earn more than you have planned for. If you are ready to make a benchmark appearance in the industry, stop waiting for years. Contact us to transform your concept into a reality. Get a quote right away!

Appikr Labs
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