A few years back, the world lacked so much for foodies like us. Sweet Tooth, late-night cravings, and party snacks had menus depending on our cooking skills, or nearby restaurants. But now, when almost everyone possesses a smartphone, food delivery apps have been brought into our lives as a blessing.
If you own a restaurant, you know how many customers love to call you to order food and get them delivered. There are reasons for that. People are busy, or about to travel, or maybe, just lazy. However, they’re an opportunity you can tackle to sell your special menus.
A report published by BusinessToday states that Swiggy delivers approximately 42 million orders in a month and Zomato delivers 37 million in the same period. So you can guess the popularity of food delivery services.
Elements To Consider Before Building A Food Delivery App
It is great that you are ready to build a food delivery app for your restaurant. However, you need to consider a few things before you begin to make sure that it will be beneficial for your business. Here are a few elements to consider before you start building your food delivery app.
- Your Geographical location matters a lot. You have to figure out if customers around you use smartphones or have good access to the internet.
- Customers’ income level also matters as they are not going to use the app if they can’t afford smartphones.
- You will need enough staff to fulfill your orders. If you will even miss a single customer, especially during the early days of the app release, you might create a negative impact on your customers’ minds.
Steps To Build A Food Delivery App
Now, if you are convinced enough and ready to get on board with your own food delivery app, you will need a plan. I am going to discuss a stepwise plan which you can use to build an app.
- Step 1 – Make A Blueprint With a Goal
To begin with, do a brainstorming session with your team or yourself and set your goals. Figure out how a food delivery app is helpful for you and what you want to achieve through it. When you have these answers, shortlist features that you want to add to the app. USPs of your business, if there are any, will be very helpful for you in standing out.
- Step 2 – Make A Budget after considering all elements
The second step is the amount of money you want to invest in the App development
and promotion process. Do you expect the app to generate revenue more than the food delivery app cost for your business? Figure out step-wise expenditures on different elements like the app technology, platform, security, and developers.
- Step 3- Choose A Platform to release your app
This is indeed the most important part. You have to figure out your customers about this. Try knowing through a survey or using secondary data to research how many of your customers use Android or iOs devices. How can you use the data for your benefit?
- Step 4- Design The Interface and Appearance of your App
Now when you have shortlisted a platform, it is the time when you should decide what your app will look like. You can use a dedicated graphic designer to do that for you, or you can use other apps as the reference and do it yourself.
Design homepage, features, menu, icons, pages, and buttons. Once you are done with the process, you can share the design with an expert for suggestions or modifications before finalizing the same.
- Step 5- Hire an Expert or a company to build Your App
Now, when your plan is set, hire a developer or an app development company to assist you with the development process. An individual developer will be less costly and assist you personally throughout the app development process.
Moreover, if you decide to hire the best android application development company, it might cost a little extra but it will have a team dedicated to your app. There will be multiple people with multiple skills and experience to assist you.
Nowadays having an app can help you in growing with speed. You can use the app to promote your discount offers, to deliver food, to promote your special items, or for feedback.
Features You Can Offer to Customers
There are a few features that can be offered to customers through food delivery apps. You can include these features in the app to make it more convenient for customers to use.
- Add a rating system for your food quality and taste, delivery services, packing, costs, and hygiene.
- A customized review system can help you in knowing their experiences or suggestions.
- Include a filter system that can help customers in seeing specifically what they are looking for. Add price, coupons, location, rating, etc as filters.
- Add a search option as well so that customers can shortlist their preferences accordingly with keywords like Rating, dish name, restaurant, etc.
- Add your contact info and social media links. If you have a website, add that link too.
- Include a chat or AI support system so that customers can resolve their queries directly without having to wait in long calling queues.
- Try to include personalized offers as well, depending upon the customers’ loyalty and order history. Build an app that can keep track of customer’s behavior on your app and offer them rewards accordingly. It will help you in building a good reputation.
Now that we have described the process you can go through to develop a perfect food delivery app, we hope that we were helpful. If you still run your business in a traditional way and you think building an app can be very helpful for your growth, you should not think twice.
However, there are some elements because of which you might not need an app.
Moreover, you also have to understand that once you build an app and promote it, your sales might grow. To make sure that you can fulfill delivery requirements for every order, you will need more staff and people than before.
You will have to train your staff and you will need people who can work faster than before. Because there will be occasions more oftenly when demand for your food grows.