How to Build a Food Delivery App like UberEats (2024)

Food delivery is something most of us can’t leave without. The pandemic and safety regulations made applications like UberEats even more popular. Now, to taste their favorite meal, restaurant guests place an order and wait for a courier to deliver it.

Moreover, food orders are the only way for restaurants to earn money, while dine-ins are prohibited in numerous countries, including the U.S.

Even though Uber Eats popularity, many restaurant owners criticize the platform for unfair service commissions that reduce restaurants’ already small profit margin.

For that reason, savoy restaurant owners are considering developing their food delivery marketplaces like UberEats. As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, lead them.

Suppose you are one of the brave and optimistic food tech entrepreneurs and considering developing an app like Grubhub or UberEats. In this case, you need to know UberEat’s business model and simple steps to build such an app or even better. Let’s see how food delivery marketplaces similar to UberEats operate and how much it will cost you to make a food delivery aggregator.

UberEats Business Model

The UberEats app is both a restaurant aggregator and a delivery agent that performs two different ways:

• UberEats uses a traditional food delivery model, listing partners-restaurants in a single app.
• UberEats also handles order delivery using its own logistics network to deliver orders from restaurants that don’t have a delivery option.

The most notable features of this food delivery application include:

• Recommendations
• Advanced search
• Order tracking
• Delivery details

Now, let us take a look at UberEats monetization strategies.

How does UberEats make money?

The company applies three monetization strategies:

• Delivery Feefrom $2 to $8 per order depending on the distance between customers and restaurants
• Service Feesfrom 15% to 40% fee for each order received via UberEats.
• Promotion-when partner restaurants pay for ranking first in the search, which increases their visibility to customers.

How to make a food delivery application: 5 steps to follow

To develop apps like UberEats and make it popular among users, you need something more than copying its features. To help you surpass UberEats, we suggest applying the following steps:

Step 1. Track Food Delivery Industry Trends

You need to be aware of the new delivery channels and other trends:

Social Networks

To make your project unique in the selected niche, consider integrating ordering via social media accounts functionality.

The first company that used this ordering option was Domino’s Pizza, which offered customers orders via Twitter accounts. App users “tweeted” a pizza emoji to the Domino’s Pizza Twitter account to place an order.

A GUIDE ON STARTING A FOOD MEAL KIT DELIVERY SERVICE

[Source: Domino’s Pizza]

Before ordering at Domino’s Pizza vis Twitter, users need:

• Create a “pizza profile” and list a favorite pizza
• Fill in the “default orders” section on Domino’s Pizza website
• Link a pizza profile with a Twitter account

Virtual assistant

Chabot allows placing orders via messengers and requests food by a single word:

Domino’s pizzahas developed Dom, a chatbot that allows placing orders on Twitter and Facebook messengers and learn about special offers.

Grubhubhas integrated its system with Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, allowing customers to reorder any of their last three purchases.

Just Eathas decided to keep up with the current trends and integrate Alexa into its ordering system. Thanks to new Amazon hardware,Echo Show, Just Eat can place orders by voice and check the courier’s location.

Smartwatch

Food delivery companies widely use wearable devices:

Domino’swas a pioneer who launched a food ordering app for Android watches which simplifies ordering.

[Image source: Domino’s Pizza]

OrderUpintroduced its latest app for the Apple Watch. OrderUp customers can place orders, track delivery statuses, and see when the courier will arrive.

BALANCING THE SUPPLY AND DEMAND WITH AN ON-DEMAND GROCERY DELIVERY APP

Step 2. Choose Food Delivery Model

Now, you need to select a food delivery model among two business models that will suit you the best:

[Statistics for on-delivery services income by Statista]

Step 3. Research target market

To develop an excellent food delivery app, you need to know the target audience. Once you understand who will use the food delivery app, it is easy to build an app that ideally meets target audiences’ needs.

The target audience could be narrow, such as gluten-free raw vegans, or broad, like pizza lovers.

To draw a clear picture of the target audience, use demographic criteria and create a target customer profile by clarifying the following info:

• Social characteristics, including income, gender, nationality, and age
• What potential customer problem may your project solve?
• What feeling will your application provoke from customers?
• Why should customers use the platform rather than competitors?

By clarifying all of these points, you will have a good idea of the target customers.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO DEVELOP AN APP: DETAILED FEATURE BREAKDOWN

Step 4. Choose the main features of UberEats-like food delivery services

When developing a mobile app like Uber for food delivery, consider the following features:

Loginallows login to the app using email or social networks profile.

Searchallows searching by meal, filters, as well as food category. This section should include pictures of dishes, the process, and a description of the meal.

Order placingallows adding meals to the cart.

Order checkoutincludes all selected dishes and the order total.

Paymentallows users to pay for the order via the built-in payment gateway. Our advice is to integrate several payment systems, such as PayPal, Stripe, MangoPay. We applied this strategy to custom marketplace development. You can find thecomplete case study on the link.

Notificationsinform users about the order status viapush notificationsand SMS.

Order tracking shows real-time order trackingusing the CoreLocation framework for iOS apps and Google Location API for Android apps. Besides, Mapkits and Google Maps will help couriers to find the best route to the customer’s location.

User Reviewsallows app users to share their experience and rate restaurants.

Step 5. Select the Technology Stack of Food Delivery App Development

Depending on the business model of a food delivery startup, you might need different technologies. Still, we have gathered an essential tech stack for Uber-like apps in the table below:

Restaurant listing

• Grubhub API
• FourSquare API

Payment gateway

• Square API
• Braintree
• Stripe
• PayPal

Find user location

• Core Location Framework
• Google Places API
• Google Maps

Push notifications

• Amazon SNS
• Urban Airship
• Firebase Cloud Messaging

HOW TO CREATE A LOCATION-BASED APP FOR ANDROID AND IOS

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Food Delivery App?

The mobile app’s cost consists of many elements, including the number of platforms, feature list, the number of integrations, etc.

The mobile development team will create a detailed app estimation only after the discovery (inception) phase.

What does this mean?

The discovery (inception) phaseis the first step you and the development team take to build a solid foundation for app development. This stage includes several components, such as:

• Functional specification
• UX/UI design
• Visual prototypes

The product discovery phasecan help you with:

• Defining the scope of work
• Developing the project roadmap
• Setting a realistic MVP budget
• Planning resources
• Testing the app MVP with a target audience
• Developing a solid investment pitch

So, how much will the food delivery app cost?

We need50+ hoursto create UI/UX design,66+ hoursto build the app’s back-end, while the development stage may take120+ hoursper platform.

To make your app like UberEats stand out, keep an eye on current food ordering industry trends, and don’t forget to give your customers added value that your competitors don’t have.

For a food delivery app, you can apply either an Order-Only or Order and Delivery Model. With the app MVP, you can gather insights from the target audience and add other features during the second development stage.

Our Successful Story

CASE STUDY:Alfredo Ibiza On-demand Food Delivery App

Alfred Ibiza is an on-demand delivery mobile app that connects restaurants, stores, couriers, and customers in Ibiza. The app allows customers to order from restaurants, pharmacies, and supermarkets, listed on the platform. The APP Solutions got to work!

We managed to develop the Alfred Ibiza platform within just three months, at a total project cost of $70,000, 50-60% cheaper than the average development cost of a food delivery app.

The platform includes an app for customers, couriers, an admin panel for restaurants with only necessary functions. Besides this, we also developed a marketing landing page to promote the Alfred Ibiza platform.

Our tech stack

• Node.js
• React.js
• React Native
• Stripe

Team composition

• 1 Back-end Node.js developer
• 1 React.js developer
• 2 React Native developers
• 1 Quality Assurance manager
• 1 product owner

What our clients say

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