How to Create a Food Delivery App: a Step-by-Step Guide

What are food delivery apps?

Statistics show that about 40 percent of meals bought in restaurants nowadays are online purchases. For every eatery, takeaway diners who get dishes at their door 2 to 3 times a week are a great pool of new audiences who enable them to generate additional profit. Of course, tapping into such opportunities is possible with a well-thought-out program that perfectly runs on different devices and has all the needed features.

There’s a variety of such utilities for stores and cafes. Users are given an opportunity to scroll through menus, read reviews, choose the options they like and obtain them, paying in a contactless manner or in cash. Designing a good platform is also a good way to improve your place’s visibility since personalized recommendations, scheduled hand-off services, elevated security and even the theme of the tech deliverable help people form good opinions.

Such tech advancements are constructed by experienced engineers with strategic visions. They explore the market, keep track of emerging trends, identify your competitors and take care of each facet of the executable to ensure an initiative’s success. In the next section, we summarized the actions they take to get the ball rolling.

How to make a food delivery app in 5 steps?

Building a utility comparable to UberEats and Glovo has niche-specific intricacies different from constructing other types of systems. Hence, collaborating with a seasoned software provider specializing in this industry is the best approach that guarantees best-fit results.

To shape a viable and in-demand solution, a deep investigation of the domain and knowledge of operating a similar business is a must. Regardless, you can overcome many obstacles with a trusted partner and a correctly set up implementation flow. With that being said, let’s go over five stages of creating a meal dispatch program from the ground up:

Step 1. Do your homework

You set the wheels in the motion of how to build a food delivery app that will be successful with market examination. Household names are more likely to receive engaged customers and to become one of them; you have to dive deeper into what your end-users’ needs and problems are and how to solve them so that they will return to you.

Conducting a competitor analysis as part of custom app development can help you figure out the good sides of renowned brands (to further refine on those features) and the areas where improvement could be used (to fill the gaps within the domain and present a better proposition).

Step 2. Consider UI/UX design

Once you have settled on your custom food delivery app development plan and unraveled the functions consistent with your goals and objectives, you can select a supplier and get started on the design. This stage comes before creation since you must establish a solid prototype and choose your branding approach before building a platform.

The creative specialists will work on crafting wireframes that demonstrate a first look at the layout and content distribution of the output. With your approval your partners will design high-fidelity or low-fidelity prototypes with a more in-depth look and feel of the app and detailed visual interface elements that correspond to your firm’s style.

Parallel to that, UX experts will map out intuitive navigation and smooth user flows, ensuring customers won’t have issues or frustrations when taking advantage of your offering. A well-thought-out user experience with a logical information architecture may be a crucial detail that separates your product from others.

Step 3. Engineer

You are ready to start the food ordering app development with a completed layout. At this phase, the executors you choose among innovative companies will work on production, i.e., writing code, your application’s designated functionalities.

The right tech stack will also be pinpointed according to the demands. You can go with native programming, which entails building on a single operating system using platform-specific tools and languages. This means tech visionaries must write two separate codes for Android and iOS.

Consider releasing an MVP or a minimum-value product first. This is a basic version of your utility with only the necessary features, launched to the target audience to test their response and gather their feedback to improve the latest version. MVP allows you to validate your idea.

Step 4. Perform QA testing

The creating food delivery app stage is completed which means you can continue analyzing your application. This is an essential step in the process as it allows you to ensure the final solution works as intended and doesn’t cause problems. Quality assurance testing aims to identify and eliminate code bugs and faults methodically.

Many different types of examination exist with diverse purposes and end goals. One of the standard assessments is functionality evaluation, which checks the behavior of the app to ensure it operates according to the requirements. Multi-environment validations are also necessary to verify the endeavor delivers the same results across all operating systems.

Step 5. Release a solution

At last, you are finally at the finish line after all the tedious food delivery mobile app development. During the concluding stage of tech pursuit production, you should prepare all your marketing campaigns and figure out promotion channels before rollout. When you are ready to present your venture to the public, your technical teams will handle the deployment details.

The first action is verifying whether the asset complies with guidelines and regulations. Once you are clear, the team will upload the final application to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Then, you will select the time and date; when it comes, the consumers can download and use your digital product.

What are the key features of food delivery app development?

Uber Eats, Just Eat, and DoorDash are common brand names of the companies pioneering in the meal dispatch market that is predicted to reach $213 billion by 2030. Is it possible to become a significant player in such a cut-throat niche?

Based on our experience, yes, it’s achievable. We have had a similar project for a German-based customer who received x3 revenue owing to the convenient ordering-making process and upselling opportunities we have implemented.

Therefore, we have gathered knowledge from our tech team, which was dedicated to this solution and determined the focal points for such food ordering mobile app development:

Expedited entry. A hassle-free entering process is a must, since imagine you are in a hurry, trying out a new utility to receive food for a big company, and downloading it you see a 5-step registration form with email, phone number, name, surname, and other staff. You would skip it and input another platform, wouldn’t you?

Therefore, not cumbersome for the first stage is our core principle in online food delivery app development. We recommend keeping it simple yet protected, for example, providing account creation within social media only, so that they can enter the code and scroll through the dishes.

Intuitive navigation. According to our analytics for clients, market researchers found out that jumping through hoops makes users abandon a service so in our practice, we create a menu that puts everything at the buyers’ fingertips. Here, we are pointing at usability, let’s consider them in more detail.

For our customer who requested us to build a food delivery app, we have grouped pivot features into a bottom bar, provided a visualization of top-rated goods, focused on personalized banners with discounts, advanced filters for food choice and a search box that is aimed at keywords.

Detailed order information. Transparency is central value for businesses that would like to become a vital part of the industry, therefore, we advise providing a comprehensive summary for purchases, including price breakdown with taxes, real-time tracking map, ability to call and text the courier.

When you make a food delivery app, it’s essential to give users an opportunity to take a step back and decline their order, change it, and save as a favorite to repeat as an option (which additionally engages the client to come back to you).

Robust payment capabilities. Referring to the situation in the first function description, we stand by adding the ability to pay using Apple Pay or Google Pay, which simplifies the buying process and doesn’t get on consumers’ nerves. Here, you can also offer a choice to save card data and automate payments and it’s worth noting that enhanced security is a must.

To sum up, we would like to promote statement that simplified control, prominent decision-making, visual hierarchy, simple checkout and configurations like dark mode, which has gained popularity, allow you to lay down the application that will get #1 rank on App Store and Google Play.

How to choose a company for a food delivery app creation?

Handling all the nuances we stated before isn’t an easy walk, however teaming up with proficient specialists will remove all the stops on the way to a well-tuned food dispatch application. Get acquainted with the procedure of food delivery mobile app development to make highly informed decisions:

Tip 1. Gather studios

Having done the homework we mentioned before will significantly simplify completing this stage. Understanding the scope of work that needs to be performed, you’ll be able to find executors who match your requirements. Otherwise, there’s a risk of opting for candidates whose specializations don’t cover the specifications of your venture. In this case, you’ll have to double your efforts to reach the benchmarks.

Speaking of the sources from which you can locate specialists who create takeaways programs, we will name at least two. First of all, elevate the listings of accomplished food delivery app developers according to the sector you are interested in — they usually include contenders of varied might who are able to undertake small and scalable projects. For example, take a look at app development companies in the UK. It’s much more effective than just googling them.

Second, contacting your partners is also a good option, especially if you know that they have a trustworthy tech assistant.

Tip 2. Evaluate their capabilities

Do you have a directory with a few companies in it? Then, proceed to this phase. When we speak about assessing powers, we mean two essential things: an examination of a food delivery app development company’s case studies and studying their frameworks. On the subject of the success stories disclosed, glance at the descriptions and pictures that supply them. Experienced vendors always leave briefs with baseline information, even if in some situations they don’t open the true names.

As for their might, find the list of programming languages, cloud solutions and services they offer. If you don’t want to divide different parts of an undertaking between several suppliers, make sure that the agencies you fancy are full-fledged, are able to craft the customer and server side of applications, and are knowledgeable about cross-platform engineering tools like Flutter and React Native.

Tip 3. Research their background

Nothing will tell you more about how they develop a food delivery app as much as testimonials of previous clients. You’ll surely find something on the pages of organizations, but we don’t recommend you stop on the resources that belong to them. Try to find evidence of their versatility on independent websites to be in the know that they are not just pages on the web.

Additionally, protect yourself by checking their registrations. Entrusting your idea to an external work force, it’s important to ascertain that they are eligible to collaborate.

To summarize the process, it would be wise to test their communication approach to ensure that it’s possible to settle comfortable work environments for every party involved.

How much do food delivery app development services cost?

We have been in the IT niche for over a decade now, so questions about prices are a dime a dozen for our managers, and we always say that the final cost depends on your preferences and requirements but who will be satisfied with such an answer? Definitely not the business owner or representative like you, who would like to receive a robust breakdown and know what to expect and how to fit your budget.

We advocate for the fact that an initial call is the only way to assume the scope of work and define expenses since you may not know if you need your endeavor to have advanced features when building a food delivery app we particularly outlined above, like logging in using Google or WhatsApp or a monitoring system that depicts order location.

Here’s a brief comparison table which we will consider in more detail in terms of app development cost, for now, let’s focus on numbers:

Talking about basic components that are in demand across startups who would like to test the idea before investing their money and engaging investors and stakeholders, MVP creation is a pivotal phase that includes essentials like profile registration, menu interface, choosing meals, paying with built-in systems or through integrations.

Medium complexity takes all the named capabilities (but considering 2FA for authentication) and also expands to custom elements like order preparation and delivery tracking, bar notifications for changes and special offers, ability for customers to leave reviews and rate applications in Google Business or else.

This price may sound enormous, but so is the provided food delivery application development that pushes figures, for example, AI-powered tools for analytics and personalization, native programming to reach wider audiences of Apple and Android owners, complex integrations with Stripe or PayPal.

The final cost will be defined according to other factors such as the complexity of the tech stack you need, the number of team members, their position, they will be freelancers or in-house team or you would like to hire app developers from an agency so that you have to pay for office space and hardware and more.

Let us also highlight maintenance, which is an additional but vital service that is responsible for application performance and regular security updates for you to remain competitive.

What would be our advice in this summary if you needed one and were wondering how to start a food delivery app? You may schedule a call with a provider who is able to estimate your project and offer a budget-friendly solution.

There’s always room for a venture and you can join the market with an MVP creation and grow up like an enterprise, it takes time and a reliable vendor.

In the following section we briefed directions that can be adopted as they dominate the domain.

Future trends in custom food delivery application development

Forecasting the future is not a daily routine but an essential part of running a business that would like to remain competitive in the long run. We are here with the top 5 analytics- and experience-based tendencies that can take place in 2025 and further years.

AI-powered personalization.

In a world where users expect to receive good treatment from businesses, engagement is a pivotal thing that has become more efficient and robust since Artificial Intelligence is implemented in restaurant delivery app development. By “good treatment” we mean tailored discounts, special offers aligned with what customers ordered previously.

It works through data collection, algorithms that access and investigate the information, Natural Language Processing (NLP), for example, used for chatbots that can be available 24/7. Many worldwide brands have already incorporated AI, for example, Uber Eats has a virtual assistant that can help clients.

Let us explore one funny and effective trend utilized by some companies really quickly. Have you ever heard that users think their phone can read their minds and offer reliable goods? With requesting individualized solutions from a food delivery app developer you are able to promote meals even according to the weather, for example, cacao in the Christmas timeline.

Logistics changes.

This trend is more about you as a business owner since it allows you to save money spent on operations — there are numerous ways to accomplish it from advanced analytics with AI that give you means to predict arrival time to GPS tracking that calculates fuel needs and the shortest ways according to traffic, road closures, etc.

When you craft your proposition, considering this option, you also earn the trust of your consumers who get their orders quickly, simultaneously covering potential delays in delivery.

Enhanced communication.

When you create your own food delivery app, it’s better to represent a way for customers to solve their issues online within minutes and here 24/7 chatbots come into the game offering robust assistance. Acting as a digital concierge, bots tackle people’s concerns head-on, keeping satisfaction levels high and frustrations low.

AR/VR interactions.

Another approach that is aimed at user delight since this technology enables the opportunity to visualize your restaurant, create 3D views of the goods you offer, make a live menu with custom features so that they can add or remove ingredients, and more.

Food delivery app development solutions made with AR/VR are also more likely to be recognized since they impress your prospects so the last ones would like to share their opinion with friends, relatives, followers, spreading word of mouth and enhancing your brand visibility.

Summing up

We hope that you found the material useful. This article was written in cooperation with our tech-savvy coders, who know all the ins and outs of crafting a utility from scratch that has all the necessary components to strive. Although we tried to cover all the essentials of how to develop a food delivery app, the majority of answers you’ll get after a thorough discussion with a supplier.

If you are looking for a proficient vendor who can take on your project from the ideation and produce a reliable application that will bring users and company growth, consider partnering with Limeup. Let’s schedule a call to discuss your solution that will capture the loyalty and admiration of target audiences.