The online food delivery market is booming; it is speculated to generate more than $161 billion by 2023. The stupendous growth is favored by increasing consumer preference of convenience over conventional shopping methods.
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Present in the MENA countries, Talabat is one such online food delivery app that commands the largest restaurant fleet with over 12,000 registered sellers. Talabat also has an extensive network of delivery agents across Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Qatar.
If you wish to know more about the Talabat business model, here is a detailed blog on How Talabat Makes Money – Understanding Business And Revenue Model Behind.
The reason for their success is the feature-rich Talabat mobile app that helps users find the best food items and get them delivered right at their doorsteps. Let’s take a look at the cost of developing an on-demand food delivery app like Talabat.
Developing an on-demand food delivery app requires extensive resources. From designing UI/UX to deploying the app in Playstore and Appstore, the development process is capital intensive and time-consuming for in-house teams. Therefore, a cost-effective and time-efficient approach is hiring professionals.
Three cost-effective ways to develop an on-demand food delivery app:
Software as a Service (SAAS) products are mobile apps that can be subscribed monthly or annually. In a SAAS product, the control of the mobile app remains with the service provider. The mobile app is hosted and maintained in the service provider’s environment with limited customisation.
An IT service provider develops Whitelabel mobile apps for your company. A white label food delivery app can be hosted and maintained on your servers. However, the amount of customisation that can be done is usually limited to the list of features they offer. The Whitelabel organisation already has a set template for delivery apps that they customise for your company.
Custom development of a mobile app is when an outsourcing firm develops a food delivery app from scratch. The development process is detail-oriented and ensures that every aspect of your mobile app is tailor-made for your business. There is no limitation to the amount of customisation in the mobile app in a custom development project.
These are three of the most cost-effective and time-efficient methods to develop a food delivery app for your business. The cost of development depends on the features of your delivery app. Let’s take a look at the characteristics of an ideal food delivery app.
On the surface, an online food delivery app provides users with a list of different restaurants/sellers and the food items each offer. The user selects things they want to purchase and makes the payment. Upon payment confirmation, a delivery agent picks up the order from the seller and delivers it to the customer’s address.
However, there is a lot that goes on in making this simple process enjoyable. For instance, features such as real-time delivery tracking, seller reviews/ratings, and customer support chatbots assure users of a satisfactory customer experience.
An on-demand food delivery app can be divided into four parts:
The customer food delivery app is the front and centre of your business. It must be able to attract, engage, and delight your users with accessibility. Here is a list of features that customer apps must have:
A seller app acts as a dedicated portal for restaurants to register their business on the platform and sell to users on your app. Every seller’s app must have a few necessary features such as:
Delivery agents are at the heart of food delivery businesses; hence it makes sense to have a dedicated delivery agent app. Here is what a delivery agent app does:
The admin panel is the main control centre of the app; it helps you monitor the performance of sellers and delivery agents. It also acts as a governance centre for customer redressal and performance evaluations. An ideal admin panel lets you;
The total cost of developing a food delivery app is calculated based on the number of features you wish to include in your applications. Here is the cost estimation of an ideal food delivery app suite (customer app, sellers app, delivery agents app, and admin panel)
Total: 1820 -2630 hrs
The final cost of development will depend on the location of your development team. For instance, development costs in countries such as India are between $10 to $40 per hour, whereas development costs in Eastern Europe are $30 to $100 per hour, and the US is $70 to $150 per hour.
If you go for a SAAS product, your development cost might reduce drastically but so will the freedom to customise your platform as per your branding needs. Whitelabel solutions offer an ideal development solution for start-ups, but they make your app vulnerable as the source code remains with the development firm.
A custom code (source code) project will give you unlimited freedom to customise your platform as per your branding requirement while securing your platform by hosting the entire code on your servers.
If you are looking to try out the food delivery business, a Whitelabel solution is an ideal choice. However, if you are serious about your business and want to build a unique future-proof platform, a source code solution is the best.
Regardless of which mode of development you choose, a food delivery app requires substantial resources and time. If you are looking to develop your app in a short timeframe, hiring a professional team is the most logical course of action.
At Code Brew, we consume code like you consume your morning coffee. It is a necessity for us to have a good day. Over the years we have had the good fortune of helping hundreds of businesses develop future proof mobile apps. Wish to develop a food delivery app of the future? Let’s connect and discuss your mobile app.
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