Food delivery is a highly promising economic sector and a great idea for a startup. Experts believe that the demand for good delivery services will only grow. Thus, according to GloriaFood research, over 80% of people use such services at least once a month.
With that being said, competition in the sphere of food delivery is rather high, so one needs to be really effective to succeed. Let’s review the popular types and models of food delivery startups and single out their weak and strong points.
Food Delivery Site Models Overview
Like any other sector, the food delivery market is shared by global and local companies. Statistics say these are local services that hold almost a 99% share of the market. Irrespective of the type, basically, there are three popular models of delivery services.
- Aggregator services, which allow customers to compare prices and foods at various restaurants. These services do not provide delivery services themselves. They just help you make an order conveniently. For every customer, they get a reward from the partner restaurants. An example is GrubHub Customers.
- Aggregator services with the feature of delivery. They also help customers make orders at various restaurants, but the key difference is that they provide delivery services as well. A bright example is the well-known UberEats service.
- All-in-one companies. These are restaurants with their own courier services. They accept customers’ orders, cook, and deliver these orders by themselves with no third parties involved.
In our review, we’ll focus primarily on the first two groups, as we discuss developing a food delivery service by anyone who is not a restaurant owner.
Well-Known Food Delivery Companies Overview: Examples to Take Notice of
When developing your food delivery startup, you may want to adopt the practices and experience of some industry giants, which have already proven their efficiency. We’ll mention some great examples to check:
- Uber is not just a taxi service but also a major food delivery operator. Currently, it operates in over one thousand cities around the globe, making food delivery as fast and simple as ordering a taxi.
- DoorDash is one of the popular US and Canadian delivery services operating in America. It collaborates with over 100 partner restaurants and offers some exclusive features, such as “popular dish”, which works as a recommendation to new restaurant customers.
- Postmate is another American service, which focuses on the delivery of various small items, including food, gifts, and even groceries.
- Delivery.com is also more than just food delivery. It accepts orders for the delivery of groceries, laundry, and, of course, food and drinks.
- Last but not least is Grubhub, another delivery company with a really great app with such useful features as GPS tracking.
To cover the largest target audience, all the operators mentioned, offer applications for both Android and iOS as well as versions for web browsers. Nowadays, it is financially profitable to look at cross-platform products: this way, you can optimize app development cost in 2022.
How to Develop a Food Delivery App from Scratch: Basic Tips
Like any commercial web product, a modern food delivery app must be high-competitive. Creating such an app is quite complicated, as too many details are to be considered. Let’s figure out basic things that will enhance the efficiency of your startup.
- Think of the buyer persona. In other words, make a portrait of your target audience. Who are your typical customers? Students? Office workers? Moms? It will help you understand what particular food products you need to focus on.
- Concentrate on user-friendliness. The best approach is to develop a unique design from scratch, though it will be costly if compared to a ready-made template. Try to make it laconic but distinctive.
- Work out your marketing strategy. Consult SEO/SMM specialists to decide what particular methods of promotion will meet your needs best.
- Investigate the market. It makes no sense to adopt the experience of the world’s best startups without understanding the specificity of your local market. You need to be aware of real people’s needs and potential challenges.
- Consider several revenue channels if possible. Maybe, you’ll be able to deliver something else along with food? Gift, medicines, groceries delivery are not bad ideas to consider.
- A mobile version is an absolute must. Nowadays, people use their smartphones more actively than ever before. But, of course, we should not forget about web development services for working through the site.
Making a competitive food delivery app is quite a challenge in the current circumstances. That said, the chance for success is rather high, as the delivery sector remains among the rapidly developing ones.