Types of Food Delivery and Ordering Apps: Key Features & Market Trend

Well, food ordering and delivery apps have never been so popular as they are today. It benefits every party that is involved in food delivery service.

Earlier, when anyone desired to enjoy their food while experiencing the comfort at their homes, they used to order on their phones. This trend has become a past today as, in this digital world, we can order food online using a mobile app only. Yes, you read it right, “Mobile App” is trending nowadays, and ordering food online has never been an easy job earlier than it is today.

Today, we are here with a post including varied information relevant to online food delivery apps, their types, and many more. So, keep reading to know everything related to such apps.

Table of Contents

Why Developing A Custom Food Ordering App Beneficial For Your Restaurant or Food Business?

As you know, every second restaurant has a food delivery app; you also might be thinking about whether it’s worth developing 3rd-party food ordering solutions for your restaurant. Well, of course, you should go ahead with custom app development as it’s the best approach for restaurants to increase sales. Let’s check out the reasons behind this.

Third-Party Commission

Various 3rd-party delivery services charge an amount as a commission fee on deliveries of around 15-30% from restaurants.

For example: Let’s check out an estimate that a few popular 3rd-party food delivery services are charging –

DoorDash – 10-25%

UberEats – 25-30%

Grubhub – 5-15%

So, it’s clear that if you partner with such delivery services, take away a considerable amount of your budget.

No 3rd-Party Delivery Services Nearby You

There may be a case when there is no third-party player in your area to offer such services. Then it would be best to develop a food ordering app for your restaurant.

For example – UberEats doesn’t offer its services in US cities and towns, like Leawood, Hood river, Brentwood, Brookfield. Melrose, and many more areas.

Risk of Losing Consumers

The third-party delivery customers target convenience first and then loyalty. That’s why they are likely to consider an online restaurant delivery service that provides a plethora of options for local restaurants. Moreover, 3rd-party businesses are usually overloaded with orders that lead to delayed deliveries. It leaves customers unhappy.

So, by assigning delivery operations to your in-house team, you will have enhanced control over delivered food and customer service quality.

Limited Customer Data

When you partner with a 3rd-party food delivery player, you don’t get the customer data that makes you capable of running analytics and gaining actionable insights into enhancing customer loyalty and support services.

So, the drawbacks mentioned above are enough to decide whether it’s worth starting your food delivery services. Besides, it will help you improve your delivery speed, satisfy your customers, ensure customer loyalty, and stay ahead of your competitors.

Types Of Food Delivery & Ordering Mobile Apps

The startups adopt various business models to allow food preparation and delivery concepts to touch new heights. Here, we are dividing these restaurant ordering apps into three key categories:

Aggregators (Order-Focused Delivery Service)

Also known as a mediator, aggregator mediates between many local restaurants and customers. Here, an aggregator connects the users with various restaurants. Customers will view the food menu, order dishes they want, and pay for that. Although, an aggregator doesn’t offer any delivery service.

An aggregator just facilitates the customers and offers customer support for their orders. They just pass the food orders of customers to the restaurants.

Next, the restaurant manages the delivery part. Aggregators get a fixed amount for every order the customers place using their service. Usually, the restaurants participating in your service bear this fee without charging any extra cost to customers.

Logistics-Focused Food Delivery Services

Also known as new food delivery platforms, this type of restaurant ordering app performs outstandingly. The users here compare the menus of multiple restaurants and make orders as per their choices via mobile app. Although, unlike aggregators, the logistic-focused food delivery service provides logistics service to their partner restaurants.

Full-Service Food Delivery Service

The main target of such a food delivery service is to cook healthy food for customers quickly never to leave them waiting. In this, 3rd-parties don’t participate at all as they have their chefs who prepare food in-house. Here, courier boys are hired in-staff to deliver the cooked food timely to the customers.

[table “27” could not be loaded /]

Market Trends Of Food Delivery & Ordering Mobile Apps

[table “28” could not be loaded /]

The US is the second-largest market of online food delivery app after China and the most funded.
In the past five years, market revenue has increased by 204%, supported by platform-to-customer services. Such services offer a broader selection of food and restaurant types.
The US food delivery app projected about 26$ billion in revenue in the year 2020.
There are about 111 million food delivery app users in the US, as recorded in 2020.
The UK food delivery app revenue reached $5.9 billion in 2020.
In 2020, there were 24.8 million UK food delivery app users.
Also, in 2020, the Global food delivery value reached $100 billion.

[table “29” could not be loaded /]

Top Features to Include While Developing An On-Demand Food Ordering Mobile App

Before you develop an on-demand food ordering app, you should know its top features to include in it to make it a fantastic app for your business.

Let’s check out a few essential features:

Push Notifications

As the online food-ordering trend is expanding enormously, you would have multiple food delivery apps installed on your smartphone. So, to stand uniquely in the crowd, you should send push notifications in a better way. It assists businesses in staying linked with the customers. Such messages help convey all sorts of information, like offers, discounts, location-based order dropped messages, and more.

Moreover, ensure that your notifications should add value to the users of your on-demand food ordering app. So, avoid plain commercial messages. Push notifications should help your business app grow to a great extent. It should notify your customers constantly about the special offers, discounts, and loyalty programs. This way, it will become easier for you to grab your customers’ attention and engage them.

Cashback, Discount/Rewards, and Loyalty Programs

When it’s about attracting more customers to your online food delivery app, we can ease it by providing special offers and discounts. Routinely, you should offer unique discounts to engage your customers.

As per a report, approximately 40% of users use an online food ordering app to look for cashback and discounts. In contrast, about 25% of users use such apps only to earn loyalty points.

It’s essential to attract potential customers to earn brand loyalty than to build brand awareness. That’s why big brands pay extra attention to their loyalty points.

Real-Time GPS for Tracking Food Delivery

One of the top features of food delivery apps is Real-time GPS, which allows customers to track the location of their food. The main aim of GPS is to provide two-way tracking along with functioning. It assists in identifying the location of the user for delivering food. Post the confirmation of the area; it becomes easy for users to track the movement and progress of the delivery personnel.

Real-time GPS helps the leading food delivery apps to provide the best experience to the consumers. Some top APIs for this feature include MapKit, Google Navigation.

For example, Uber uses Google Maps on every platform.

Easy Payment Options

As per the perspective of a business owner, payments play an essential role in all businesses. However, it’s the last step of the order placement, but if a customer faces any issue, maybe minor or significant, surely they wouldn’t try it again. So, to make the payment process much more productive and straightforward, a customer should have every payment option listed in your on-demand food delivery app.

You can include all the mobile wallet app services or payment gateways available in the market, like PayPal, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Stripe, iOS Wallet, Online Banking, Credit/Debit Card, and Cash On Delivery (COD) options. Similarly, you may offer vouchers and promo codes.

Social Media Integration

For a long time, social media has been contributing to online marketing. It’s one of those unaffected viewpoints that improve the decision of the customer. By social media integration, consumers can easily share videos or images of their favorite dish with their family and friends. Moreover, you can make your food delivery app recognizable on social media and attract customers regularly.

Customers can reap the benefits of social media. Businesses can connect social media with discount/loyalty programs to attract existing consumers to earn rewards and points by inviting new customers. This assists in engaging potential customers.

Reviews & Ratings

Customers are essential to every business as they are the reason for their growth. Any sort of rating or feedback assists firms in knowing the areas of improvement in their on-demand delivery app. This feature permits your customers to review and rate many other restaurants along with their dishes listed on the app.

It’s a fantastic and well-tested way for any business to know how its customers respond to its app. If the app is rated good, then many people are likely to visit your app. That’s why by adding a feedback portal, your business will know the areas of improvement in the app for a better customer experience.

Simple Order Placement

Many people prefer ordering food online as order placement is easy and quick. Your app may also receive numerous orders if a user-friendly usability outlook is considered while designing it. The on-demand food ordering app should hold an excellent user interface (UI) design. A UI is a significant part of the app that helps users communicate with the application and order services.

The users should get an option to discover and explore effectively what they need. If UI is very time-consuming, it will affect the user experience. That’s why it is known as one of the essential components of the app that helps in-app expansion. It should load all the elements rapidly for exceptional user experience with better conversion rate and app engagement.

Top Five Restaurant Delivery Mobile Apps In 2023

Well, there are a plethora of on-demand food delivery apps available in the market. You just need to download the best food delivery app, select a restaurant, place your order and make payments using your mobile phone or paying through cash.

We are also here with the top 5 food delivery apps to ease you to select the best.

Zomato