Step-By-Step Guide On To Building An App Like Foodora

Last Updated on June 2, 2022

Introduction 

It’s a busy world and ease and pace are the two most valued elements of our modern life. Are you aware of the fact that 51% of US customers use delivery services to buy dishes at casual restaurants?

Any company in the service sector must have the versatility and the choices provided to customers, be easy to use, and take into account the needs of app users. The best food delivery applications available on-demand, such as UberEats, Deliveroo, Postmates, etc., have been able to do this very well and have worked hard to make sure their app users only have the best experience.

Indeed, Taco Bell claims that their website and mobile app are 20 per cent higher in orders than in-store orders. This is a prospect and promise which is lucrative for modern business people, challenges developers, and benefits customers.

The millennials have transformed the idea of dining out into a restaurant to dining in, where they enjoy the food they consume. Their favourite restaurants are to be delivered on the tap, and food supply apps would be very demanding in such a scenario.

Do you know that 57% of the millennials prefer ordering food at their place so that they can enjoy their favourite meals at their place?

On the other hand, 31 per cent of customers say they choose to use third-party food apps for at least two days a week in a study done recently. These third-party apps will transform the face of the food delivery industry as customers become accustomed to looking for offers with the one-stop-shop!

What is Foodora?

Foodora is Norway’s most successful and popular food delivery service and Q-commerce site, which is currently operating in Finland, Sweden and Norway. Originally based in Berlin, Germany, with the third generation of the digital company, Foodora leads the transition, allowing everything to reach your door within 1 hour.

In February 2014 Foodora was established in Munich under the name Volo GmbH. The company moved to Berlin when Rocket Internet acquired the company completely in April 2015.  Later In June 2015, Foodora acquired Hurrier (in Canada), Suppertime (in Australia) and Heimschmecker (in Austria) food services that now operate under the Foodora name. Foodora was then fused with the high-tech food delivery brand of Delivery Hero, Urban Taste, under the Foodora title.

The German distribution operations, including Foodora Germany, were acquired by the Dutch company Takeaway in December 2018. The deal was concluded on 1 April 2019 with Foodora GmbH formerly part of the Takeaway group, Lieferando.   

Delivery Hero is also in service on other markets under the Foodora name. From May 2020, in Finland, Norway and Sweden, Foodora remains available till date.

Food Delivery Application Models For an App like Foodora

Two big food delivery start-up models which are dominating the market in the present food supply scenario are:

• The Aggregator Model

This model is based on the conventional food supply system. Centered on the aggregator models, these start-ups act as third parties that control local customers and restaurants. They have a place to experience the many cuisines and restaurants for consumers. The aggregators of the food supply app as a third party help with the ordering and exposure of restaurants. Only after registration in the app can the user explore and then place their order at the menus, reviews, ratings and prices. If the order is confirmed, the aggregator transmits the details to the restaurant and then sends the food for delivery. The food is shipped and delivered to the customer absolutely through the restaurant. This group includes applications such as Zomato.

See also: How Zomato Works

• The Delivery Model With Logistics Support

The model differs from the aggregator model because it offers full logistical support for the partnering restaurants. This model will profitably expand its offerings to small restaurants, food supplies and home supply services in a seamless fashion. This model gives start-ups in the food industry a lot of ease and support that lack the money or bandwidth to get their own distribution systems built. This model provides a horde of advantages, from the point of view of a restaurant. The need to retain delivery staff, and equipment, or handle deliveries is avoided by the adaptation of this model. The restaurants favour this model for ease and thus offer a lucrative business model for the food delivery business. This is the model selected for highly lucrative food supply applications such as UberEats and Swiggy.

Feature List – Top Features To Include In Foodora Like Food Delivery App

So what is it that is needed to develop a food distribution application like Foodora? The future performance and popularity of the app are determined by a number of common features, which we have discussed in detail down below. They are:

1. Access To Data

Data is the true king here since it is the one thing that most people are drawn to. The more menus, cuisines, restaurants, ingredients, food material, calories, delivery times, addresses for restaurants they have, the more a person would be involved and active. 

It is this data that makes buyers make up their minds on what they want to buy. All of this information and other data can be obtained via the API used in mobile applications in this day and age of technical revolution.

2. Online Payment Integration

To be able to sit at home and put your orders is not enough, it is only natural that your customers will still like to make their purchases online! Whether it is UberEats or Zomato, this feature is provided by all the leading players in this market where consumers don’t have to think about getting enough cash in their wallets.

It is important that you integrate as many payment options as possible for an app that is genuinely popular with consumers. Stripe, Visa Checkout, Paypal, or even Square are some of the more common types. These media allow consumers to use debit or credit cards without a hitch to complete their purchases.

3. Delivery Time Estimation

This is a world of instant gratification and most consumers are searching for easy delivery with optimum productivity in this fast-paced world. For the convenience of the customer, it is also prudent to provide a function showing an approximate arrival period. This goes a long way toward balancing a consumer’s expectations and ultimately lowers the rate of the anxiety of customers. 

Although UberEats offers an estimation of the delivery period, the forecast of the time taken by Postmates is proven to be pretty reliable. This may seem like an unlikely feat, but it is not that far fetched in the age of machine learning. All feasible donation criteria are taken into consideration and the distribution times are immediately determined if an order is put on your app.

4. Real-Time Tracking

While this feature has been popularised by Uber, the leading taxi service, it is very useful for food delivery applications. The leading food delivery apps such as Postmates and restaurant apps such as Pizza Hut and Caviar use GPS extensively to provide only the finest user service. 

The way GPS operates here is that it first determines the position of the user and then the location of the user is checked, these are a two-way monitoring and GPS activity where the client would monitor the progress and movement of the delivery staff and the delivery staff will be able to see the way to the location of the consumer. MapKit, Google Maps or Waze’s Navigation are some of the great APIs for this functionality. Google Maps is used by Uber on both channels.

5. Rating & Reviews

The food delivery apps incorporate the stringently filtered freelance drivers or delivery workers, but they do need to be checked from time to time to ensure that they do a decent job and do not do something that will harm the credibility of the company. Via a customer evaluation and rating scheme, the easiest and most successful way to do this. 

Apps such as Postmates, DoorDash, UberEats provide their users with a chance to provide the delivery team with a recommendation based on their experience. It is on the basis of these scores that the apps determine if the distribution workers in question can proceed.

6. Loyalty Program

In order to order from an internet distribution provider, a good loyalty scheme attracts more clients. As per a recent study, 45 percent of customers state that if they had mobile shopping or loyalty plans, they will use online ordering services more frequently. Although lucrative for consumers, a loyalty scheme lets restaurants attract more customers, allowing them to return and order again.

Common challenges while creating a food app & how to tackle them

In any segment, the industry is full of competitive applications, and the food delivery app category is not an anomaly, to say the least. In promoting the app, one needs to be wise enough to struggle for its existence. These are some of the typical obstacles that are bound to emerge when you set out to develop an app like Foodora.

1. Finding The Right Audience

One of the initial issues facing the construction of a food delivery product by a new app developer is how to find the right target to market the app? You ought to be a bit more precise than only serving delicious meals when it comes to describing the identity of the end-user. You need to know what sets you apart and how it brings meaning to your audience. In order to get there, you need to identify a specific objective first, whether it is busy workers who on a Saturday night are searching for quick and nutritious meals for college students.

If your USP offers tasty fast food, you need to reach the part of the populace that doesn’t care about the diet part and plans to grab a delicious quick bite and just have a friend’s hangout. You should still go back to improvise on the board. UberEats has its USP and it serves a wide selection of delicacies from a multitude of cuisines. On the other hand, firms such as Postmates have built up a USP by not limiting themselves to just food and delivering just about everything.

2. Determining Your Needs

The second question is what is needed for the creation of the start-up food delivery app. For the prospective viewer, platforms like WhatsApp, Snapchat or Instagram just require an app and the work stops there. This is wildly different from the start-up of food distribution involves 3 iterations of the app (one each for the customer, the delivery team, and the restaurant partner) and an admin panel for your company that brings up to a limit of 4 deliverables.

The primary aim of the creation process and the software should be to keep it clear and make it easy to use on both ends of the user. A customer would like to be given a one-tap order with the option of browsing all the restaurants with various search criteria by using an app like UberEats. Whereas a restaurant edition app manager will require a comprehensive and easy-to-use database in order to handle the orders and a good GPS integration to quickly and reliably identify the pickup and drop positions.

A good GPS integration will also be necessary for the delivery workers to be able to calculate the time taken and follow the route to reach the delivery site.

3. The UI/UX

The user experience on the consumer edition of the software is crucial to be strongly immersive. The customer must be able to reach the closest restaurant directly from the navigation with great ease. The following are the attributes that are bound to draw certain good consumers:

• The easy method of registration and account setup, ideally fitted with the provision to login via social media.

• Providing quick access for users to locate restaurants in the area using their GPS right after completion of registration. Offer them a lot of details, including related restaurant information, cooking list, rates, sales & combos, reviews & ratings, and more, while encouraging customers to search by name for a restaurant.

• Providing an opportunity for customers to add selected dishes to their cart or delete any they later regret or may have added by mistake.

• Providing monitoring for real-time makes the delay a little cooler than the hassle it can be! The concept is to make this waiting period look smaller, a consumer maybe somewhere with the tracking functionality, but is aware of the food status by the minute!

• As most individuals still have their doubts about it and the slightest hitch could have them fleeing the other way, the payment feature is the tricky one. It is important to easily, securely and make the payment integration. Go for most of Paypal, Stripe, and CCAvenue ‘s common payment integrations.

4. Finding The Food Delivery & Restaurants Partners

With you, this is one of the most serious issues. As of now, though, there are only a limited number of restaurants with a digital footprint that offers a lot of space in the arena for the establishment of new collaborations. To start with, it may be a long process, but it will come a bit more quickly once you find out what to give and what to ask for. Follow the steps below and begin creating your app:

• Partner and grow your market with small & big restaurants
• To market your idea, choose the correct PR platforms. Channels for social media and inbound marketing options may also be taken into consideration.

5. Finding The App Development Partners

You don’t know how to build a smartphone app if you are like other people then you would have to work with professionals to develop an app in that situation. There will be thousands of names that pop up as you go hunting for one online, and you would have to have some filtering to pick out the poor ones while leaving the positive around.

6. The Planning 

When preparing the food delivery app you are going to create, the concept is to be clever and wise. You get to experience a lot of ground realities and information that need to be ironed out. There are staff to be hired, restaurants who need to be called, and creating a perfectly crafted food delivery app is the most important element.

Discuss the tactics with, among other items, the software production firm, brainstorm, and strategize your promotion strategy. During the campaign, make it your slogan to win the confidence of buyers, highlight the USPs you have painstakingly planned, and let the discounts take centre stage. This is one of the most successful techniques for hanging on to clients for a long time.

Tech Stack You Can Use For An App Like Foodora

• Payment Gateway : Square API, Braintree, Stripe, PayPal
• Push Notifications: Amazon SNS, Urban Airship, Firebase Cloud Messaging
• Find User Location: Core Location Framework, Google Places API, Google Maps
•  Restaurant listing: GrubHub API, FourSquare API

How Much Does It Cost To Build An App like Foodora

In deciding how to proceed with software development, pricing and the budget are critical factors. While pricing varies from project to project, when you create a food order app, you can note those variables (which will factor in the manufacturing costs of your food app)

• Configurations and services you want in your app
• Android or iOS (normally, Android charges less)
• Third parties’ incorporation or back-end growth. If you are low on financing, third-party integrations are preferred because they are cheaper, but they accumulate massive recurring long-term costs. The server backend is typically favored in the interim, since it may initially be a big investment, but is favored over the long term.
• If you like the presence of social media or an admin panel in the app,
• The team or mobile app development business was chosen by you
• Post-development upgrades and maintenance charges.

On average, building a food delivery app like Foodora may cost anywhere between $10,000 to $40,000 depending on the features included. Some other expenses include the server cost, maintenance charges etc.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Interested to know more? Visit Oyelabs, a food app development agency.