A Complete Guide To Building Your Own On-Demand Delivery App Like Glovo

Last Updated on June 3, 2022

A world without online food delivery apps seems almost unfathomable right now. These apps are all the rage, and they have been for quite some time. What started with Chinese takeaway in the early 2000s has transformed into an industry that has completely changed the meaning of convenience. Convenient food ordering is no more a luxury, it has become a necessity for a food business if they want to survive in this tough environment. When food choices available to the consumer exceed the actual demand, it becomes necessary for the companies to provide top-notch services in order to stay relevant.

A decade ago, food businesses could just have a nice place and prepare good food, and people would be willing to visit and enjoy their services. As time progressed, that became not enough, now people want a great ambience, courteous staff, excellent services, and good offers if they visit the restaurant. In addition, they want these restaurants to have the option of online food delivery if the consumer wants to enjoy their services at home. We have reached a point where consumers will first order your food from their homes, and if they actually like it, they will consider going to your restaurant next time they go outside. Hence, entering the consideration set of your consumer is more about improving online delivery and less about dining out.

Because of all the reasons mentioned above, online food delivery has become one of the fastest-growing businesses ever, more so in the past year. The global online food delivery industry has reached more than  $126.91 billion in 2021 and is forecasted to scale up to  $192.16 billion in 2025 according to reports published by ResearchandMarkets.com. Some of the apps that have become a common name in the industry include GrubHub, UberEats, Glovo, Deliveroo, etc. In this article, we will get to know a little more about Glovo, how the app works and what you need to know before you jump into the industry with an app offering similar functionalities to Glovo.

See also:

• GrubHub Business Model
• How to Build An App Like Postmates
• How To Make An App Like DoorDash

About Glovo

Glovo is a Spanish on-demand delivery app that was started by Oscar Pierre; a 27-year-old and Sacha Michaud in 2015. The idea was originally conceived by Oscar who quit his job at Airbus after just three months of joining to execute the MVP that he had in mind. Sacha Michaud then joined him later and Glovo was hence founded as an app that can help people in their daily tasks and errands. What’s great about Glovo is that it allows its customers to order anything using the same platform. They can order food, flowers, groceries, medicine, alcohol, and much more, and that too within an hour. Apart from all this, the Glovo app is a great place to discover local stores, order anything, deliver worldwide and get real-time tracking. With all these features, it is no surprise that the app garnered over 30 million downloads in just the first five years.

The app has the tagline of “order anything” and has been able to raise $513 million funding and has 4 acquisitions. The app is successfully functioning in around 26 countries and more than 288 cities with 3000 plus courier fleet and 20,000 partners.

The Glovo business model is simple, the app tries to receive most of its business revenue (almost 70-75%) through commissions from partners. This allows the app to stay affordable and preferable for the customers.

Key Features For An App Like Glovo

Any on-demand app that involves partners and fleet in their ecosystem requires three elements and corresponding three platforms in order to service them properly. For an app like Glovo, these elements are-

1. Client or customers
2. Partners or restaurants
3. Fleet or courier

These three elements are individually important for an app like this to work. Customers provide demand for the products; partners are the ones who create a supply for the same and the fleet is responsible for making sure that products reach from the party that has the supply to the party that demanded for the same products. All these elements need to have their own corresponding platforms that can fulfill their needs. Let take a look at a few features that are necessary to have for these three apps:

Customer’s App

• Easy Registration– With Glovo, you can easily register using your Fb account or your e-mail. An important aspect of registration is to allow customers to register without asking them to fill in personal details. This can be done when they are ready to make a transaction, at the checkout stage.

• Choose Location– Glovo asks the customers to select their current location before making any purchase. This allows the app to filter out the partners that are delivering to this location.

• Bookmark Option– It is also necessary to allow customers to save their favorite restaurants and stores.

• Order Anything You Want– With Glovo, you can order anything you want, it just needs to fit in their yellow backpack and be available in your city. Once you click a picture and upload the item, you can find it and then order it on the app.

• Delivery Option– It also allows customers to deliver a product from one location to another. All you need to do is add a pickup location, note, and delivery location. You can even fix a time for pickup and pay directly through the app.

• Chat Option– There should be an option that allows customers to chat with the restaurant as well as the person delivering their order.

• Scan and Order– Glovo also allows its customers to order via the app when they are sitting in a restaurant. All they need to do is scan the QR code, check out the menu on Glovo and order directly from the app. This reduces the hassle of waiting for a waiter.

• Check Order History- You can also check past orders, see the status of current orders and track how much you have spent on the app.

• Multiple Payment Options– Glovo also allows its customers to choose from multiple payment options. It is necessary to have a few options to make it easy for the customers to pay.

Partner’s App

• Partner’s Signup– This allows restaurants/stores/shops to join the food and start listing the items they have. Once they sign up, they will have to fill in all the necessary details about them including business name, location, service hour, etc.

• Launch Promos– They should have the ability to launch promos and offers to their customer

• Alter Menu– It is necessary for partners to have the ability to alter/add items to their menu or list. This is helpful for when a particular item is out of stock or not available and the partner needs to remove it from the app.

• Order Tracking– It is necessary to have the ability to track ongoing orders and check their current status. Both the parties involved should be able to see the real-time status of the delivery

• Easy Communication- The restaurants not only need to communicate with the consumers, but they also need to communicate with the delivery person. Hence, it should be made easier for them to interact with both these parties.

• Update Content– Partners should be able to easily update the content on the app as well as the pictures and the descriptions.

Delivery App

• Signup– Like the other two apps, delivery guys also need to be able to register easily on the platform.

• Order Management– It is necessary for the fleet to have an appropriate order management page from where they can book deliveries in real-time and take orders. This will help in giving all the necessary information about the order to the fleet.

• Delivery Time Estimation– The fleet should be able to judge the average delivery time required to fulfil a certain order.

• Easy In-App Chat– The delivery personnel needs to have a great in-app chat through which they can communicate with the customer as well as the partner.

• Account History– An overview page where the delivery person can check the previous orders fulfilled by him, the total amount collected, and check the rating given to him, etc.

Technology Stack Used In The Glovo App

• Back End: Spring, Redis, Python, Node.JS, MySQL, Kotlin, Kafka,Java
• Front End: Vue.JS, JavaScript, Nuxt.JS, CSS Modules, AngularJS
• Devops: Terraform, Linux Kernel, Kubernetes, Git, Docker, AWS, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon SQS

Building an App Like Glovo

Now that we know all the features that you need to add to your Glovo like app, let’s talk about the process of actually developing the app. You can choose to hire developers who will build an on-demand app for you in-house or you can hire one of the many app development companies that are experts in making an app like this on a regular basis. The choice is completely yours, but before you make this decision let’s discuss the things you need to do before that.

1. Do Your Research– Before you actually start developing your own app, let’s take a look at what has happened in the industry so far. Research about the leaders and competitors present in the market and analyze their offerings. In order to step into an industry as competitive as this, you need to find a sweet spot between customer needs and what you can offer. Finalize what kind of food delivery app you want to create among the different types available. Try to analyze what others are doing, make a note of features you need to have for sure, and find something you can be better than your competitors at. You need to find a USP you can back on and then move from there.
2. Select An Appropriate Business Model– Before actually diving deeper into building an app, you need to select an appropriate food delivery business model for your business. This would include deciding whether you want to open a restaurant or just act as an aggregator, select a revenue model, select the location from where you want to start, etc. These answers will give you more clarity before actually building an app. You also need to decide whether you want to have your own delivery channel or collaborate with a delivery partner. These decisions will also help you in deciding the amount of investment you need.
3. Think About Monetization– Apart from selecting a business model, you also need to select your revenue model. Glovo collects up to 70-75% of its revenue from its partners in the form of commissions. There are also other apps that charge a fee from both parties whereas others only charge their customers and take a certain sum from their partners when they join. A few charges that need to be considered include the delivery fee, platform fee, advertising fee, and fee paid to be recommended before others.
4. Finalize the Functionality and Features– It is also necessary to think about the features that you want to add in your app. There are a few basic features that all delivery apps have and then there are certain features that are dependent on the priorities of the business. Hence it is important to understand the features that you want to provide and make sure you offer a few that are not already catered to by the competitors.

Once you have identified all these necessary points the next step is to find the right people to develop the app for you. Although you can develop the app in-house, it is always advisable to work with experts in the food delivery app development sector who build apps like these on a daily basis. In doing so, you will go through a few steps:

• Prototyping– This is the first step when you go to an app development company. They understand your idea and the features you want to add and they build the prototype for your app with the basic user flow and create the initial application screen designs.
• User Interface Design– Once you approve the prototype, the company goes ahead and builds a UI/UX design for the app. This will help you in understanding how different functionalities will work and how the actual app will look like.
• Development process– Once the UI designs are approved, the next step is to actually develop the app. This step is the longest step and takes the most time. It also involves getting approval from the client and then making changes accordingly.
• Testing– Once the app is developed, the next step is to test whether the app is working properly. In this stage, the development company test the app from various mobiles and laptops and fixes any issues that they observe.
• Taking the App Live– Once everything is approved by the company, the final step is to make the app available on the play store and app store. The app is only made live once the client get quality assurance and everything is working.

After this stage is when you need to finally make the payment to the development company. While talking to the app development company you will get to know that there are many apps that can be developed without having to start the process from scratch. Many well-established apps have their API’s available online. These APIs can be used to develop a basic framework similar to the app without having to build from scratch. This can easily be done in case you have limited budget constraints but still want a nice app for your business. Some of these APIs are available for free while others require to be purchased.

These are all the things that you need to keep in mind before actually developing your on-demand delivery app. There is a huge clutter out there, so make sure when you actually do this that your app is clean, easy to use, and offers top-notch features. A feature that has become extremely important nowadays relates to the localization capability filter. This allows customers to see products that are closest to them, it can also be used to filter preferences, payments options, etc keeping in mind the location where the order is made.

Features like these will make your app stand out, which is exactly what you want right now. Make sure you are confident in your product and have already thought of everything that can go wrong and do your best at avoiding them.

Frequently Asked Questions for building an app like Glovo (FAQs)