Food is an inevitable part of our daily lives. From being a bare minimum requirement for life sustenance to being one of the most leading industries across the globe, we have seen revolutionary changes in the role food plays in our lives.

With the advancement of technology, innovation, and people’s requirements, the food industry also underwent a series of changes over time. From eating out, taking parcels, and calling restaurants to order food, we have come to the age wherein all restaurants in and around you are just a tap away from delivering your favourite food at your doorstep.

Even if people were initially hesitant to adopt this novel idea, they have entirely embraced it right now. There is barely anyone having a smartphone who doesn’t have a food delivery app installed in it; especially so in the urban areas. 

A lot of thoughts, ideas, and considerations go into the development of any app. The idea and the features that were provided by food delivery apps have now expanded into a greater platform. The competition is high and so is the business. The speed, the service, the availability of a wide variety of options, reliability, and affordability are few of the options that make these mobile apps so dear to its users.

If you are a small business or a startup thinking of developing and introducing your food delivery app, you must understand the metrics of selecting features, analyze the cost factors, estimate the efforts required, and so on before actually doing it. To ease the process, will provide you a glimpse of all these aspects to help you take control of the decision-making process of your customized mobile app.

Initially, to build a food delivery mobile app, the most important step would be to onboard restaurants, bakers, and F&B stores to this platform. Once these entities have been onboarded, app development becomes a shared goal. After they have been onboarded, the actual app development is done and these restaurants and stores are featured on the mobile app. Then, we all know the rest of the story. The users come to know about the app through various marketing programs, they download and install the app on their phones and start using it. The customer looks at the food choices available to him/her in the app based on their locality, places an order, a delivery person is sent to the restaurant and he/she collects it and delivers it to the client. The amount paid by the customer is then split between the app and the restaurant/store according to their decided terms. This is the big picture overview of the food delivery app business.

Now let us analyze the cost factors of actually developing a customized mobile application for our business, tailored to inculcate our innovative ideas and to meet our unique business use cases. In India, we, Metric Tree Labs ( an app development company in Kochi, Kerala) , being professional mobile app developers in the arena, would charge close to 5000$ -10000$  for an app that meets all the basic requirements you mention. For advanced customization, the charges will vary. 

For first time investors, this may seem like a huge amount but it is a wise and necessary investment for your business. If you pitch in the right amount of money with the right kind of professionals, you will have a hassle-free time running your business online. Breaking up this amount, let us now see the various heads under which the mobile app is priced.

Some Basic Calculation of App Development :

1. UI/UX Design  – This comprises of close to 11-12% of the total cost

Aesthetics is one important factor to be considered. It is not just the features that you provide to users that brings in more, the application should be made as presentable as possible for easier user interactions.

2. Front End and Back End Development – This accounts for almost 50-60% of the total cost.

The front end and back end of your mobile app should ideally satisfy the basic performance metrics for a well-functioning app. Quicker response-time, protection against app crashes, fit-to screen resolutions, and optimal resource consumption are some of the desirable qualities a mobile app should have. A well-performing app helps it be a customer’s favourite and that means only one thing – a boom in business! 

3. Documentation – This constitutes up to 5-6% of the total cost.

You will need proper technical documentation, user manuals, and other important reference documents for your mobile app. This is highly important for you to understand the application better and to also pass on the information to others.

4. Testing – This comes to about 15-16% of the entire cost.

You need to properly test your app before launch and also, post-launch, before each new release. This is a high priority factor in the case of the development of any mobile app. You need to properly analyze the functionalities, use cases, exceptional cases, load balancing, etc before rolling it out for the customers. This will help to better serve the customers and to retain them. It is not good for the business or brand if the app produces a bug in the production and the customer finds it. It may even lead to losing customers or potential business. So, testing is of utmost importance.

5. Bug Fixing – This amounts to approximately 7-8% of the total cost of development.

Once the testing is done and the bugs are identified, if any, they need to be fixed. So this is also a crucial stage in development.

6. The Finishing Touch – This comes to about 3-4% of the total cost.

This is just optimizing all the workflows of the app, just perfecting it wherever possible.

This is the basic break up of the total cost of mobile app development. In actuals, this may vary slightly according to your requirements. For further insights on the cost and development details, reach out to our domain experts at Metric Tree Labs, a leading app development company in Kochi, Kerala. You must find reliable professionals for building your app, especially so for small business institutions, so that it stays in your budget and meets your purpose.

Also, let us take a step closer to a better understanding of the stakeholders of the mobile app. They can be classified into 4 major categories and they are :

• Customers

The customers can go through the wide range of options available to them, in their locality, and place an order. After placing the order, they will have the option to choose a payment mode according to their comfort and convenience and make payment accordingly. Also, they need to have the provision to track and contact the delivery associate during the delivery period. After the delivery, the customer can review and rate the food and delivery on various metrics. They also need to have an option to ask questions and raise their concerns, if any.

• The Merchant

The merchants, ie, the restaurant/shop owners/staff, list out the products that are available for delivery along with the location of the shop/restaurant and the price of each product. They should update the app in case an item is unavailable or if the shop is closed. They can also introduce offers and discounts for their products and even promote their shop for better visibility. Once an order is communicated to them, they must accept/reject it so that a delivery associate can be assigned for the same and/or the customer can be informed about it.

• The Delivery Associates

The delivery associates are an important part of the business as they are the ones in charge of delivering the food physically. Each of the members of the team appointed has to be verified by the administrator. They should be paid as per the number of orders they deliver and the distance they cover while doing so. They should also be provided with an option of whether to accept/reject any order, where rejection transfers the order to someone else on the team.

• The Platform Owners

This is the main controlling body of the mobile application. They oversee the entire process, manage communications, and bring the team together. They review the customer experience and work on enhancing it on the business front. 

Every food delivery mobile application requires access for the seller, the delivery team, the customer, and the administrator. The mobile app developed should mandatorily have almost all of these versions/fronts:

• The Customer Front – The platform wherein the customer registers/logs in, views the various food options available to him/her, places an order, makes the payments, tracks the order, and gives the review. Many other functionalities also come into play here like the various filters, the offers, the reviewing system, etc.
• The Merchant Front – This will be the version used by the merchants, ie, the restaurant/shop/bakery owners wherein they will modify their menu options, introduce their offers and discounts, read their reviews and ratings from customers, etc.
• The Delivery Associate Front – This will be the version used by the delivery associates to get notifications on their assigned delivery, to get and track the address and payment details, reach out to the customers, etc.
• The Platform Owner Front – This will be the version used by the platform owner of the application to monitor the entire process, make changes, collect data, and so on. This will be the administration team.

The administration team is the team that is provided with the resources to manage all other teams and the ones who should ensure proper and active communication between other teams to enable smooth functioning and a greater marginal profit. They are also to manage the application, take the customer reviews into account, and take action accordingly. The team is also responsible for any payment issues faced by the user or the seller. These are some of the examples of the functionalities performed on the platform owner version.

Having these four versions for your food delivery mobile app is a basic requirement. A lot of effort goes into developing all these versions and to make them function smoothly. Also, then there comes the add-on and unique features that each app tries to introduce for themselves. All these requirements make up the price for the mobile app development rightly justified.

Running a small business through a mobile app may seem like a hard task as it involves more than just managing the application but also keeping the partners, employees, and the customers satisfied with the services. Hence, your core focus and wisest decision when it comes to a business run through an app should, of course, be on its well-tailored development.

To understand more about building such an app or to get an expert panel for building your mobile app onboard, reach out to Metric Tree Labs, a leading app development company based in Kochi – your one-stop solution for building a professional mobile app for your business.