Mobile applications have made our life a better place and are a more straightforward tool where just a few taps can lead to what we want. Around 5 billion people are using smartphones i.e.,  nearly 65 percent of the people on this planet. The app development industry is a massive and aggressive market, with 130 billion downloads in 2020 alone. Almost every business, whether small or large, use mobile apps to extend their customer reach. The food industry is also worth approximately a trillion USD. The reason behind the rapidly growing market of the food business is their food ordering app. The growth of apps became possible due to the on-time investment trend.
More than 1 billion people use the food ordering app and online ordering system. By 2024, there is an estimation that the food industry is about to reach 182,327 million USD. Over the last few decades, businesses and the food industry have witnessed massive changes in people’s eating habits. All credit goes to technological development. Technology has a significant contribution in bringing everything to the tip of our fingers. 
Consumers, these days, prefer to get everything delivered to their doorsteps without any interaction or hassle. It is probably the reason why food ordering apps are going so popular. Every restaurant and food café business wishes to gain more end-users through their food app. Also, developers have to keep in mind that the UI/UX of the app should be easy-to-use and vibrant so that users can use it comfortably.
If you have a fine-dining restaurant, food café, or a takeaway joint, you might face difficulties like:

  • Attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
  • Payroll issues for inclined employees.
  • Managing restaurant operating costs.
  • Order receiving and delivering chaos.

You can solve all these problems using a food ordering app and smoothly run your food service. If you develop a food app that serves an online food ordering system, you can easily manage your entire business from a single place.

Why Do You Need a Food Ordering App?

According to some research, among the 65% of people on the planet who are using smartphones, roughly 25 to 30 percent use an online food ordering app or restaurant app. Having a restaurant or food app will market your restaurant to these possible customers. Again, companies like Dine, Zomato, Gayot, and Yelp maintain a database of reviews and restaurants’ ratings on their website. It lets the customers decide whether they want to order their meal from any particular restaurant or not. Making your business and food services online is a smart choice for this generation. Apart from all of these, you can provide different services and discounts to your existing customers also.

  1. The food app will boost your brand, and you can add a theme that will represent your brand to increase brand recognition and memorability.
  2. Apps allow businesses to offer personalized customer experiences in a more efficient and organized manner.
  3. Incorporating features like push notifications and geofencing helps your app and  business to reach users in real-time and give them a solid reason to revisit your app for future orders.

Steps to Create a Food Ordering App for Your Business

Once you bring your entire restaurant or food delivery service at the customer’s fingertip, you will witness a change in the way your business used to operate. Advanced searching filters, tailored food recommendations, real-time food courier, and order tracking, customized delivery details are the prominent features that you should keep in mind while developing your food ordering app. Here are the preliminary steps that you can follow to create your food ordering system.

1. Outline Objective

Developing an online platform for your business is essential when you know the importance of building it along with the right reason. First, identify your objectives for developing the food ordering system. Ask yourself –
What is the problem or problems that you are targeting?

  • Which section of your food business requires attention?
  • Which tools and techniques will be beneficial to incorporate in your app to solve these problems?
  • How to reach more customers through  online ordering service?
  • Is creating brand awareness a part of your plan?
  • What are the outcomes you are expecting out of your online ordering app?

2. Choose your Food App Model

Apart from outlining the objectives, decide what business model you have to follow that will work for your food business. Two prominent models exist in the food ordering market these days:

  • Order-only model: The business or the service will be responsible for taking food orders and managing these orders.
  • Order and Delivery model: This kind of service is responsible not only for accepting and managing orders but also for delivering them. In some cases, the food delivery services tie-up with local courier delivery services connected through an app.

3. Define App Functionality

Once you outline your introductory objectives and service model, you have to decide the functionality you wish for in your online food ordering app. To identify your required functionality, follow the steps – 

  • Jot down all the elements you need for your system.
  • To remain ahead of your competitors, always be aware of the latest food ordering industry trends to understand the functionality.
  • Analyze your competitors to see if you require a similar platform.
  • Think about the functionalities, like push notifications, geofencing, real-time delivery tracking, in-app menu management features, payment gateways, etc., that can ease the life of your app’s end-users.
  • Some additional functionalities will bring more trust to your app, such as AI-driven chatbot support, instant billing, social sharing, click to call, better ROI on special offers, etc.

Also, determine whether you want to build the app for android users or iOS users or both.

4. Design User Interface

You can roughly sketch your user interface (UI) to give the app developers a rough idea to flesh out a better view of how you want your app to look. Create separate sketches for each screen (Login, order page, add to cart, payment, checkout, order success, track order & delivery, etc.)

5. Research Target Market

To cater to outstanding service, you should know your customers and target end-users. Performing thorough research will comprehend what your target user wants. Thus, it becomes easy to create an app that ideally meets the end-user demands.

6. Define Budget

The next step is to create a budget that seems appropriate for your food ordering app. There are few things to keep in mind when you are going to build a food ordering app for your business –

  • Don’t be rigid with your budget. Always try to keep some room for adjustment. The developer might come up with few additional functionalities that will enhance your service. At that time, the cost might fluctuate a little.
  • Also, never grant a large budget for your app if the functionalities you wish for are available at a lesser cost.

7. Hire Expert IT Agency

If you need a company that develops your online food ordering app, prefer a company having experience in developing a similar product. Having prior knowledge will help a developer better build the app, and the team can easily handle any issue during the process. Supersourcing can easily cater  your needs and provide ample expert agency options for creating such apps.

How Food Ordering App will Work?

You must know how your food ordering app should work. If you don’t have much idea on this, then you can analyze your competitors. This section of the article will give you a basic idea about generally, how a food ordering app works.

  • Customers will use your food app or restaurant app to view the menu and order the food based on the customer choice and ratings they see.
  • Then, the customer will add multiple items to the cart.
  • Next, the customers confirm their orders.
  • Then, the payment options screen will appear. The customer will pay either online or via COD mode.
  • The service will receive these orders via the admin panel.
  • The restaurant will process the order by preparing the meal customer asked for through the app.
  • If your app has the delivery model included, just before packing the order, the restaurant contacts the delivery service or their employee delivery staff.
  • The delivery person will pick-up your order and deliver it to the customer.

Let’s Wrap up

The popularity of the food industry and food businesses allows entrepreneurs to go for on-demand food apps and customized food ordering app development. This niche is promising and can yield good returns if invested in smartly. But to stand out in the market, you have to tap into the current food ordering industry trends. With the latest app for ordering food, you can gather insights from your target customers and incorporate additional features at the second iteration of development.

If you are planning for app development for your food business, check out Supersourcing and get an expert domain agency. Just share your business idea on the portal along with important and relevant details in no time you are going to receive multiple expert agency options for your food ordering app development.