How to Build an On-demand Food Delivery App Like Postmates?

With the current tendencies we experience nowadays, food delivery applications have become a significant component in daily experiences and they have ease of access as well as a myriad of options. The transformation is embraced by many companies within a short period, hence creating many opportunities to earn by developing a solid food delivery app. Even if your on-demand food delivery application has the potential and sounds great in almost every other area, the competition is very keen, and you have to be strategic, have the right features, and also have a smooth development process. In this article, we will take you through which steps intervention is most effective, from understanding the development cycle to picking the right features and technology that will make a profitable food delivery app.

As demand for food delivery services is on the incline, building an app that is both easy to use and reliable is paramount. No matter the scale of your business, with a properly designed food delivery application, a simplified user experience for the customer, and the growth of a business can be realized. We shall now look at what is required to develop an on-demand food delivery service that today’s customers need.

Well, the stats say that the entire food delivery app industry is expected to reach $213 billion in market size by 2030. It saw its largest growth in five years in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Business Model of Postmates

First, let's understand how Postmates serves its user segment in three different ways. Customers open the app to order food. They see the list of various restaurants and order from one of them. As soon as the customer places the order, restaurants are notified and the platform starts notifying nearby delivery partners. The nearby delivery partner accepts the request and the customer's order is assigned to the partner. This is how the whole process is when a customer places the order.

Know how Postmates works through its business model before you start with the on-demand food delivery app development:

Order Placement: Customers open the Postmates application and can go through all listed restaurants, grocery stores, vegetable shops, and alcohol shops. Postmates allows users to add items to a cart, like their favorite places and also allows users to rate the place from which they ordered.

Checkouts & Payments: When it comes to payment options, there are credit as well as debit cards and PayPal, along with mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. Seeing this is how easy safe and discreet it is to use Postmates It could not get any better. Promos and discount offers can be taken at checkout with integrated deals.

Matching: This process is to connect customers with the right food delivery partners. Once the order is placed, the Postmates algorithm matches it with the most suitable delivery partner based on the assigned factors. With its real-time matching algorithm, delivery partners and restaurants are able to deliver the order on time.

Tracking and Feedback: With the Postmates application, customers and delivery partners both can use GPS service for tracking. Customers can track the delivery partner whereas delivery partners can reach on time to customer's doorstep with the help of navigation. Once the order is delivered, customers can provide feedback and ratings to both the delivery partner and the restaurant.

This sums up the overall business model for Postmates. Let's have a look at food delivery app development.

Case Study : To Go - The Art Of Cooking App

How to Build an On-demand Food Delivery App Development?

Here are the steps to follow:

• Research the Market and Set Your Purpose:

Know about the stats, journey, market competitors, their methods, and everything before starting your food delivery app. Know what customers want, find loopholes in your competitors' services, and try to improvise those loopholes in your app. Set your on-demand delivery apps' purpose. Consult a mobile app development company to help you configure your on demand delivery app.

• Choose a Business Model and Revenue Model

There are many food delivery apps available, such as Postmates. Choose the most appropriate app for launching your on-demand food delivery service after analyzing their business and revenue models. Know what type of business model and revenue model your market competitors are following.

• Finalize Features

For developing a food delivery app like Doordash, you must focus on the core of the app: Feature finalization. Start with the user registration and profile section; users should be able to register in the application and all the user details must be shown in the profiles section. Restaurant listing is the second must-have feature for the on-demand food delivery application. Restaurants should be listed with ratings, addresses, menus, prices, and other deals. Offer live tracking with GPS to customers and delivery partners. Integrate an in-app payment system in your on-demand food delivery app, like the Postmates application, to provide a seamless order checkout experience. Include push notifications to attract customers to your app. Other than that, integrate features such as edit profiles, customer feedback, and more. Hire on-demand marketplace development company.

• Decide on UI/UX Design

Finalize a design that provides a smooth user experience and seamless user interface. Don't include heavy design elements that can increase the loading time of your food delivery app like uber eats. Maintain a clean design throughout the application for a seamless user experience.

• Start the Development Process

After finalizing the app flow, decide on the tech stack for the food delivery app. Consult with a mobile app development company for tech-stack selection. For frontend development, use react native or flutter for cross-platform app development. Meanwhile, in the backend, you need more than a programming language. Third-party API integration, cloud services, database, and more. Hire app developers to develop a robust food delivery application.

• Restaurants and Partners Management

Along with customers, it is important to manage restaurants and delivery partners. Make sure that restaurants find your application easy to use and update if you want to have reliable partner services with restaurants. Also, provide live GPS tracking in the delivery partners' application to order delivery on time.

• Testing and Deployment

Run your food delivery app through different testing methods like functional testing, performance testing, security testing, user testing, etc. Find and resolve bugs before deployment, then, with the help of a trusted mobile app development company, deploy the application.

• Launch and Marketing

After a successful deployment, it is time to take the application to market. If you want your application launch to be a success, employ several marketing strategies to create buzz before the launch day. It is a must to have good pre- and post-launch marketing strategies for food delivery apps to target the wider customer base.

In closing, developing an on-demand food delivery business includes proper planning, the right technology, and an effective user interface. In this case, every step is important in the mobile app's success, for example defining the main app features, ensuring order processing, managing several ways of payments, and so on.

Building your proposition into something tangible that accommodates the ongoing dynamics of any industry can be achieved by collaborating with experienced developers and following a structured development process. Understanding the steps involved in the development of a food delivery application will help you create a winning product that retains and expands its user base, whether you are starting afresh or seeking to upgrade an existing food app.

Case Study: PostMates

Postmates was launched in 2011 and in no time, it has established its worth in the on-demand food delivery marketplace app. What helped Postmates is that it offers more than just restaurant food deliveries. Customers can order anything from local stores like groceries, clothing, electronics, and more. Postmates get it all delivered within some hours. No one was in the market with a similar concept, which helped Postmates to stand out in the market. It satisfies a wide range of customer needs through a single platform and that is its USP.

Also, the logistics system in Postmates was the talk of the town. Postmates introduced a decentralized chain including independent couriers. It allows people to register themselves on the portal and deliver goods on their schedules using their cars, bikes, or scooters. It helped Postmates with faster deliveries and reduced costs for the company. Its real-time tracking system allows customers to track their orders from order placement to order delivery. It helped Postmates gain berry points as it enhanced the customer satisfaction ratio.

The relevance of Postmates to customers and even more so to small businesses has been emphasized in the course of the recent global Covid-19 pandemic. Postmates serve a critical function since they help keep businesses afloat by facilitating the delivery of goods directly to their customers when the physical shops are closed or operating under strict conditions.

In areas where owning a delivery system was difficult, Postmates opened up its platform, giving small local businesses a way to access their customers. The platform showed how it could help many businesses withstand the impact of the pandemic and sustain the local economies. Owing to its flexible nature, Postmates managed to service several establishments such as pharmacies, retail and grocery shops, and restaurants, proving the scalability and versatility of the model.

This was an important new chapter in the Postmates narrative and more importantly, it showed how consolidation can be used as a strategy in a cut-throat on-demand delivery market. By merging, Postmates retained its capacity for inventiveness, remained competitive within a fast-evolving operating environment, and further strengthened Uber’s formidable market position.

Also Read, How Much Does It Cost to Build a Food Delivery App Like Menulog?

Cost of Developing an App like Postmates

You must know that it is not only one application, you have to develop applications for three different modules: Customers, Drivers, and Restaurants. It is up to the party what type of food delivery application they want to create.

Basic App: This MVP version of the food delivery app includes all three modules but only with basic necessary features like user/partner/restaurant registration, edit profile, order placement, etc. The overall cost can range from $35,000 to $50,000 for basic app development.

Mid-level App: This type of on-demand food delivery app development occurs on top of the MVP version. This includes features such as GPS tracking, in-app payments, a wishlist, and other options. The cost would be around $55,000 to $70,000 for such app development.

Advance App: Advanced versions of such food delivery apps include features like restaurants and food recommendations, reviews and feedback, deals, offers, etc. The food delivery app development cost starts from $85,000 and goes as high as per your requirements. Also, to develop this type of application can take around 10 to 12 months.

Case Study : Pizza Delivery App

Conclusion

To wrap up, it is worth mentioning that creating a food delivery application will also need care and extensive planning, just like creating an on-demand delivery application like Postmates. Designing the perfect application involves step-by-step planning, starting from the market analysis, selection of the specific features, ability to grow, and training customer requirements.

The competent team of developers can very fast-track the development process and help you save money in the long term. Not even if you want to add components like real-time geographical GPS tracking, payment systems, or advanced customer service, your app should still have a pleasant experience for its end-users and delivery staff as well. In addition, it is important to be aware of how much it is going to cost to create a food ordering and delivery application that takes into consideration the different characteristics, complexity, and skill levels of the development team to plan a budget effectively.

You should hire dedicated developers who are focused on the development of high-performance, scalable applications in any other technology. It is important to support a more efficient food delivery app development process. When you hire Flutter developers, you will be able to develop cross-platform applications from the same code, which will mean a better and quicker development period. When you are looking to hire developers for your application, such as a developer specializing in food delivery applications, this will also quicken the process, while ensuring that the result will meet your expectations as a company. Having the right development team in place can make or break the successful delivery of an on-demand business application, regardless of how small your organization is. Contact Hyperlink Infosystem for further information.