What is a food ordering mobile app?
An online food ordering app is a service that allows customers to order food from restaurants. Customers can order food on their smartphones or other mobile devices and can have it delivered to their homes or office.
Food ordering apps are used by restaurants and cafes to streamline the process of taking orders and by customers to conveniently order food in a few clicks.
It’s really quite simple.
When the customers want to order food from a restaurant, instead of picking up the phone and calling them, they are able to place their order through the app. Once their order is placed, they pay for it using a credit card or debit card.
What are the benefits of a food order app?
For the customers
One of the main benefits of a food ordering app is that it’s really convenient. The customers can access it anytime and anywhere, and they don’t have to wait in lines to order food.
Consumers get their food faster, and they don’t have to worry about forgetting their wallets or having cash on them.
For the restaurants
Food ordering apps offer a number of benefits to restaurants. First, they help restaurants to increase foot traffic. Customers are more likely to visit a restaurant if they can order their food from the app.
Second, they make the customer experience more pleasant. The restaurant owners can add the most selling items to their app so that it becomes easier for the consumers to place their orders quickly.
For the app owners
The benefits of a food ordering app for the app owner depend on the app. For example, some apps are free to the app owner but make money from selling advertising space to food places. Other apps charge the food places a fee for each time a customer places an order through the app.
But altogether, a food order app can be beneficial for not only the app owners & restaurants, but the consumers as well.
What are the essential features of a food ordering app?
Below are some of the essential features that a food ordering app should have. So, if you are hiring a mobile app developer, you may like to make sure that he or she should incorporate these basic yet essential features into your app:
Intuitive Ordering Process
Your food ordering mobile app should allow users to easily order their food online. The whole process of ordering (add to cart, view cart, checkout, online payments, etc.) should be seamless and intuitive. Even a layman should be able to place an order with your app.
Wishlist
There should be an option on your food ordering app to allow users to add the items to their wishlist. This makes it easier for them to check out at a later point in time when they want to do so.
Orders Tracking
After the successful payments by the users, they must be able to see the order status on your app. It would be even better if they can view the real-time status of the order through a GEO map. To integrate an efficient GEO features, you need to hire a professional mobile app maker.
Discount & Coupons
Everybody loves discounts. It is therefore a very important feature that your food delivery app should have. Additionally, the backend of your mobile app should be very simple and easy for you to easily create new discount coupons.
Easy login & authentication
The signup, login, and verification method should be short and intuitive for the users. If not, you may lose many users who won’t signup and use your app because of the complex signup process. Your mobile app builder can also integrate a feature of social media login.
Items management
The restaurant owners or managers should be able to add their items to the app easily. It should be as simple as a few clicks.
Help & Support
Your mobile app should also have an option for your users to raise their tickets or contact you over chat to resolve their queries. The quicker & efficient your support feature is, the more will be your sales & orders.
Dashboards
Each user in your mobile app (admin, customer, restaurants, etc.) must have their respective dashboard where they can view and manage all of their activities on the app. The activities could be the summary of orders, earnings, stores, and more.
Rating
The customers should be able to rate & review the restaurants. These ratings & reviews will help the new users to place their orders using your app.
How much time does it take to build a food ordering app?
Depending upon the complexity of the project scope, it may take 2 months or a few months to complete your food ordering app project. A basic app may take 45 days to complete while a complicated project may take 4-5 months or even more.
How much is the cost to create an online food ordering app?
There is no standard pricing structure that all the app developers follow. But on average, you may end up paying USD 15000 or more if you hire a local mobile app developer. However, if you hire a mobile app developer in India, you can easily save more than 50% on your app development. An Indian app builder may charge you as low as $5000 to create a basic food ordering mobile app.
Which technology is good for food ordering apps?
At Innomax, we build native mobile apps that provide excellent quality because they have easy access to the native features of a mobile device. We also recommend using Flutter for creating mobile apps because it will help you to reduce time and money without compromising on the quality of your app.
Interested in building a food ordering mobile application? Hire an Indian app builder now!
