How to Create On-Demand Delivery App: Features, Cost, and Monetization

Updated 25 May 2023

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On-demand services are on the rise these days. Companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Glovo are one of the leading players in this industry. However, a bunch of startups have managed to fit into this niche: Nuro, Deliv, and LogiNext. According to Statista, the on-demand services market in the USA is predicted to reach 54.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2027. However, an on-demand delivery app takes time and money.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll discuss various aspects of on-demand delivery application development: from idea validation to required features. We'll also break down the cost to build such a solution and ways to monetize it.

Types of On-Demand Food Delivery Services

Starting on-demand delivery app development, you need to consider the service’s type. There are two main types: marketplace and platforms with in-house logistics.

Let’s single out the details.

Marketplace

Popular services: Uber Eats, Delivery Hero, Deliveroo

Marketplaces or aggregators stand for on-demand delivery apps that connect users with restaurants. Customers can look through the menu, order food, and pay for it right from the app. As any other marketplace, on-demand delivery apps offer customer support if there are any problems with ordering or delivery.

The most widespread monetization model among aggregators is a fixed fee from each order. For restaurants, aggregators are a great way to keep a constant order flow minimizing idle hours. So the commission is usually worth it.

Platforms with logistic support

Popular services: Domino’s, Jimmy John’s

This business model generally stands for on-demand delivery apps by restaurant chains offering users options from their menu.The restaurant is responsible for the whole delivery process and no commission applied. It’s common to hire full-time couriers to serve the clients.

This business model is perfect for well-known restaurant chains. It lets them keep customers engaged providing personalized offers and not to pay commission to third-parties.

How to Make On Demand Delivery App: 6 Points Checklist

CB Insights say that 42% of startups fail because the market doesn't need their product. To avoid such situations, you need to validate your idea before launching an app.

App idea validation

It’s the process of gathering users’ feedback about the product. Simply saying, you need to look for the customers’ expectations, define a target audience and what problems your product can help them solve.

Let’s take a look at how to validate your idea before starting the development process. Please note, you can go through the Research and Planning phases by yourself or contact an experienced IT provider who will take over the entire product development lifecycle.

Step 1. Conduct market research

How to build on-demand delivery app? You need to research the market and study your competitors carefully.

Creating a food delivery service, you need to gather information about customer needs and consider industry trends. Research your future competitors to identify their strong and weak sides. It’ll help you to create a better product.

Doing the market research, you need to answer the following questions:

  • What are the goals and mission of your company?
  • Who is the target audience of your on-demand service?
  • What are the users’ needs and pains?
  • What are their expectations from your solution?
  • What features does your service need?
  • How to monetize the platform?

Need help with market research?

Book a consultation with our Business Analyst to learn the details

Step 2. Define your target audience

Knowing the target audience and their preferences, you can create more personalized solutions and gain more users. For example, if you plan to build app like Uber Eats or Uber, consider utilizing theur view on users’ demand for Business services. This solution allows creating a company Uber account. Employees can connect this account to their own accounts to request a ride. In this case, the company pays for the ride.

There are three primary target audiences for a food delivery business — students, parents, and working professionals. Each group has specific needs that you need to follow. For example, the students’ main fuel is fast food. So, it’s better to cooperate with local fast food restaurants to deliver orders faster.

As for parents, they prefer to cook and eat healthy food. They usually order groceries with home delivery. Food freshness and delivery speed are crucial for this target audience.

Working people lack time. However, they want to eat full and healthy meals. So, deliveries from local restaurants are popular among them.

As you can see, each group has specific needs. To define your target audience, you need to consider their age, location, and income level. Depending on these factors, you can create an on-demand delivery app providing a more personalized experience.

Also, it’s good to prepare a schematic portrait of your customer. This portrait consists of essential information like age, location, income, food preferences, and more.

You can find the example below.

How to build an on-demand delivery service: Target audience

Schematic portrait of your customer

Step 3. Create a customer journey map

How does the customer make an order? Are there a lot of steps? You need to answer these questions before starting on-demand delivery app development.

Customer Journey Map stands for the journey through the app from the user’s point of view. Every move, like putting a delivery address or adding a dish to a basket, is noted on the map. Having such a map, you can understand the app’s logic.

How to create an on-demand app: Customer Journey Map

Customer Journey Map

Step 4. Make and test prototypes

Understanding the features of your future on-demand solution, you can create a prototype of the service.

Designers can create a working prototype of the platform. Prototypes mean an interactive model that shows particular results depending on the actions.

The prototype allows showing the product owner the final variant of the app or website. It represents the app interface and functionality.

Build an on-demand app: Create prototypes

On-demand delivery app concept (Source: Dribbble)

Step 5. Develop an MVP version

Minimum Viable Product includes only significant features needed to satisfy the users’ basic needs. MVP allows getting the users’ feedback and updating the product depending on their needs and expectations. Building an MVP tends to take a short time. However, this solution allows entering the market.

However, you can choose the Flutter app development services to optimize the development expenses. Flutter is a promising technology from Google that lets developers create cross-platform apps with a single codebase. Results are impressive — two native-like mobile apps within a smaller budget.

Step 6. Launch the app and gather feedback

Once on-demand delivery app development is complete, your vendor will help you launch it in the app stores. You can then collect feedback from your first users to get their opinions on your product. Once you are convinced of the product's viability, you can scale your product and increase investments to build a feature-rich solution. This way you'll be able to reach more audiences and increase profits.

Top KPIs

Key Performance Indicators or KPIs refer to a set of metrics that evaluate different aspects of service. They should answer the following questions:

  • Is the service financially independent?
  • What parts of the platform require improvements?
  • Why do customers choose your solution?
  • How to increase revenue?

Let’s discuss top KPIs that you should consider during on-demand delivery app development.

Total amount of orders

This metric lets you check the business growth. Investors always want to see the company’s progress.

Average profit per delivery

Every service needs to get profit. This metric shows the revenue of the company. You also need to calculate expenses on marketing, payroll, and others.

Conversion rates

This term stands for the number of users that have done the required action, e.g. order food. It’s easy to calculate this metric. Conversion rates = Total number of visitors / Total number of orders * 100. For example, you have 1,000 visitors and 50 orders per month. So, your conversion rate is 5%.

Create an on-demand delivery service: Top KPIs

Top KPIs for an on-demand delivery platform

How to Get Money From On-Demand Delivery App?

To build on demand delivery app, you need to consider the monetization strategy. There are several ways to get revenue from a food delivery service.

Restaurant fee

This model is quite widespread in the food delivery industry. The strategy is simple:restaurants pay a fixed price to get listed on the service. Another, and more widespread option, is to charge a fee for each order. For example, UberEats takes 15% from the order subtotal.

Explore how to start a Uber business and make it profitable

Ads

Restaurants can pay to rank higher on the search results. This way, ads will look more natural.

Peak hours

Delivery can cost more during the peak hours like lunchtime. In this case, the on-demand delivery platform gets higher revenue.

Delivery fees

This model implies that food delivery for the customer will be paid. In this case, it is crucial to calculate the fee amount to cover all costs associated with the delivery and exceed them, ensuring a profit.

Examples of popular apps’ delivery fees

Food delivery appDelivery fees

UberEats

Flat rate starting at $4.99

DoorDash

From $0.99 to $7.99 + a service fee of 7-15% per order

GrubHub

Standard $9.99 delivery fee

Foodpanda

10% commission + 2% service charge

Caviar

From $1.99 to $8.99 + a service fee of 18%

Swiggy

30 – 35% of the order price

Of course, there are a bunch of alternative ways to earn money:

  • Extra fee during bad weather conditions
  • Extra fee for rush delivery
  • User fees

How to Build On-Demand Delivery App: Basic Functionality

It’s not enough to create food delivery app. You should develop an entire ecosystem to make the platform work for all parties.

A common on-demand food delivery solution consists of four parts:

  • Customer app. Users can look through the menu and make orders via iOS or Android apps.
  • Restaurant app. Restaurants can see and manage orders.
  • Courier app. This solution notifies couriers about new orders. They can see the order status and delivery address.
  • Admin panel. The product owner and the team can manage the whole platform. They can add and delete restaurants, handle payments, and more.
Create an on-demand delivery app: Four solutions

Parts of an on-demand delivery service

Of course, each solution should have various features. To give you a hint, we’ve listed the required features.

Customer app

The customer app is the most significant part of the project. You need to create a user-friendly UI/UX design to gain more users. Customers are quite spoilt these days. They don’t use the application with an unattractive or unclear design.

Also, the app features affect the users’ conversion. You need to create a clear way to make an order during on-demand delivery app development. Of course, the app’s features can differ for various apps. But there’s a set of MVP features similar to every on-demand delivery app.

  • Registration and login. It’s better to offer several registration options to make this process fast and user-friendly. It’s a good idea to integrate signup via social networks like Facebook or Google. Also, you need to add email and password, phone number and password signups. ‘Forget password’ option is also required. Developers need to use Facebook SDK and Google SDK.
  • Restaurant search. Users should be able to search for nearby restaurants using geolocation. Also, it’s good to add filters to make the search process more convenient.
  • Location tracking. Let customers track the courier’s location in real-time. You can integrate this feature via Google Location API for Android and Location Framework for iOS.
  • Order and payments. After putting food to the card, customers need to pay for their order. For this, your development team will need to integrate such payment methods as Braintree and Stripe.
  • Push notifications. They help customers understand the order status like accepted, delivering, and arrived. To integrate push notifications, your team can use Amazon SNS and Firebase Cloud Messaging.
  • Ratings and reviews. Users need to leave their reviews to improve the service. It’s possible to keep their feedback using Microsoft Azure and AWS.
Create an on-demand delivery app: Customer app

Customer app concept (Source: Dribbble)

Restaurant app

This solution lets restaurants manage incoming orders. It’s common to create a web solution rather than a mobile app. With its help, restaurant workers can accept orders and notify couriers once it’s ready.

On-demand delivery app developers should integrate the following features:

  • Registration and login. To make the service secure, each employee should have an account. It’s possible to implement a signup feature, using Facebook SDK or Google SDK.
  • Menu management. Using the restaurant app, workers can edit the menu to keep it up-to-date.
  • Order management. Workers should have various management options like accepting orders and changing their status.

What features does your app need?

Book a meeting with our Business Analyst to get a full consultation on your app’s features

Courier app

The courier app should be simple but functional. Couriers use applications on the go, so it’s better to offer a mobile version only.

How to make an on-demand delivery app convenient for couriers? You need to add these features:

  • Registration and login. Couriers need to sign up to use the app. They need to have options similar to the customers’ app: social media, email and password, phone number and password.
  • Navigation. You need to offer couriers convenient maps with the fastest routes. To integrate this feature, your team can use Google Maps Platform for Android and Location Framework for iOS.
  • Order details. Couriers need to see all the information about orders: restaurant address, delivery address, delivery time, and so on.
Build an on-demand delivery app: Courier app

Courier app concept (Source: Dribbble)

Admin panel

The admin panel is an essential management tool for your business. Here are some must-have features:

  • Login. A secure login makes your data safe and well-protected.
  • Restaurant management. Admin can add restaurants to the service. Also, it’s possible to delete users.
  • Analytics. Using this feature, you can track essential KPIs like the number of orders, delivery time, revenue, and others.
  • Payment management. This feature allows charging fees from restaurants and users. Also, you can change the amount using this feature.

Must-Have Features at a Glance

As you can see, there are a lot of features to integrate. Below you can find a table with the required features and technologies to build an on-demand delivery app.

Must-have features for an on-demand delivery service

SolutionFeaturesTechnology

Customer app

Registration and login

Facebook SDK, Google SDK

Restaurant search

Elastic Search

Location tracking

Google location API, Location Framework

Order and payments

Braintree, Stripe

Push notifications

Amazon SNS, FCM

Ratings and reviews

Microsoft Azure, AWS

Restaurant app

Registration and login

Facebook SDK, Google SDK

Menu management

Order management

Courier app

Registration and login

Facebook SDK, Google SDK

Navigation

Google Maps, Location Framework

Order details

Admin panel

Login

Facebook SDK, Google SDK

Restaurant management

Analytics

Payment management

On-Demand Delivery App Development Cost: The Final Price

The final cost to create an on-demand delivery app may vary from $170,000 to $300,000+. The final price to build such type of app consists of the following aspects:

  • Features
  • Design
  • Quality assurance

The cost of the features

The number of features and their complexity are the main cost drivers to create an on-demand delivery app. Developers need more time to implement more complicated features.

Below you can find the time and price to create features we’ve discussed in the previous part.

Estimates below are based on the average rate in our region (Eastern and Central Europe, Estonia) — $50 per hour.

How to create an on-demand delivery app: Cost of features

SolutionAprrox time, (h)Approx cost, ($)

Customer app for iOS or Android

600 - 700

30,000 - 35,000

Courier app for iOS or Android

500 - 600

25,000 - 30,000

Web app for restaurants

200 - 300

10,000 - 15,000

Web-based admin panel

300 - 400

15,000 - 20,000

Total

1600 - 2000

80,000 - 100,000

Design

The app design can be a struggle since it requires a decent amount of time and money.

To gain more users, you need to create an attractive and intuitive UI/UX design of your app.

Design cost of an on-demand delivery app

SolutionAprrox time, hoursApprox cost, $

Customer app for iOS or Android

100 - 200

5,000 - 10,000

Courier app for iOS or Android

100 - 200

5,000 - 10,000

Web app for restaurants

80 - 180

4,000 - 9,000

Web-based admin panel

50 - 150

2,500 - 7,500

Total

330 - 730

16,500 - 36,500

The final price to build an on-demand delivery app

Considering all the factors below, we can calculate the final price to create an on-demand delivery app. You need at least $160,000 - $170,000 for one platform (iOS or Android) and $200,000 - $300,000 for two platforms (iOS and Android).

Cost to create an on-demand delivery app

PlatformAprrox time, hoursApprox cost, $

Total for one platform (iOS or Android)

3430 - 4530

171,500 - 226,500

Total for two platforms (iOS and Android)

4530 - 5830

226,500 - 291,500

Below you can find the details.

Price to build an on-demand delivery app (iOS or Android)

Type of workAprrox time, hoursApprox cost, $

Customer app features (iOS or Android)

600 - 700

30,000 - 35,000

Courier app features (iOS or Android)

500 - 600

25,000 - 30,000

Web app for restaurants

200 - 300

10,000 - 15,000

Web-based admin panel

300 - 400

15,000 - 20,000

Design

330 - 730

16,500 - 36,500

Project management

500 - 600

25,000 - 30,000

Quality assuarance

800 - 900

40,000 - 45,000

DevOps

200 - 300

10,000 - 15,000

On-Demand Delivery App Development With Cleveroad

Cleveroad is an IT service provider with over 10 years of industry experience. Over the years, our team has developed many custom software solutions for various industries.

Cooperating with us, you will get the following benefits:

  • More than 10+ years of experience in developing custom software solutions
  • Multi-industry expertise and professional approach to the nuances of various business domains
  • Flexible cooperation models: Fixed Workscope, Time & Material, Dedicated team models, and more
  • n-demand services per your request, including building software from scratch, legacy software modernization, UI/UX design, and more
  • Comprehensive IT consulting services to help you automate your operations, modernize software architecture, and implement a tech-driven digital strategy to enhance your business efficiency

Our company's portfolio includes many custom software development projects in different domains, including on-demand applications. One of our cases is a platform to book custom services called AYIO.

The app's main idea was to allow individuals to find a specialist in different fields. Thus, the platform provides a large number of on-demand services. Our customer wanted to create a solution allowing users to switch easily between the roles of supplier and consumer with a straightforward UI/UX design. Our team created a functional and user-friendly platform MVP to fulfill our customer's product vision and stay within the budget. As a result, the company got a quality software solution that meets its needs and brings income.

If you need an on-demand delivery app developer, feel free to contact the Cleveroad team. We'll pick up your project at the raw idea stage, help you do market research, and build a unique solution to compete in the market.

Discover your app development cost

We’ll check the requirements and estimate your on-demand app development cost

Frequently Asked Questions
How to make an on-demand delivery app?
  • Step 1. Validate your business idea.
  • Step 2. Consider UI/UX design.
  • Step 3. Create a list of required features for each solution — customer app, courier app, restaurant app, and admin panel.
  • Step 4. Choose the monetization model.
  • Step 5. Cooperate with a qualified development team.
What is an on-demand delivery?

On-demand delivery stands for express delivery of products. There is an efficient transportation system that allows receiving orders fast.

How much does a mobile app development cost for an on-demand delivery app?

Let’s calculate the final price to create an on-demand delivery app. You need at least $167,450 for one platform (iOS or Android) and $202,450 for two platforms (iOS and Android).

What are the features of a perfect on-demand food delivery app?

The common on-demand food delivery solution consists of four parts. Each part has a specific set of features:

Customer app

  • Registration and login
  • Restaurant search
  • Location tracking
  • Order and payments
  • Push notifications
  • Ratings and reviews

Courier app

  • Registration and login
  • Navigation
  • Order details and status
  • Order history

Restaurant app

  • Registration and login
  • Menu management
  • Ratings and reviews

Admin panel

  • Restaurant management
  • Analytics
  • Payment management
  • Discount and coupons management
How do delivery apps make money?

There are several ways to get revenue from a food delivery service.

  • Restaurant fee
  • Advertisements
  • Peak hours
  • Extra fee during bad weather conditions
  • Extra fee for rush delivery
  • Users fee
Author avatar...
About author

Evgeniy Altynpara is a CTO and member of the Forbes Councils’ community of tech professionals. He is an expert in software development and technological entrepreneurship and has 10+years of experience in digital transformation consulting in Healthcare, FinTech, Supply Chain and Logistics

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Comments

5 comments
TS
Tracy Shelton
11.11.2021 at 06:46

hi, Very interesting post. This is my first-time visit here. I found so much interesting stuff in your blog.

EL
Ellen Lopez
28.10.2020 at 09:32

Liked your article. You discussed a lot of details of on-demand delivery app development. I adore the cost part since it offers a full price to create such all solutions of the service.

MA
Mustafa Alnıaçık
24.09.2020 at 19:22

Nice work.

ON
Oscar Nielsen
12.09.2020 at 07:28

Good text.

CM
Christopher Meland
07.09.2020 at 18:37

I find your article useful. Now I know that I need four apps of a delivery product. Also, you added the required technologies to create the features. I like your expertise.

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