Food delivery app development: How to be the winner like Uber Eats

2020 could be a dark side to many sectors but not food delivery app development, which is a significant trend in the app development market. As Uber Eats might be the King, it is still a room for other winners.

In the last decade, food ordering remains a peculiar sector that diners used to eat inside restaurants. Whereas, they believed to have better service quality and save the delivery price. At that time, food delivery was underdeveloped when there were rarely businesses offering delivery options. Due to lack of competition, the delivery price was notably high that going to restaurants tended to be the more economical option.

Fortunately, the world has rapidly changed in favor of offering more convenience and time-saving. With the appearance of a novel generation, food delivery app services like Uber Eats, Zomato, or GrubHub, the on-demand delivery has currently become the new standard that every restaurant should adopt.

Additionally, the outbreak of coronavirus 2020 has accelerated the growth of food delivery businesses. While the whole community followed social distancing, the demand for emerging online food ordering was lifting. At that time, leaving houses to buy food consisted of infection risks. Accordingly, home deliveries refer to a secured option, which gains encouragement from both individual and public sectors.

Trends in online food delivery app development market: Potentials and challenges

A research done by restaurant delivery users proposed Uber Eats was lead the food delivery market, which took roundly 34% of the market share. Following this, DoorDash and Grubhub also the big players, which adopts respectively 33% and 21% of the total users. The success story of Uber Eats came from a collaboration with the two largest food chains, including McDonald’s and Starbuck.

High potential market in food delivery app development

With the rapid software development of food delivery apps, experts believe that is also a great potential for new entrances, entering the market for making profits. Keeping track of food delivery trends would help your business reach a healthy growth. However, the future technologies that emerged in food delivery services deter new startups launching their business, which are robot shipping, parachute delivery, and drone. It is due to they all require a significant investment in R&D and infrastructures.

Challenges from advance technologies

On demand food delivery via parachute is predicted to be a standard that it offered instant delivery with every limit manual work. Jafflechutes is one of the first businesses offering parachute delivery in Australia. In the beginning, this food delivery app allows users to order sandwiches online and wait in a specific drop location for receiving their box from a mini parachute. Throughout the process, customers could avoid human touch due to a high level of automation.

Similarly, robot shipping is also a notable technological innovation that requires support from several advancements like 3D maps, tracking sensors, and advanced cameras. In which robots could depend on those technologies to design the best rote for cutting down the delivery time. Besides, it also avoids direct communications between individuals.

Food delivery by drone has already put to the test in America, which promise to offer food delivery in only 15 minutes. Its smart solution promises to eliminate the threat of late delivery in rush hours and shipper shortages.

Cloud kitchen and virtual kitchen 

Cloud kitchen and virtual kitchen specialize as restaurants and food stores, which only appear in the on demand food ordering apps or other online platforms. In this way, owners reduce the investment in physical locations and infrastructure while taking advantage of the massive audience network from one demand platform. It suggests that restaurants could have more money for investing in food quality and customer services.

Take Uber Eats as an example that made some special deals with particular restaurants to offer unique menus, which are only available for the app users. By the way, both food delivery apps and restaurants benefit due to attracting users who are interested in new experiences. In practice, this model indicated a big success, contributing to the domination of Uber Eats in America.

As expected, virtual kitchens could shortly become the norm in the market, allowing restaurants to delete intermediary costs and focus on serving end diners. Besides, instead of investing in physical spaces, restaurant owners need to emerge the management system, including a food ordering system, restaurant management system, or customer relationship management system (CRM)

Related article: How on-demand food delivery companies make money

Packaging with green technology

Environmental-friendly materials are raising concerns among countries across the world. In which, it is not only social responsivities but a marketing strategy applied by most brands. Offering zero waste products could bring better brand images to restaurants and catch the attention of communities.

For the delivery sectors, using traditional packaging, which consists of plastic bags, typically ending up with adverse criticism from users. Green packaging is definitely the future of food delivery systems, which is believed to offer healthy meals while protecting nature. MacDonald, for example, has started a plan of replacing traditional packaging with pure eco-friendly materials by 2025. Alternatively, as a delivery giant, Uber Eats cannot stand outside the war that straws and utensils are only provided upon customer requests, which could reduce the use of those items.

On-demand food ordering and delivery in multi-channels

One significant attribute belongs to the food delivery sector refers to the requirement of a short delivery time. Instead of day delivery as other products, customers need their food orders successfully delivered into their homes within an hour. Accordingly, delivery services offering a shortage of delivery time would win the game. As a result, optimizing the delivery process cut down the delay time, and offer more convenience is seemingly the core goal for all food delivery businesses.

Likewise, the dominance of novel delivery channels would expectedly lead the future of the food ordering industry. Twitter, a social media platform, has released a unique feature, called Easy Order, to Domino Pizza fans. For instant order, users only need to comment on a pizza icon in the special Domino twitter profile. On the other hand, Papa John’s Piza also has an outstanding idea that Smart TV owners could handily browse its menu and complete order right on their TV.

Related article: Building the successful on demand food delivery app – fundamental types and functions

Food waste management solution via mobile apps and IoT

Following the rising environmental concerns, a software development company focusing on food waste management tends to be a profitable area for building startups. Whereas, while several parts of the world suffer famines recently, there are over 35% of foods getting wasted daily. Every country thirst for leftover food solutions.

Obviously, a leader will be the winner that operating food waste management solutions have more possibilities to succeed. But how? Leveraging mobile apps and IoT technology development is the mainstream. Applying IoT in predicting the food consumption volume provides the number is closer to the correct one. By which, food businesses produce in the right purchasing demand that reduces the potential waste.

Additionally, IoT also contributes to food inventory management, which operates with sensors to detect and manage the shelf life of foods. That could be put on processes or distributions in some way before overdate.

In terms of mobile apps, unsold foods or meals could broadly approach the one who needs it. For instants, a food mobile app called Food for all recently rescue leftover food and drinks from local stores and Caffe with a half-price discount. 

Related article: Top IOT solutions in Food and Beverage industry

Pet food delivery app development services

Pet owners take roundly 70% American households in 2020 that give a high motivation in the pet food market. Pet food delivery app development comes up with an absolute growth path for businesses. In which the scale of global pet food expectedly reaches US$ 92 billion by 2020, approximately 40% of consumers decide to buy pet foods online.

In conclusion, the food delivery app development is predicted to be sustainable over time. If you are looking for building an empire like Uber Eats, we can help you adopt the cutting-edge features and defeating competitors.