Updated: September 23, 2022 
The food industry has undergone a substantial revolution in the past few years.
Nowadays, when people barely have time for their daily routines, they look for instant solutions at their doorstep.
It is where online food delivery apps like Talabat come into play. Such apps have made it easier for users to order their food online and deliver it to their homes/ workplaces within the shortest time possible.
Furthermore, the COVID pandemic has also increased the necessity of delivery apps like the Talabat food delivery app as people want healthy food delivered to their homes rather than visiting restaurants.
This apparent high demand for online food delivery has made it necessary for restaurants to stay abreast of what’s happening in the market, forcing them to create food delivery apps for the success of their business.
If you, too, are thinking about creating a food delivery app for your restaurant, you’re at the right place.
In this blog, we’ll discuss steps to help you create a user-friendly food delivery app like Talabat for your restaurant,
The development approach you can follow must-have features, and the cost estimation to develop an app.
But first, let’s find out what exactly Talabat is!
What is Talabat?
Talabat food Delivery is a major online food delivery app that manages over 17,000 registered sellers across MENA countries.
In addition, this Dubai Talabat food delivery app has a vast network of food delivery agents across Kuwait, Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Jordan.
The food delivery app allows users to find the best food items in their region and get them delivered to their doorsteps.
As of now, you must be familiar with the Talabat food delivery app and looking for ways to develop an online food delivery app for your business.
So, without further ado, let’s get started with the detailed food delivery app development process.
Steps To Develop A Food Delivery App
To create a food delivery app like the Talabat portal, you must clearly understand how it works.
It is not just a customer app; it consists of four different apps for a different set of users to perform food ordering and delivery operations quickly and seamlessly.
Customer Food Delivery App: This allows users to order their food online based on their locations, likings, discounts, and more.
Restaurant App: The restaurant app is a portal where restaurants can register their business and sell to customers on the app. It also allows restaurant owners to update their menus, prices, and more per their business requirements.
Delivery Agent App: It allows delivery agents to register on the app and perform their duties properly. The agents can use this app to accept/reject the delivery order as per their availability.
Food Delivery App Admin: It allows the organization to track the performance of sellers and delivery agents.
So, before initiating such a complex development process, make sure to go through the following steps to avoid the hurdles that can waste your time and effort.
Step 1: Conduct Market Research
If you’re planning to make a big move into the food industry, it’s of utmost importance to understand the market dynamics.
Therefore, before you initiate the food delivery app development process, conduct thorough market research and competitor analysis to gain insights into the existing trends and identify the market leaders.
It will also help you create a better business strategy per industry norms.
Then create a plan that not only highlights value propositions and key resources but also focuses on the cost structure, channels to focus on, and revenue streams for your app.
Step 2: Strategize a Business Model
Launching a food delivery app like Talabat requires you to choose a suitable business model.
Also Read | Mistakes People Made while Creating Food Delivery Apps
Being an entrepreneur, you must familiarize yourself with various food delivery business models and choose the one that best suits your business requirements.
Some of the food delivery app models are:
- The Order-Only Model
- The Order And Delivery Model
- The Fully Integrated Model
- Cloud Restraunt Model
- Meal Kit Delivery Model
Step 3: Determine Revenue Streams
Create a revenue stream to monetize your food delivery app beforehand. You can also reach out to investors for funding to ensure no hindrance.
Online food delivery apps like Talabat works on four significant revenue-generating models, including:
- Ad campaigns
- Subscription fee
- Commission fee on every order
- On-site restaurant promotions
Step 4: Decide on a Development Approach and Reach Out to Developers
Once your business plan and revenue streams are in place, it’s time to pick a food delivery app development approach.
Here you’ve three different choices:
Custom Development From Scratch – It requires you to write code from scratch and usually requires a dedicated team of mobile developers with expertise in the food industry solutions.
Not every company can afford this approach as it involves a lot of time, effort, and monetary investment. However, it gives you unlimited freedom to customize your app depending on your branding needs.
Saas Products – They offer basic functionality to launch the platform. You can install a simple and user-friendly solution to create a food delivery app quickly.
These solutions are packed with powerful features for cumbersome administrative processes and deliver a top-notch customer experience.
The best thing about Saas products is that you can subscribe to them monthly or annually.
One more thing to know is that such apps’ control remains with the service providers.
Choosing this might reduce your development cost, but so the freedom to customize the platform per your requirements.
White Label – You hire a white-label IT company to create a food delivery app for your restaurant.
They usually work on a template, and the chances of customization are very limited in this approach.
It is an ideal solution for Startups, but it makes food delivery apps vulnerable to various threats as the source code remains with the development company.
Step 5: Work on the user interface, backend, and database
Before you develop a database for your food delivery app, design and finalize its user interface.
Also, ensure your design team comes up with an eye-catching design to grab the users’ attention.
Once you’re done with UI designs, you can move to the backend and database system.
Build a minimal viable product (MVP) or a prototype to get a clear idea of how the app will work. It allows you to update the prototype if you’re unhappy with the results.
Know About | A Guide to Mobile App Backend Development
Step 6: Testing
Once you know how to create a food delivery app, it’s time to pass it through the testing phase.
In this phase, testers and the development team will run various tests on the app and resolve bugs, if any.
Once your app passes the testing phase, it is ready to go live as soon as you want.
Technology Stack To Use For Talabat App Development
Well, this is the tech stack that was used to develop the Talabat app, and you can choose the right technologies for your food delivery app depending on your business requirements:
Front-End Development: JavaScipt, CSS, HTML, WebAssembly
Backend Development: Frameworks, Languages, frameworks, DBMS, web servers
Hybrid Development: Flutter, React Native
Android Development: Kotlin
iOS Development: Apple Xcode, Objective-C, iOS SDK, Swift
Payment: Braintree, Stripe, PayPal
Direction Finding: Google Maps, MapKit
User Location Finding: Google Places API
Storage: Azure, AWS, Google
Analytics: Google Analytics, FireBase
Registrations: Facebook SDK, Gmail SDK
Must-Have Key Features For Your Food Delivery App
Now that you have decided to create a food delivery app like the Talabat application for your business, you must decide on the features you want to put in it.
Related Blog | Key Features You Must Include in Your Food Delivery App
Of course, since it’s your app, you can add as many features as you wish; however, you shouldn’t compromise on any of these features:
Multiple Payment Options
Integrate your food delivery application with secure payment gateways and diverse payment options, including Credit & Debit cards, Netbanking, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and more, to facilitate hassle-free transactions.
Real-time Order & Delivery Tracking
It allows the restaurant owners to update the order status, letting delivery persons know when the order is ready.
Moreover, this feature enables customers to track their food order right from when they place an order until it is delivered.
Multilingual Capabilities
This feature allows restaurant owners to target customers in multiple regions where multiple languages are spoken.
In addition, customers can change the language as per their preference, making it easing for them to place an order.
Delivery Management
It allows restaurant owners and admins to assign delivery orders to delivery persons.
In addition, the delivery person can accept/reject the request as per their availability.
Rewards, Cashback, and Loyalty Programs
Did you know?
“Starbucks gained an 80% increase in sales by introducing loyalty programs.”
Offering rewards, cashback, and loyalty points to your customers will help attract new users to the food delivery app.
Reviews & Ratings
It allows customers to rank and evaluate restaurants from where they have ordered the food through the food delivery app.
Feedbacks from customers help restaurants to improve their service and food quality, leading to a boost in sales.
Also, it helps new users to pick restaurants based on their ratings.
Other Features of the Food Delivery App
Some other features you can add to your food app based on the structure of the Talabat food delivery app:
Customer Food Delivery App
Here are some other features that your customer food delivery must have:
- Users Registration/Login
- User Profile Management
- Advanced Search Filters
- Add to Cart
- Wish Lists
- Delivery Scheduling
- Push Notifications
- Cancellation, Replacement, and Return
Seller Food Delivery App
So, the Talabat vendor portal must have the following features:
- Seller Registration
- Item Management (add/edit/delete products)
- Special offers/Coupon Code Management
- Order Management (accept/reject orders)
- Payment History
- Order Alerts
- Revenue Analytics
- Seller Support
Delivery Agent App
This is what your delivery agent app must have:
- Agent Registration
- Delivery Request Management (accept/reject deliveries)
- Delivery Scheduling
- Geo-location Services (real-time delivery tracking)
- Work History (reviews, ratings, earnings)
- Route Optimisation
Food Delivery App Admin Panel
Some of the must-haves for the admin panel of the food delivery app are:
- Manage Sellers
- Revenue Analytics
- Push Notifications
- Inventory Management
- Product Management
- Order Management
- Customer App Modifications
- Delivery Agent Management
- Platform Discounts and Promotions
- Customer Complaints Centre
Cost-Estimation To Develop Food Delivery App
The cost of creating a food delivery app like Talabat depends on various factors,
Including features you want to add to your food delivery app resources you hire to develop the app, and the level of optimization and operability the app requires.
Covering everything from ideation to launching an ideal food delivery app suite that includes a customer app, sellers app, delivery agents app, and admin panel can take approximately 2400 hours.
Here is the breakdown of these hours:
- Project Discovery: 85+ hrs
- Work Validation Scope: 30+ hrs
- Prototyping: 50+ hrs
- Documentation: 35+ hrs
- UI/UX Design: 130-140 hrs
- Android App Development: 400-800 hrs
- IOS App development: 600-1000 hrs
- Backend Development: 350+ hrs
- Admin Panel Development: 80+ hrs
- Testing: 60+ hrs
Now, the final cost of creating a food delivery app depends on the location of your development team.
For instance, the food delivery app development cost in India can range between $10 and $40 per hour, and in the US, it can vary from $70 to $150 per hour.
Conclusion
Regardless of which development mode you choose and what features you want to integrate, an online food delivery app requires proper planning, actual actions, and dedicated resources & efforts to be successful.
And if you don’t have enough resources and time to develop the app, hiring a professional team will be beneficial for you.
At RV Technologies, our dedicated and well-experienced team of designers and mobile app developers can help develop and launch a food delivery app to reach your customers, leading to your business growth.
Also, our journey doesn’t end with the app’s development and launch; we offer maintenance services so your app remains secure and performs optimally.
Have a food delivery app project in mind?
Let’s get connected and discuss your project!
+918968519881