How to Develop a Food Delivery App like GrubHub?

I don’t want to cook for today, I too had a weekend! ~ Mom

We have heard these statements come straight to our ears from the tired, fussy, and workaholic moms and housewives. In this blog, We will discuss in detail how to build an app like Grubhub with features, cost, and required tech stack.

Do you understand the situation of mom or people who face similar things? We all are humans and sometimes our system requires us to pause or stop for some time. Things can’t be manageable every day and time by people and it has become a challenging problem. 

It foresees businesses to rescue people from them. Some of them would have great ideas but are confused and afraid to face the risk. Here comes the picture of a sound delivery system to serve desired and fresh food to the users. 

Although the businesses do not have their restaurants, they are just delivery partners, while combating with different restaurants they can fulfill the needs and desires of the users. 

The market of online food delivery apps is driven by the high revenue of $151.25 M in 2021. It crossed all the bars without any doubt in the marketplace. Recently, GrubHub has become the front gear in the food delivery market. 

Let’s start with more about the industry and stats related to GrubHub. Why should one invest in this leveraging industry? 

Let’s begin with the idea!

GrubHub Introduction

GrubHub, the self-motivated food delivery platform is known to serve food with quality to satisfy the demands of the customers. The process takes simple steps for the customers to grab their food instantly just by placing the order from the app platform. 

GrubHub began with the idea to serve meals of high quality to the people without leaving their comfort. In 2014, GrubHub came up with that idea and partnered with restaurant operators who don’t have their delivery system and only have dine-in options. The platform starts deliveries across 50+ markets alone in the US. Now the food delivery platform is excited to deliver outside the US. 

In 2020, the company announced subscription packages to its premium users for unlimited free deliveries. GrubHub delivers beautiful cuisine ideas to its users. One such is Cauliflower Pizza. It is ranked as the no.1 order in 2018 in GrubHub charts and ranked 7th in the overall category of food delivery orders. 

GrubHub: Headquarter, Investment, & Establishment Year

• The company is situated in Chicago, Illinois, the US in the year 2004 by Matt Maloney and Michael Evans. GrubHub is an online delivery marketplace option for food eaters that connects diners with local restaurants. 
• In 2020 it became the subsidiary company of Just Eat Takeaways for the price of $7.1B.
• The app raises total funding of $284M.  

Simple process to place an order; 

Once the user places the order, the request is dispatched to the restaurant. If the restaurant denies the order due to some issue, the order gets canceled, and the user places the order again. 

Once the order is accepted by the restaurant, it requests the nearby delivery rider to take the order, and meanwhile, the food has been prepared. The user can add tips and comments for the restaurant to prepare the food. The restaurant schedules it for the delivery boy to pick order. The user can track the time for the arrival of the food, and pay for it in the meantime or go for the COD option. 

Read More: List of Most Popular Food Delivery Apps

What are the Benefits of Investing in a Food Delivery App like GrubHub?

The market of food delivery is no doubt driving the momentum of the food industries. But over the years technologies flourished with great solutions to the food delivery industry. We have seen a great outbreak in the food and its delivery services. 

With the involvement of the technologies and especially with the effect of Covid, users are now more personalized about their demands. The dine-in options are now somewhere halt. The situation is turning new options for investors and app owners to invest in this domain. 

Here we are going to discuss a few reasons for investors and app owners to develop an app similar to GrubHub and secure their place in the industry. Let’s take a look; 

Target marketplace

The food delivery industry has plenty of options to focus on ready-meal deliveries like soups, salads, beverages, desserts, cereals, oil, etc. Serving the right options to the right audience directly from authentic food restaurants brings a balance of nutrients and ingredients. 

Being the competent owner of the business you can serve the most challenging and demanding options to the users. You can serve according to user’s specific regions like for people who have no time for cooking, corporate offices, students, weekend food eaters, etc. Hence the domain is a great option for you to target a market audience. 

Effective turnaround after the pandemic

We can say the pandemic is the major factor to fuels the gross ROI of the food delivery industry. The pandemic stops the user from visiting in real to the locations where restaurants are present. 

For the investor, it would be a great opportunity to provide decent offers and features to the customers. The businesses that start investing in this multimillion-dollar industry with the hope and unseen opportunities impact a major breakthrough. The quick delivery ideas of 10 minutes or less give tangible outputs to the owners like what GrubHub is persuading.

This will roleplay a strong mindset to invest for many new investors in the food delivery industry. 

Smooth cooperation to thrive in future solutions

For late-night hunger and cravings, something like food delivery anytime anywhere brings ease and satisfies the customer’s need. Along with the entrance of the pandemic, people became more habitual in having food at their doorstep rather than going outside. 

The industry gives plenty of options to food eaters, restaurants, delivery partners, cooking specialists, investors, etc to serve future enriched features and options to let users always be in the comfort room. 

GrubHub, with the smooth cooperation and mutual benefit partnership with different restaurants, brings them a seamless platform to serve more customers and on their behalf charges a small commission for every order. This way the food delivery app platform increases the audience flow constantly. This benefits both of them and builds strong relationships. 

If you’re a real investor you too enter into this domain to fulfill your goal. 

Loyalty programs drive the user base

In the food delivery app, the loyalty programs greatly drive new customers and repetitive user presence on the platform. It is a crucial factor that gives users real-time points to spend before each purchase. As per the stats, the loyalty points gain major traction with users and increase the net presence on a transaction from 12% to 35%.

Checkout More: List of Top Mobile App Development Companies in USA

Less overhead and seamless support to the users and restaurants

If you’re a business owner there is a high chance for you to secure and invest in one of the most promising industries which is food delivery. As already many options are present in the marketplace that causes an obvious facility to the restaurants to give their services and take the maximum benefit. By providing mutual benefits to both users and restaurants, the investors can impact their growth and future scope in the marketplace. 

Retain the potential user’s rate and more customer engagement

It would be the best idea for businesses to retain the presence of potential customers with small investments. However, you need an application platform to cater the services to the users. So by outsourcing with some of the partner app companies, you can turn your idea of app-making into reality. Just make sure that the app is not limited to one platform. To cover a large sum of the customer base it is best to have your app run on multiple platforms like Android and IoS. 

A food delivery platform is a great way to leverage your services

Having a food delivery business is not enough, you need to have a platform where everything runs cohesively and well. A smooth user experience can lift the brand. A few examples like GrubHub serve multiple features to their customers by placing everything on their app platform. That lubricates the user presence on the platform.   

GrubHub Market Share and Statistics 

The numbers speak a lot, here are the market shares of GrubHub in the year 2022. 

• GrubHub acquired 33.8M active users
• In 2018, GrubHub contributed 34% market share with $2.1B in revenue in 2021. 
• Partnered with 30k restaurants across cities.
• In 2019, GrubHub had 65k active drivers, which is second next to Doordash, which has 700k drivers served across the regions. 
• The food delivery giant, GrubHub has claimed to have 32M active diners spot across various cities in the US. 

Business Model of GrubHub (Aggregator or Marketplace)

Without the complementary business model, businesses can’t virtue growth in a highly complex marketplace like food delivery. To perform well and astutely, it is important to depend and segregate on the best models that underline the main wireframing of the food delivery business. 

Aggregator Model

• Brand name: the aggregator model allows different vendors to service the customers under one brand name. For example; Uber or Zomato runs on an aggregator model, in which vendors have the freedom to accept or reject services. 
• Partnership model: here the vendors are using this model in partnering with the food delivery brand provider to earn profits and grow their business. The platform gives one commonplace to multiple vendors to utilize and serve their services. 
• High quality: in the aggregator model there is only one brand name hence the brand keeps the quality at the maximum premises. It maintains the standard and serves as per what satisfies the customers. 
• Standard price: there are high commission rates and pricing taken by the businesses to deliver the quality of service. The price is standardized.  

Read More: Grubhub Business and Revenue Model: How Grubhub Works?

Marketplace Model

• Brand name: the marketplace model allows different vendors to sell their items with their unique identities. But they do have to fulfill everything like packaging, delivery, add tags, payments, processing, etc. 
• Partnership model: in this model, the vendors use the branding of the already established brand name and cater their services through the platform. For example; Amazon is one marketplace that attributes multiple services to its users from different sellers. 
• High quality: in the marketplace model the delivery and purchasing are done via multiple sellers. There is a high challenge for them to maintain the quality as per the standards. 
• Standard price: here the price fluctuates and varies as per the seller.  

Revenue Model of GrubHub – How GrubHub Makes Money?

While we can’t deny the giant presence of the food delivery company GrubHub, one question becomes pretty common, i.e. how GrubHub makes money. The company has had large turnovers become visible in the last few years which would not be possible without a revenue model.

Let’s look around some of the revenue models to earn maximum profit next to GrubHub. 

• Commission Per Order: with this model, the business can charge some commission from the restaurants. For every order, the business charges a penny of commission to the restaurants. The commission depends on some factors as well like the location of the restaurant, number of orders, etc. 
• Advertise: the restaurants advertise themselves to promote and secure their place amongst their competitors. By advertising the business prioritizes them in the listing and banners.
• Subscription: with subscriptions, businesses can offer premium services to their customers. The subscription comes in different packages from small, to mid-level to enterprise models.  
• Featured Listing: if you’re the restaurant owner you can beat the competition rush with the featured listing features. The business offers premium feature listing options to the restaurants to prioritize them and gain maximum traffic. 

Recommended Read: Grocery Delivery App Development Company

Key Features of Food Delivery Apps like GrubHub

The GrubHub food delivery app is distributed around four major panels including admin, user, restaurant, and delivery agent. 

• Admin Panel: the admin is responsible for managing everything from their end. He manages the fulfillment of the orders and ensures the quality and on-time dispatch of the items. The admin is able to track the deliveries and reject any suspicious activity. 

Some of the common features that come under the admin panel are; account management, analytics, assigning orders to the delivery agents, and registration of the restaurant into the app platform. 

• User Panel: the food delivery app must be aligned and prepared with the customer’s point of view. For the business, it is vital to add some of the top features inside the app like an easy sign-in process, offer discounts and deals, loyalty programs, push notifications, order placements, menu, track delivery boy, order history, etc. 

• Restaurant Panel: the restaurants are using the app platform to cater the services to their customers online. The app must be equipped with features including a dashboard, menu management, order accept or reject, manage restaurant accounts and payments. 

• Delivery Agent Panel: last but not least, the delivery agent uses the application to serve on-time deliveries to the users and pick the orders from the restaurants. Some of the common features are order history, GPS history, payment history, call/chat, managing orders, etc. 

Read More: Top Food Delivery App Development Companies

Advanced Features of Food Delivery apps like GrubHub

In addition to the basic features, to make food delivery apps like GrubHub more robust and successful in the marketplace, it is important to place some of the easy-to-fit yet purpose-aligned features. 

Here is the list; 

• Push Notifications and Alerts: in this feature, the app pops up notifications for every important task or update. The user can manually set the alerts without switching to any page. But the push notifications are placed in a controlled manner for important updates only without disturbing the user. 
• Real-Time Tracking With PIP Mode: with the picture-in-picture (PIP) mode, the user can track their deliveries without closing their current work. Real-time tracking can be done with the use of analytic tools. 
• In-App Chat Camera: the in-app chat camera feature lets the user talk with the restaurant or to the delivery agent to save time. 
• Multiple Payment Gateway: users don’t want to stick to a single payment mode. By complementing the app with multiple payment gateways the business owner can assure users of unbreaking and secured payments. 

Let’s move on to some other customer-friendly features such as  – 

• Re-order Options
• Auto Dish/Restaurant Recommendation
• Quick Support to Resolve Issues of Customers
• Give Instructions to the Delivery Agent (Image, Text, Voice messages)
• Order for Friend
• Premium Subscription
• Subscription, Discounts, and Offers

How Much Does it Cost to Develop an App Like GrubHub

To develop an app like GrubHub, you need to take care of a few crucial factors. 

• How complex will the app structure be? 
• How many team members will be required to develop the app?
• The app is specific to which platform? Android or IoS 
• What tech stack is required to integrate the features like GrubHub? 
• What cost is required to manage the after-launch support and maintenance? 

It is always a clever idea the more you invest the more you will obtain. But if you’re someone who is not an experienced player in the niche market, then you need to take care of the above key factors, under the market competitor’s services. 

With understanding, every aspect of the cost of building a food delivery app like GrubHub is evaluated around $25k-$40k. And in case you want to introduce more advanced features then the cost of app development would go high likewise. However, the expert app development company would harness you best possible features within the platform to save the maximum of your expenses. 

Read More: Food Delivery App Development – Cost, Features & Tech Stack

Conclusion

The food delivery marketplace is always lucrative and versatile for providing high-end services to customers. For businesses, it is wise to start and build an app similar to a top trending delivery application to allow more facilities to the users. 

For investors and optimistic business owners, it is high time to make this a promising opportunity for your business and collaborate with some mobile app development company that would fit with the market expectations and terms. Octal is a popular food delivery app development company that delivers custom-rich food app solutions.

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