How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Food Delivery Platform like Doordash?

Thanks to industry giants like Doordash and UberEats, the online food delivery industry is experiencing exponential growth. In 2021, Doordash went public for the first time and raised a $72 billion valuation. 

The company also increased its revenue by 69% to $4.88 billion in the same year. This immense success of the food delivery giant has inspired several restaurant chains and entrepreneurs to hire a professional food delivery mobile app development company and launch their own food delivery platforms. Of course, anyone planning to launch a food delivery application would want to know the total amount of money they’d have to pay to get the app developed. 

If you’re dealing with the same question, this guide will help. In today’s article, we have penned down different factors influencing the development cost of a food delivery application like Doordash. Read this guide and you’ll be able to devise a cost estimation for your food delivery platform more conveniently. 

So, without any further ado, let’s get started. 

As per a report by Statista Market Forecast:

• Revenue in the Online Food Delivery market is expected to hit US$ 136,431 million in 2020.
• Revenue is forecasted to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 7.5%, resulting in an estimated market value of US$ 182,327 m by 2024.
• The largest segment of the industry is Platform-to-Consumer Distribution with an estimated business value of US$ 70,741 m in 2020.
• In global comparison, the majority of revenues will be produced in China (US$ 51,514 million in 2020).

The Scope of Developing a Food Delivery Platform in 2022

Before diving into the factors influencing the development cost, let’s first understand why it has become crucial for restaurants to have their own food delivery apps. Like always, food is a necessity to stay healthy. 

However, in this fast-paced world, people rarely have time to prepare their meals or even go out to restaurants for dining. This is when food delivery platforms come into the picture. These platforms allow users to order food from their favorite restaurants right from the comfort of their homes or offices. 

Consequently, they can enjoy delicious meals without having to go through the hassle of preparing meals or driving down to a restaurant. This increased reliance on food delivery apps is the reason why even new food delivery ventures manage to gain a strong customer base in a relatively shorter period. 

In short, despite industry giants like Uber Eats and Doordash leading the market, new food delivery ventures can still establish a strong market and grow their business. 

Evaluating the Development Cost of a Food Delivery Platform like Doordash

So, coming back to the real question; how much would you have to pay to get your food delivery app developed? Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to defining the development cost of a food delivery platform. Even if you want to build an exact replica of DoorDash, the development cost will vary in each scenario as it depends on a plethora of external factors. 

Let’s walk you through some of these features so that it becomes easier to evaluate the final development cost of your food delivery application. 

1. Business Model

In general, food delivery platforms can be categorized into two different categories:

• Aggregated Food Delivery Platforms
• Independent Food Delivery Apps for Restaurants

For readers who don’t know, aggregator food delivery platforms allow multiple restaurants to list their business and gives customers the liberty to order food from their preferred food outlets. These types of applications require additional features to streamline the different operations of multiple stakeholders. Apps like UberEats and DoorDash fall into the category of aggregated food delivery applications. 

Independent food delivery applications are delivery solutions designed and managed by a particular restaurant or food chain itself. In this scenario, the development cost is relatively lower as such applications don’t have multiple stakeholders. 

2. Development Team You Hire

As surprising as this may sound, the developers you hire for your project will become one of the major deciding factors for the final development cost. The truth is different developers charge different hourly rates, which mainly depends on the location of the developers. 

For instance, a development team operating from a country like India or China will have comparatively lower hourly development rates and you’ll be able to get the app development at a lower price. However, if you hire developers from first-world countries like the USA or Australia, you’d have to pay higher hourly rates to the developers. This usually happens due to the economical differences between the two countries. 

If you’re planning to launch your mobile app without burning a hole in your wallet, it would be better to outsource app development to developers in countries like India. This way you’ll get the same expertise and will be able to launch the final product at a lower price. 

3. Development Technologies

As of today, the market is stacked with different types of development technologies that you can use to build a mobile app from the ground up. 

Choosing the right development technology mainly depends on the project requirements and the features you want to integrate into your application. For example, if you want to develop a native mobile app, you would most likely choose a native app development framework such as Swift or Kotlin. However, if you want to launch a cross-platform food delivery app solution and target a wider audience, it would be better to pick a cross-platform technology like Flutter or React Native. 

Based on the development technology you choose, the final development cost of your project will be different in each case. For native mobile apps, you’ll have to hire two separate development teams to build mobile apps for iOS and Android respectively. In short, you’d have to pay twice the amount to get your apps developed and deployed in the market. 

In addition to developing technologies, third-party APIs and microservices also add up to the final development cost of a food delivery application. For a mobile app to function properly, it’s necessary to integrate certain features such as multi-payment support, app security, and auto-suggestions. Now, instead of developing these features from scratch, many developers choose to integrate existing APIs to speed up the development process. Usually, these APIs have additional charges that can easily increase your app’s development cost. 

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4. Features of Your Food Delivery Application

Finally, the features that you want to integrate also have a huge influence on the final development cost of a food delivery application. Features of your food delivery app will mainly depend on your preferred business model and the target audience. Of course, the more features you want to integrate, the higher would be the overall app complexity. Consequently, the development cost will be higher as well. 

Most Common Features to Integrate in Food Delivery App

• GPS Integration and Real-Time Location Tracking

This is one of the prerequisites for any delivery platform. If you want to deliver a remarkable user experience, it’s necessary that customers are able to track the real-time whereabouts of their orders and get instant delivery updates. To do this, your development team will integrate Google Maps and Apple Maps APIs into your mobile app. This way customers will be able to track their orders more conveniently. 

• Rewards & Discount Programs

The online food delivery industry is one of the highly competitive markets right now. To engage your potential customers, it would be necessary to run special discount programs where customers can earn huge rewards. Your developers must add a dedicated “discount & rewards” section in the admin panel where your team can create, run, and manage exclusive discount programs. 

• Multi-Payment Support

As we mentioned earlier, multi-payment support is an essential feature of a food delivery application. Your customers must be able to process payments using their preferred payment mode within a few seconds. 

This can be achieved by integrating a third-party payment gateway into your mobile application. While there are different payment gateways you can choose from, all of them charge a specific amount to provide their services. These subscription charges and the time to integrate the API will also add up to the final development cost. 

• In-App Chat Support

Your food delivery app solution also needs built-in chat support so that customers can easily get in touch with the restaurant, their delivery partner, and your customer executives. 

Now, when it comes to in-app messaging, you can either integrate one of the existing microservices or APIs or build a messaging portal from scratch. 

Based on which approach you choose, the development cost of your food delivery application will automatically differ. Of course, it would take more time to build a new interface for a messaging panel from scratch, which means the overall development cost will be higher as well.

• Social Media Integration

Social media integration is also a crucial feature that can boost the overall engagement of your food delivery application. By providing social media support, your customers will have the liberty to share their favorite dishes on social media and promote the desired restaurants. 

Moreover, this will also allow them to create their accounts without having to enter all the information manually. They can simply log in with their preferred social media accounts and start ordering food right away.   

Now, these are only a few of the features you’ll need to integrate to build a user-centric food delivery application. Based on your customer preferences, you can further add more features and engage your potential audience more effectively. 

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Conclusion

At this point, you already know different factors that’ll influence the development cost of your food delivery application. In general, you’ll have to pay anywhere between $20,000 to $80,000 to get your app developed based on the overall project requirements. For a more precise estimation, reach out to a food delivery app development agency and let them quote a custom price according to your app details.