How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Food Delivery App Like Uber Eats: Average Cost Estimation

Everyone has heard the name of the most in-demand food delivery business – Uber eats. Today it is a well-recognized food delivery platform designed to order and deliver based on the consumer’s request. Any companies that consider developing such a business need to arrange with a large number of restaurants and cafes in order to provide sufficient options for their users to choose from. After that, a company is able to develop a food delivery app.

Sounds easy, right? However, as with any other application, there are many things you have to start with long before the development process. Since this market is now the most requested due to the COVID-19 impact, you will probably face many competitors during the working process. That is why you need to consider the market needs, pain points, your own possibilities, hire an experienced team in this sphere, and finally think about the cost of developing an app like ubereats. 

Even though you might think that the market is full of food delivery apps, the good news is that the majority of them lack user-friendly design, new implementation required by the target audience, and the absence of many options that affect the way they work. Most of them are shadowed by Uber eats, as its founders took a close look at all steps during all stages of the development process.

This is why we designed this article alongside niche-down experts to help you understand the inner process of these apps and give you valuable information on how to create an on-demand food delivery platform that will have the same and even bigger success in this tricky ecosystem. 

And if you are not sure about developing this app on your own, contact our team, and we will answer all your questions. Ready? Let’s go. 

Why Invest in Food Delivery Apps Like Uber Eats

The food delivery industry is one of the most popular today, providing a hassle-free way for people to order their meals and giving enterprises a perfect opportunity to jump into the money car. This sphere has always shown significant growth, but only after COVID-19 broke out did investors really start to consider a go-to option for their business. So if you think about making a food delivery app like UberEats, it’s definitely the right time!

People always tend to go after speed and convenience in the digital world. They use their phones every day and for different purposes, including ordering dinner for a comfy evening, as it is much easier than cooking by themselves. This sounds logical and decisive for customers to turn to various mobile apps and food delivery platforms in particular.

According to Statista, revenue in the online food delivery segment is projected to reach US$306,808m in 2021, with a growth of 16.6% in 2022. Now we know that it is an absolutely winning idea for businesses to earn money, let’s talk a bit more about the exact benefits of creating this platform for both users and investors. 

For an average user, the pros of a food delivery app are obvious. They have an opportunity with just a tap on a mobile screen to select and get almost any meal at almost no time.

However, enterprises, cafe owners, and investors can get even more advantages of custom food delivery application development, including:

• Extending business reach, as new and regular users can order food easier from their restaurant. Also, more people will try their dishes by ordering them and then possibly return as visitors.
• Making food delivery available 24/7. This way you can run a business round the clock, to get more orders than with a regular restaurant.
• Optimization of marketing campaigns and boosting customer loyalty. By using your food delivery app, the users can always be informed about the latest special offers and loyalty programs. This will help you to easily monitor what works best for you and attract customers in more effective ways.
• Collecting accurate and effective data for business updates, new implementations, and analysis. With precise user information, a business owner will make only well-weight informed decisions without wasting money on what does not work.
• Investors can get commissions received from cafés, restaurants for the orders made, from the drivers delivering orders,
• Receive fees for processing specific orders faster, from subscriptions of the consumers for special offers and special service,
• Get paid from advertisements from food outlets, stores, and other third parties.

In this modern world, the top food delivery solutions have already turned into successful businesses with multi-million dollar yearly revenues. Although the field is fruitful, there are still many gaps that can be filled by your mobile app.  

How Does Uber Eats Make Money? 

You probably think about food delivery app development cost, but first, we should understand how Uber earns an astonishing amount of money. As you know, Uber is a world giant among all businesses, as it offers numerous services that we use on a daily basis. However, Uber eats is one of the most profitable services today due to many factors. Especially after COVID-19, Uber eats became a go-to option for all people in many countries, as now people use this platform every day no matter where they are. 

Below we will list all ways of monetization that can help your app gain money, as Uber eats does. 

• Standard Delivery Fee OR Convenience Fee: Uber Eats takes a flat delivery fee from its users irrespective of the order value. The charges usually vary from $1 to $5 depending on the target market they are operating in.
• Periodic Revenue Share from Partners: This platform takes a cut of 15% to 40% on each order that is fulfilled from the restaurant and cafes. Uber Eats chooses the percentage of the commission according to the age and maturity of the target market.
• Advertising Fee from Partners: This food delivery app also helps chosen partners attract more consumers and significantly increase user base by offering customer-facing brand campaigns, informed social posts, and email marketing to Uber’s rider base.

Even though the cost of developing a food delivery app might seem big for small enterprises, If you have already run a restaurant business, the bulk of your overhead is already set. The average costs are around 25% for staffing, approximately 25% for rent/bills/marketing, and about 25-30% for food, with total costs of 75-80%. According to the type of restaurant you have, you can turn a profit of up to 20%. 

Therefore, if you opt-out of delivery, you will get most of the same basic costs. However, if you develop a mobile app, you will make more profit. Based on the latest revenue focused on the uber eats cost breakdown, a successful app will cover your spendings within a few months, approximately 3-4, with an average daily income that is established by Uber eats. 

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5 Factors Affecting the Cost of Developing a Food Delivery App

Before launching a new food delivery application, you must conduct a lot of research and planning if you expect a high return on investment. This is why we collected these main features that Uber eats include in their app, which affects the cost of building a food delivery app.

Real-time location tracking

This feature is not a must-have for any app, but if you want to create something that will gain interest, you should consider it. Using this option, users will not just track the order but also have peace of mind on the approximate time in completion of the order delivery. This feature is beneficial not only for the customers, but restaurant owners will also be more aware of the current situation of the delivery boy.

Push Notifications

Notifications are included in our daily lives, like many applications that we have used to inform us about different things. The same happens with food delivery apps. Starting from the order acceptance till the receiving an order, every step could be notified to the customer using the push notifications. This is especially useful today as most people are not keen on calls and prefer to be informed via messages.

Real-time analytics

This feature will definitely affect the cost of making a food delivery app, as it is powered by DB infrastructure and algorithms. However, it can also lead to improvement of the whole business process because its integration helps in carrying out the different types of analysis related to this sphere. They include revenue reports, driving business by the number, revenue projections, and many more.

Payment systems

The payment system is a must-have feature that should be implemented in the food delivery network. Although it also affects the cost of uber eats like app development, this option can also help your product become better out of the rest of the competitors. This system helps in making it possible to include all payment options available today. This also eases the payment process.

CMS for news and articles

CMS is a Content Management System – software that is widely implemented to create and modify content on a certain website. As a rule, a CMS serves more than one customer in a joint collaborative environment, where each user will get access either to special features or all vital ones to create, read, update and delete content. Since many kinds of write-ups regarding the applications are maintained by the admin, the CMS system can manage their own as well as restaurant write-ups.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Food Delivery App like Uber Eats or Similar

Even though there are many factors that together add on to the estimation of food delivery app development prices, we will try to bring you a better idea of how much would it cost to start a food delivery app – the answer to which will be a rough guideline. 

Depending on the features you are looking to add to your food delivery mobile app and the resources that you would need to get your app transformed from the idea to the launch phase, the cost of developing a food-delivery service like Uber eats would come out somewhere around $35,000 to $40,000.

This amount of money won’t look so astonishing when we look closer at the development team and their prices one by one. Let’s stick to an average price for a complete team that has two-three months to finish the project. Your project will need the following members:

3 Front-end engineers for inner mobile app development (30$/hour);
2-3 Back-end engineers for AP, controlling communication and payment system within the app (30$\hour);
UX/UI designers for the valuable design of the app (15-20$/hour);
DevOps engineers for controlling mobile functionality (50-60$/hour).

However, when you hire an outsourced team or a company specializing in app development, the cost is usually lower than we mentioned. You should also remember that when you consider food delivery app development, you have to find a team with an appropriate background, so your app will contain all the essential features for success. 

How Interexy Provides a Food Delivery App Development Cost Estimate

Interexy is an experienced development company that highly values each customer’s needs and preferences during the onboarding process. As one of the most renowned outsourced brands, we also strive to provide a clear picture for our clients on how much will it cost to build an app like ubereats with our engineers. Below we will list each step that we proceed with customers to help them get through the whole process easily and quickly with peace of mind every time. 

First of all, after onboarding, we explain to our clients a pre-sale for their project. If they agree and approve everything we listed, the pre-sale document goes to our in-house business analyst to make sure every minor point that a client wants is included. After being approved by both sides, our BA creates a backlog with key points and gives a customer a new and more detailed version of the project. 

Once it is done, we go through the process of designing a specification with every user story while also crafting a sample for our niche-down engineers. Since we have great experience with app development, we choose a practice-proven PERT estimation that ensures that our company will follow all deadlines. When this stage is finished f, our developers evaluate the project with a confidence level (from 1 to 6) and hours for all – worst, most probable, and the best case.  

When they are ready, the BA deduces the final cost that also contains risks, PEM integration, and a QA job. Therefore, the customers will see and approve the project with all mentioned outcomes. Since we know how busy our customers are, we always go the extra mile and provide them with a final cost smoothly and within only 1-3 days. 

Do not hesitate to contact our team if you have any questions on food delivery app development or if you are ready to bring your idea to this booming market. 

Our Experience

As we discussed how much does delivery food app cost with our team, it is time to show you the exact script on how we produced a custom delivery mobile app for one of our beloved clients – One Rover.

The task was to create an application that will allow users to send any “things” with just a few taps on their mobile device. The main issue we faced during the development process was to give access to the global courier network of Rover+ within one service. Our engineers, with great experience in this space, decided to integrate a detailed turn-by-turn GPS Navigation in an app from Google to provide an enhanced traveling experience.

Today One Rover is a leader in Rideshare cost savings, options, and satisfaction. The app we designed provides robust commute options to One Rover platform users in boundless locations around the world.

Final thoughts

If you consider entering the most profitable niche today and wonder how much does it cost to develop a food delivery app, we’ve got you covered. This article outlines everything you need to know before creating an app and explains the exact features and prices you have to regard at the very beginning. And if you are here and not sure to make this on your own, our Interexy team is always there for any ideas you have.