How Much Does It Cost To Develop A Mobile Application Like GrubHub

GrubHub is a food delivery application that allows you to order food and beverages from the restaurants that are located in your city. You can check and order through the menus of various restaurants that are linked with the application. The app charges you a nominal delivery fee and delivers your food wherever required.

GrubHub is a Chicago based company that was founded by Mike Evans and Matt Maloney in the year 2004 as an alternative for the paper menus. In just a little time span of 3 years, the company spread its reach to San Franciso. Year after year, the company showed remarkable success in terms of its growth and market strategies.

In August 2011, the company officially relaunched its app to mobile ordering and payment solution provider. This was a huge step for the company, but they had enough revenue and user base to lean on to this step. Just 5 years down the lane, the company not doubled but tenfold its revenue and became the number one food ordering app in all of the USA. Ever since GrubHub has achieved many new milestones and is amongst the top multi-billion industries.

This is an excellent time to be in the food delivery business. The earnings that can be made through such companies are huge, wherein the initial investment is a lot lesser than any other business and the profits are considerably high. Applications such as GrubHub make their profits using the following ways.

The very first way through which apps like GrubHub makes money is through the delivery charges that are paid by the customer. The delivery charge can be anywhere between 20-40% of the total amount. Customers are always happy to pay the amount for the service as they are getting their food without even stepping out of their house. A majority of the delivery fee is paid to the delivery workers and a little share is kept by the delivery company.

GrubHub, in particular, takes a commission fee of 12.5% on every deal from the restaurant. The commission can range anywhere between 5 to 15% depending upon the popularity of the service and the restaurant itself. This is a major source of earning for the delivery companies. Some restaurants that have good ratings even pay extra commissions to the delivery companies for priority deliveries.

Another way through which the companies like GrubHub make money are the advertisements. As the user base of such apps is large, playing advertisements on the application helps in getting a good chunk of money. Advertisement companies have different rules and regulations and that can be managed with the ad regulators.

There are certain hours of the day or during a special holiday when the demand is higher, then the company charges an extra delivery amount. This is usually paid by the user. Some companies even charge 1.5 the amount of the fee that they regularly charge. This is also a way through which the companies make a good income for their services.

When you think of building an application for a business that is already a real-life concept, then you need to think out of the box. You must include some additional features in the application so that the customer can find something new to try and therefore end up having your application on your phone. If you will build the same app as before, then it is no good for the user and there it gets quite unlikely to gain popularity among the masses for such an application.

Some of the features that you can include in your application are:

In the world where everything is turning towards AI, it is the right time for developing an app that has the functionality of AI. Alexa, Siri, and other voice operating software can be linked with the app so that a customer can simply order through the voice command. No application has launched this functionality in their app yet, so it will be the best time to revolutionize the way of ordering in the modern-day.

The new additional option that can be given in an app that may raise the popularity of the app is the usage of a drone system for delivering. The system can be highly beneficial in saving the time of the orders and can benefit the food delivery companies in a huge way. However, the initial investment required for it will be higher than the traditional ways and to pull off such a unique way, you might need a good financial backup.

There is no straight answer to this question. There are numerous factors like the design, time duration, and the number of features included in the app that decides the cost of building an application.

In general, terms, to develop an app like GrubHub, the cost comes somewhere between the range of $35,000 to $40,000. These costs include the Mobile application design designed for both android and iOS. The cost of developing an iOS app is usually a little higher than that of The android. The app testing and the launch of the app in the store are inclusive of this cost.

However, this cost includes the pricing for basic features like searching, ordering, favorites, coupons, real-time tracking, in-app chat, and payment portals. In case, you need to add on some more features to the app, the range may go up to 50,000$- 55,000$.

There isn’t just one application that is to be built to fulfill the need of the business, but rather you have to create a little separate version for the application for the customer, delivery worker, and restaurants.

The application that is built for the customer needs to be the most advanced version of the app. It will include the maximum features such as menus, notifications, best restaurants to order from, the turnaround time for the order, payment gateways, etc.

The appearance and the design of the app should be such that it engages the customer to spend more time on the app. The UI/UX design for the app should be interactive and appealing for a customer. The maximum time is spent in building this app and it costs around 25,000$ -30,000$ for the development of it.

An application is needed for the driver who will be taking the order from the restaurant to the customer. This application does not require a significant amount of work to be done. The framework of this application revolves around the basic functionality of receiving the order, assigning the restaurant and sharing the address of the customer. Also, it includes the amount that is to be paid by the customer or if already paid online. The interface of the app can be simple to save the cost of the app.

A web application is also needed for the restaurant that will be serving the food. They will get a notification for the order through the app and will start preparing the food. In the meantime, a driver is allotted to the order who will reach the restaurant to pick up the order. Similarly to the driver’s application, the interface of this application will be simple and the app is just built to read and acknowledge the orders from the delivering app.

An app is required for managing all the statistics and the customer base of the company. For it, back end & web services development needs to be done. For the development of it, the most amount of time is required as it will have all the data of the customer, restaurants, and the driver. The working of it should be simple and efficient.

To determine the accurate cost of the application, the formula is simple

Data Storage : Each user will have a separate account and to store the data and history of the user, a database is required to be linked with the application.

Payment Gateways : Payment plays a major role in any application as it is the basis of earning the money. So it is required for an app to include that more and more gateway options in the app. Also, the payment gateway must be simple to use so that the customer does not find any trouble in ordering the food. Also, a database needs to be maintained in the user’s application that will help in keeping the storage of details of various payment accounts of the user.

Location Detection : This is a must include feature in the application. The times are gone when you had to call and tell the directions of your location. It is the world of smartphones now and it is required for an app to have the functionality of detecting the location of the customer on its own. So this is a feature that can never be neglected in a food ordering app.

When developing a food ordering app, it is essential to do good research on the development process. Some important aspects that must be considered are:

While developing the app, you must analyze the market and the competitors in the area in which you are about to establish your business. You have to think of providing more features than the existing services been given by your competitors.

The business of food ordering apps works totally on the food partners that are in association with your app. So, it is most important to link your services with the best restaurants in the area.

Marketing is a necessary phase of any business and you need to make a good plan for the marketing of your app before it has even been designed.

Before you put your footsteps into the market, you should think of all the possibilities that can go wrong and also keep up with backup solutions for the same.

It is not a cakewalk to develop a food ordering app. It requires a high level of commitment and passion to go through all the checkpoints to finally reach the last step. But if one sticks to their goals and be consistent in it, it can be highly profitable in the long run. Good Luck!