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Before so-called food delivery apps like Uber Eats, Swiggy and Zomato became popular, Dabbawalas of Mumbai with their simple collaborative model of delivering homemade lunch to the city professionals and workers was already well-known as a unique model built upon an everyday necessity. Over the years, an array of online food delivery apps mushroomed across India. For urban middle-class Indians ordering restaurant foods through these apps has become the new fad.
From web services to deliver homemade tiffin to the right person at the right time to deliver delicious delicacies from your preferred restaurants, online food delivery services are now able to cater to every food needs. The spectrum of food delivery apps consists of a variety of services ranging from food apps for delivering restaurant delicacies to homemade tiffin delivery apps such as Spoonjoy, Mealboat, and Fresh Menu that delivers homemade foods to your doorstep. These apps have emerged as the movers and shakers of the food industry with limitless possibilities for growth, expansion and revenue.
Understanding The Global Story Of Online Food Delivery
Around the world, the vast majority of food delivery services are mostly run through region-based portals ranging from the big ones having a nation or continent-wide presence to the delivery services that cater to the population of a single state or region.
In the US, online food delivery services dominate a considerable portion of the food delivery market. In 2015 alone, the market capitalisation of online food delivery services was $4 Bn. A recent survey indicated that alone in the US, around 43% of the customers have agreed to avail online delivery services for their food needs at different times of the day and night.
On a global scale, especially in countries with a large chunk of the affluent middle-class population, the popularity of the food delivery apps is continuously on the rise. In urban India, the overwhelming reach of mobile apps among youth and a great number of unemployed youth having scopes of employment as delivery valets became positive factors behind the popularity of such apps.
Let us list out the key growth factors for the Indian online food delivery services whether running their businesses through websites or mobile apps or both.
If you look closely, each of these factors is common to the urban Indian population who are increasingly getting into an affair with the online food delivery apps.
To understand how online food delivery services work, you need to have an in-depth understanding of their pertaining business models. Well, there is not a single type of food delivery services in India. There are quite a few different types and their differences are largely the outcome of the business models they follow.
Apart from a few innovations in the food delivery business models, grossly there are 3 main business models that are found with a vast majority of online food delivery services.
Most of the early on-demand food delivery services follow this model. According to this model, the business just works as the facilitator of order and delivery of foods between the restaurants and the customers. Gathering more orders is the key aspect of this model and as this model is not focused on value, over time the food delivery services switched to other matured models.
The integrated model focuses takes care of the entire value chain starting from the order to cooking to the delivery process. This type of services became popular for restaurants and guilds of food-makers who wanted to take advantage of the business opportunities by ordering foods directly to their customers doorstep.
According to this model, the restaurant remains responsible for both the food quality and the delivery of foods. Apart from the restaurant to customer food delivery service, this models also gave birth to hub kitchens catering to particular localities with different menu options for everyday.
This model has come up as the more mature model by addressing the shortcomings of the first-generation order facilitator model. Though this model is only focused on the delivery of food and leaves the cooking to the restaurant, it allows listing of all available restaurants based on food and order availability, quality ratings, customer preference, cuisine and several other parameters.
By listing vendor restaurants on an aggregated platform and by completely taking care of the delivery system, this model optimises the business opportunity like never before.
Those days are gone when online food ordering platforms came as a new and innovative way to catering food to the doorstep of the customers. Everyday new food ordering services are mushrooming. On the other hand, the market opportunity is still lucrative as the demands of doorstep delivery is continuously increasing.
This is precisely why, the competition is only favouring the online food delivery services with engaging website UI and smooth user experience. It is not a surprise that most of the leading online food delivery services boast of beautifully design, sophisticated and highly customer-centric websites that makes food ordering a pleasant experience.
Homepage of your food delivery website is where most customers will gather the first impression about your business brand and the ordering experience. So, homepage design needs meticulous approach to each and every component.
Let’s have a look at the key homepage features that a food delivery website should have.
Your food ordering website should make it easier for the first-time or inexperienced users. A “how it works” section should help them get oriented. The key areas this section needs to cover include the following:
This is an important area of your website to build the reputation of the service over time by using customer testimonials, reviews and ratings. In the homepage dedicate an area where you showcase the real opinions of the customers about your service.
The login/signup process should be simple and intuitive requiring quickest time to complete it. Using a pop-up with options for either one-click guest login or social login option through Facebook/Google/Twitter or traditional log-in process through email, these are the key sign-up process.
The key strength of online food delivery services is the wide range of food options representing diverse cuisines they provide. Having the exposure to a wide variety of menu and delicious food options is the biggest impetus for most customers choose online food delivery platforms. This is why, you need to give utmost importance to the food listing more than anything else.
Other key sections of your food delivery website should have the following attributes.
While a food delivery website is something you must start with, you need to have a fully-featured food delivery app sooner or later. As your customers starts coming to your platform again and again a dedicated and native mobile app will help them stay connected and give your business more sales opportunity.
A mobile food delivery app should offer all the above-mentioned features as listed and explained above. When you build the mobile app interface of your online food delivery service you need to create actually 4 different interfaces, for customers, for delivery valets, for restaurants and for the admin of the service
Customer app: This will work similar to the food delivery website for the customers and help them order food online effortlessly. Just like the website interface it will have different restaurant menus, freedom of choice with a variety of food items, different payment options and options to track orders on GPS-enabled map.
Delivery driver app: This app interface is created specially for the delivery valets who can use this to get notifications of orders allocated to them, get details of the location and payment options.
Restaurant app: This dedicated app interface for the restaurant owners help them receiving and accepting orders, keep track of the delivery valet and manage payment.
Admin app: This admin-specific app interface is in charge of controlling all other app interfaces including the ones for restaurants, delivery valets and customer orders. Apart from this the admin panel takes care of customer support, payment processing, discounts and promotions.
Online food delivery platforms will continue to prosper and become more popular as their presence is expanding beyond the hyper-smart metropolitan cities into small cities and towns of India. While big players are still focusing on the upmarket affluent urban Indian population, regional food delivery services can focus on the underserved small town population and take a large pie of this booming industry.
Source id: https://inc42.com/resources/things-to-consider-for-a-successful-online-food-delivery-business-in-india/