Essential Features of Food Delivery Applications in 2023

The modern-day lifestyle is very hectic and fast-paced owing to which people are not finding the time these days to do their daily chores like cooking, washing their clothes, shopping for groceries, etc. In such a scenario, the features of food delivery app have emerged as a convenient food delivery solution for those who want to enjoy a delicious meal without the hassle of cooking or going out to eat. These apps offer a wide range of features that make ordering food a seamless and enjoyable experience.

Hence, people have turned towards smart mobile apps to carry out their daily chores. Food delivery apps are one type of smart apps that serve people’s daily requirements. Hence, there is a huge demand for food delivery services via high-end food delivery apps in India and around the world.

So, if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, this is a great time to try your hands at the food delivery business and mint money in the industry. Developing a basic food delivery app will give you only a small success or a marginally positive ROI. However, developing an advanced and fully-featured food delivery app will help you beat your competitors and give you a very high ROI.

So, how exactly do we identify high-end food delivery apps from the rest of the lot? The best-in-class food delivery apps will have at least three variants of the app and a plethora of convenient features that benefit customers as well as online food delivery business owners. We shall discuss them in detail in the coming section.

Modern Day Food Delivery Application Features

Modern Day Food Delivery Application will have at least three variants of them and the following sophisticated and convenient features to make life easy for customers as well as online food delivery business owners.

Customer App

The customer app variant of a top-notch food delivery app will have the following convenient features to make the process of food ordering child’s play for customers.

Registration on the app: Customers can register themselves on any food ordering app by giving some of their basic details like their names, addresses, mobile numbers, or email ids. Logging into the food ordering app is done usually via OTPs to minimize the threat of users’ accounts being hacked.

Food delivery apps which provide for a dedicated account password should also incorporate the “Forgot password” option to enable users to reset their respective passwords in case they would have forgotten it.

Features Of Food Delivery Applications In Restaurant

Showing restaurants nearby: Once the user has logged into the food ordering app, the app will display some of the restaurants in the user’s vicinity. The suggested restaurants displayed could be based on the user’s past orders or preferences.

In case the user decides to try a new restaurant or cuisine, he or she can search for restaurants or cuisines according to their respective categories on the food delivery app. If the user finds even that to be difficult, he or she can simply type the name of the Food Delivery Applications In Restaurant and relevant results will be displayed.

Estimated cost display and order placement: Once the customer decides upon his or her restaurant to order from, he or she can then browse the restaurant’s menu and start adding food items to the cart.

Every time a new food item is added to the cart, the estimated total cost of the order is updated on a real-time basis on top of the cart icon. Features of Food Delivery Applications ensures that customers spend only what they are prepared to spend on their food order. Once customers have added all the food items they want to the cart, they can go ahead and place their orders.

Order scheduling: Most of the time, customers would want their orders to be delivered as soon as possible but sometimes, customers may want their orders delivered at a later time in the day. In such a scenario, the order scheduling feature comes in handy.

For example: if today is your dear wife’s birthday and you have the cake cutting ceremony at 8:00 PM. There’s no guarantee that the desired cake type will be available if you choose to order it at 7:00 PM. If the desired cake item becomes unavailable at the time you choose to order, it could ruin the day for your wife and for you as well.

Instead, if the cake item is available in the morning, before you get ready to go to your office, you can order the cake item then and schedule its delivery between 7 and 7:30 PM when you’ll be (should be) back in your home. That way you can ensure that your wife’s red letter day becomes memorable. So, the order scheduling feature is truly very useful in certain situations.

Live order tracking: This is perhaps the most elaborate, advanced, and important feature in the customer app. It provides live order status updates to customers via in-app notifications.

Users can also track the location and movement of their respective delivery executives in the food delivery app. This feature keeps customers informed and prevents anxiety for them.

Swift and secure online payments: Customers these days are spoilt for choice when it comes to paying for food orders via online means. Food delivery apps these days have a plethora of swift and secure online payment options embedded in them to ensure that the payments for food orders are made by any online means. Even the Cash on Delivery (CoD) payment option is available to accommodate orthodox customers.

Ratings and reviews: Food delivery apps enable customers to give their ratings and reviews for the food orders delivered. This is an effective way for food aggregator businesses to know which restaurants are performing well and which restaurants are not and address the ones that are not performing well.

This feature also enables customers to voice out their suggestions and complaints regarding the respective food orders delivered and ensure that they get the quality of product and service they had paid for.

Reorder: Food delivery apps these days are very smart. They save customers’ past orders and preferences so that if customers think of reordering the same, they can do so by just clicking the ‘Reorder’ button. The reorder feature saves a lot of time and effort for customers.

Offers and loyalty programs: This is the feature that customers like the most because it enables them to save a lot of money. If your online food ordering app has appealing offers and an enticing loyalty program, they will heighten your customer retention and brand loyalty, which will give you umpteen benefits in the long run.

Delivery App

The best food delivery application will have features that are required by delivery executives to seamlessly execute their customers’ orders. They are as listed below.

Essential details registration: The essential details of delivery executives like their names, addresses, blood groups, mobile numbers, qualifications, etcetera will be registered on the delivery app and the company’s backend database to provide any form of assistance in case the delivery executive meets with an accident or any other form of disaster.

Certain details of delivery executives like their names, contact numbers, and the languages known to speak will be displayed on the customer app so that customers can contact their respective delivery executives to know their order statuses or to provide assistance if needed.

Option to accept or reject orders: Modern day food delivery apps enable delivery executives to accept or reject their customers’ orders based on their current availability.

Customers’ orders can be rejected if the delivery executive’s shift is drawing to a close, if he or she is facing any health issues at that time, if the delivery executive’s vehicle or mobile phone has broken down, if the route to the customer’s palace is jammed or too treacherous, etc. Casual rejection of customers’ orders is not allowed.

Order status update: This features of food delivery app enables delivery executives to update their current status on the delivery app like ‘en-route to restaurant’, ‘waiting at the restaurant’, ‘order picked up’, ‘en-route to deliver the order’, ‘restaurant delaying the order’, ‘item/s not available’, and ‘order delivered’.

The corresponding notifications will also be given on the customer app on a real time basis. This feature minimizes the calls to delivery executives, Keeps Customers Informed (KCI), and prevents anxiety for them.

Accurate GPS enabled navigation: This is perhaps the most important features of the delivery app. It enables delivery executives to accurately navigate to their respective customers’ locations and deliver their respective orders on or before time. This feature aids in preserving the integrity of the online food delivery business.

Option to rate customers: This option is provided on modern day food delivery apps because sometimes, even customers misbehave with delivery executives. In such a scenario, delivery executives can give their ratings and comments on misbehaving customers and they will be banned from the food delivery app. This feature safeguards the human rights of delivery executives and heightens their brand loyalty.

Performance and payments tracking: The delivery app variant enables delivery executives to track their payments and the number of orders completed every day, week, month, or even every year. This way, they can strive to perform better and thereby earn more.

Admin App

The admin app is the most advanced and feature-rich app variant. It has the following versatile and elaborate features. They will mostly be available on the admin dashboard.

Issuing orders: Via the options on the admin dashboard, online food delivery business owners can issue orders and coordinate with their staff, partner restaurants, customers (mostly irate), and delivery executives to ensure the smooth functioning of business operations and thereby ensuring customer satisfaction.

Managing payments: Via the admin app features, food delivery business owners can make prompt payments to all their staff in various departments. They can also collect commissions from their partner restaurants promptly to ensure the smooth functioning and the profitability of their online food ordering business.

Maintaining a business database: Online food delivery business owners must maintain a live database of their business operations. This is enabled by the respective features on the admin app.

Via those database-related features, online food delivery business owners can keep a track of staff joining and leaving their business, new restaurants partnering with them, some partner restaurants getting delisted (quite rare), and other aspects of their business operations. Admin app features give online food delivery business owners granular control over their business operations.

Getting valuable business insights: The admin app will have built-in sophisticated and automated business analytical tools that give online food delivery business owners informative and actionable business insights like the number of new customers acquired, customers’ tastes and preferences, seasonal and time-based order volumes received, the discount coupons availed by customers, the statuses of various customers in the loyalty program, etcetera.

If these business insights are actioned properly, they will take the online food delivery business to the next level.

Making changes to the loyalty program: An online food delivery business’s loyalty program aids in heightening its customer loyalty and retention. Therefore, the loyalty program has to be fine tuned for its appeal and effectiveness.

The admin app enables online food delivery business owners to make changes to their loyalty program so that they can heighten their customer loyalty and retention, which will give them innumerable and invaluable benefits in the long run.

Having known the food delivery app key features, if you want to develop a fully-featured online food delivery app to mint money in the food delivery industry, kindly discuss your plans with us and we’ll get your online food delivery business off to a great start.

How We Can Help You

Features of Food Delivery Applications industry in India and elsewhere in the world is booming presently. The industry has grown manifold since making a footprint in India around 2009. The situation presently in India is such that anyone who develops a fully-featured online food delivery app can mint money in the industry.

If you’re thinking along those lines then feel free to contact us at any point in time and by any means (call, email, or WhatsApp). We have quite a few years of proven experience in the app development domain and we can certainly make you realize your business ambitions.

Our amazing app development portfolio and the exhilarated reviews that we have received from our clients speaks volumes about our expertise and professionalism in the app development domain. So, you certainly won’t be disappointed if you consult with us. And also get a demo about the features of food delivery app.