How Much Does it Cost to Develop App Like UberEATS

The rise of on demand food delivery apps has changed the fate of the food industry.

In fact, the speed at which the online food delivery industry is growing, it clearly shows that the online food delivery demand will surpass the offline demand in a matter of next 3 or 4 years.

And no, don’t just take our word for it, the statistics prove it as well.

The above graph confirms how big the market already is, and how bigger it will become in the next 3 to 4 years.

The best part is, you can equally leverage this demand for online food delivery by developing a food delivery app like UberEATS.

We know for the fact that as someone who is just starting up and aspires to join the list of top players in the on demand food delivery app industry, it is necessary to know how they attract customers, retain them, and make money.

So, in order to help you build food delivery app like UberEATS and make sure it becomes a success, we’ve created the most-detailed Food Delivery App Development guide on the entire Internet.

We went above and beyond to create this expert-guide and you will agree to that once you read it.

So, if you’re serious about launching your own food delivery app startup like UberEATS, we strongly recommend you to read that guide first and then come back to this blog to know the actual cost to develop food delivery app of your own.

In that guide, we’ve shared the success formula of UberEATS and other popular food delivery apps and we’ve also shared how you can replicate their business model.

(Read the guide already?)

Great! Let’s jump onto the subject without wasting any time.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop An App Like UberEATS

How UberEATS Makes Money (And How You Can Follow Their Strategy)?

If you’ve read our guide on Food Delivery App Development, then you know that most of the popular food delivery apps are built around order + logistics-based business model.

In this model, you not only provide access to multiple restaurants to your customers, but you also handle the delivery part as well.

Now, when it comes to making money, UberEATS has following multiple streams for generating steady revenue.

1 – Delivery Fee from Customers

The UberEATS charges a flat fee for delivery for each order. But in addition to that, they also add a surcharge during peak hours.

Peak hours are usually the Lunch & Dinner hours at which most people order food online. And what UberEATS does is, they limit the restaurants in their app during peak hours and if customers still want to order food from those certain restaurants, they need to pay a little extra on top of their total bill.

However, for someone like you who is just entering the market, we strongly advise not to charge extra at those peak hours. In fact, not charging extra at peak hours could be one of your biggest USP.

You can market your app around the idea that unlike UberEATS, you don’t charge any hidden & extra fees, and you promise to deliver the customers’ favorite food from their favorite restaurants even during the peak hours.

To prove that this idea could totally work, consider the case of Gett, for example.

As you can see, Gett has made “no surcharge” their main unique selling proposition to market their app.

Here’s another one:

See?

Today, Gett has reached $1 Billion in revenue.

2 – Revenue Sharing with Restaurants

Another way UberEATS earns itself revenue is through a recurring revenue sharing model.

In this model, UberEATS takes a cut for the orders that were fulfilled by UberEATS. This commission percentage is typically between 15% to 40%, based on the maturity of a specific market.

3 – Advertising Income

In addition to the delivery fee & revenue sharing model, UberEATS has one more business model that helps them generate millions of dollars in revenue.

In the advertising model, UberEATS basically charge their restaurant partners a marketing fee to list them on top among the restaurant list.

Now, since more and more restaurants have witnessed the power of food delivery apps and the number of orders they can bring to them, restaurants are more than happy to pay for being listed on top.

In fact, this revenue has proven to be the most successful one, among all food delivery app business models.

Certain Challenges You Should Know About Before Entering The Food Delivery App Market

At this point, you know everything there is to know about food delivery app development except for one thing!

The mountains you need to climb to reach the top. These challenges are not so challenging though, you just to need to know them so that they don’t come out to attack you out of blue.

1 – High Competition

Since there are already too many food delivery app startups out there, competing with them will be the biggest challenge.

So, in a situation like this, you’ll have to offer something unique than all your competitors in order to attract people to download your app. Here, you can consider the Gett strategy we discussed above.

If that strategy doesn’t feel enough to attract customers (which it isn’t, but it could add tremendous value though!), you can also consider offering something unique in terms of features as well as user experience.

2 – Finding Restaurants to Partner With

This may come as a roadblock in the beginning, as most of the popular restaurants don’t get involved without knowing concrete data like the number of users your app has for example.

So, what you can do at this point is, you can focus on restaurants that are in high need for extra orders and free promotions and provide coupons for those restaurants to attract customers.

In short, focus on increasing the restaurant count instead of adding well-known restaurants on your list. That part can come a little bit later.

3 – Finding an Experienced Mobile App Development Company to Build Your App

You already know the truth. – There are way too many app development agencies around the world. But don’t let this fact be any relief as it will be more difficult for you to choose the right agency.

For example, there are many agencies which could develop your app at much cheaper rates, but the result won’t be promising. Therefore, it’s always best to find a mobile app development company that already has experience in building some sort of on demand app.

Credencys has developed multiple on-demand applications for various industries.

For example, we developed a taxi booking application for a San Francisco based Taxi company.

We’ve also developed an on demand courier delivery app for a Singapore based startup.