How to Launch Online Food Delivery Business in 2022 – a complete blueprint
Due to COVID-19 people are staying indoors and are ordering food online and are spending on off-premises orders like a drive-through, curbside pickup, take-away, or delivery. Although the takeout and delivery were already popular before the COVID-19 when social distancing and lockdown were not there. But nowadays as people are more cautious and are taking all safety measures to stay safe food ordering, food delivery and takeaway are likely to increase more.
On the other note, Technological development has created an impact on every aspect of the lives of people and the food industry is no exception. It has been identified from the latest studies that there has been a tremendous impact of technological developments on the food industry during the past few years.
Technology is the force that has led to a lot of innovations in today’s world. In some industries, technological advancements have been accepted at a slower rate in comparison to others. The food industry is also one that is making use of technology and transforming it into the digital world.
Looking at such a scenario many food delivery marketplace businesses are cropping up to meet the demand and help the restaurants keep their kitchens open. Online marketplace food delivery is growing exponentially and if you want to enjoy the benefits of this market you may need to launch an online food delivery service.
Below are the few tips which you should see for starting an online food delivery business:
- Look for Areas that have Signs of Demand: To find out the right area for your business you need to survey your potential customers. You may offer services temporarily to assess the demand. Apart from this, you can also look at the other signs of demand such as find if people living in that particular area are having access to the internet, disposable income, have smartphones because to order food through online delivery they need to have all these things.
Talk to your nearby restaurant businesses, what problem they are facing presently, it’s a low count of orders, high charges from other delivery businesses like Swiggy, Zomato, Deliveroo, etc. Dine-in restaurant suffers the most in this corona period, motivate them to start their kitchen and start curbside pickup & delivery orders to sustain.
- Find Your Niche: Food delivery business runs a range of activities from farm-to-table to meal kits to restaurant delivery orders. So, once you have decided which area you are going to target next is finding a niche. Decide whom you are going to target; whether you want to target individual entrepreneurs working in offices or want to focus on big corporate deals.
Corporate deals can bring you a fixed number of meals every day for their employees. You may focus on some specific kinds of food such as raw food, low-carb diet, Keto diet, or any other diet.
- Define your Approach: There are several ways to approach the food delivery business. You must define your approach. It all depends on your budget. How to manage your spending for example you need funds to develop your food delivery market place applications, then marketing of your business among your nearby restaurant, restaurant sign-ups, manpower who will handle menus, customer calls, etc.
Approach to set up your own Market Place Business Applications:
Applications Required :
1. Food Ordering Marketplace Web Portal
2. Web backend Panel for Restaurant Staff to Manage Menu, Customers, Orders, etc.
3. Master Backend Panel for Platform Owner Staff to manage each and everything of the system.
4. Delivery Management Web System to manage orders & their deliveries from different delivery guys
5. Marketplace Food Ordering Mobile Apps – iPhone & Android
6. Order Management Kitchen App – iPhone & Android
7. Delivery Guy Mobile App – iPhone & Android
How do you set up or procure these applications for your business from known IT development companies?
There are two ways:
1. Custom development of applications required to automate marketplace business from scratch. Which will also take considerable time & money efforts. A full fledge custom food ordering marketplace application development will take around 5 – 6 months in development and require around $15000 – $20000 funds when you get it done from offshore companies.
2. White Label Food Ordering Market Place Apps: This is an optimum solution if you are starting a new marketplace business. Here you will get pre-tested and well-coded Market Place applications in your business branding at less cost & in less time. It hardly costs you $2000 – $2500 & can get ready in 10 – 30 days only. You can feel the applications in advance before making the purchase whereas in custom development you will feel the product after it developed for you.
- Your Online Delivery Services must be Mobile Friendly: The use of smartphones is increasing at a rapid rate and the growth is expected to reach more than ever before at the end of this year. So, make sure that your online delivery services are mobile-friendly in order to reach your consumers. You should optimize your website for mobile and check how it looks on different tablets and smartphones. See if customers are able to see your offerings, look if the order process is intuitive, and all other things are working fine or not. This is necessary in order to make sure that consumers can easily order food without any hassle.
- Hire Delivery Persons: You will need reliable drivers who can deliver food to the customers quickly and safely after the order is successfully placed by the customer and accepted by the restaurant. Initially, you can start with one or two drivers but depending on the size of your business you will need to hire more drivers.
Don’t forget to make sure that the delivery persons you are hiring have a license. Check their records if they have any history of accidents or driving violations. Also, train them in basic customer service skills so that they can boost customer satisfaction.
- Do Proper Marketing: Use social media for building awareness about your online delivery business because in today’s time social media platforms are the best way to create awareness and communicate with your consumers. Launch marketing campaigns on social media, if possible put your company name or large magnets of your website on the delivery person’s vehicles.
Online food delivery is one of the fastest-growing marketing strategies for many business people in terms of making profits. As we all know that food is the basic need of every human being for which he or she struggles in his or her daily life. The main problem is that people lack time these days as they have busy schedules so they don’t get time to cook or time to go out to have their meals.
Also, in the current situation of the coronavirus pandemic, people are avoiding going out even if they have time as they don’t want to get exposed to the risk of getting infected from this fatal disease. So, they look for a convenient way to order and get their food delivered to their doorstep. Knowing this thinking of people if you are also thinking of launching your online food delivery business then just keep in mind the above-mentioned points and be ready to reap the benefits of the online food delivery business.
Thank you for such an informative blog!!well explained .