Food Apps Blog - 2022

How to start an online grocery delivery business in 2021

Grocery items are the daily needs items without which we can’t live whether there are restrictions, lockdowns, or spreading of corona-like infections. Yes, these days way of shopping has been charged, customers start using online shopping platforms for the delivery of orders at their doorstep which eventually safe for them and shop owners too.

There are plenty of reasons why the customer wants online shopping these days – it can be a time crunch due to professional work, safe to place online for avoiding any human touch do to corona, the customer spends that time on some other important work or with their family, etc.

Here the opportunity of the Online Grocery Delivery platform comes into play to serve online shoppers of grocery items. The online grocery delivery platform provides services of online ordering via a website or mobile apps and schedules the deliveries of orders at a preferred time by the customer. Customers don’t need to physically visit the grocery store, even not come into the store for an hour to select items, they just select an order from an online grocery catalog and place orders and items delivered to their home or office.

It’s not just grocery but it includes all daily items like fruits, vegetables, cosmetics, beverages, milk products, wellness medicines, bakery products, processed food & much more.

How to start an online grocery delivery business in 2021

During & after the coronavirus period, the online grocery delivery business is not a new thing for your customer but this has become normal for all customers now. They are habitual of the grocery delivery apps, grocery delivery marketplaces.

Index of Content

1. Register your business name & brand entity
2. Discuss & Finalize your business model
3. Tech solutions for your Grocery marketplace business
4. Decide Revenue Model for the online grocery business
5. Ready with your Business Branding Assets
6. Hire an average technical staff
7. Marketing your business

So if you want to open an online grocery delivery business you need to go through these primary steps to establish a profitable business.

1. Register your business name & brand entity – Register your business with your local tax authority and complete all necessary compliance with them. This is necessary for opening a business brand. This creates an authentic image and trust for your business among your customers. Paying your taxes as per compliance of your government is necessary to avoid future complexes when you grow big.
   
   Business Branding ensures or safeguards your business from competitors and helps in sales also with your customers. Customers remember the brand name that provides them good services. Each of your communication, digital assets, even delivery boys dressing should speak about your branding. A professional branding is required because this is your business brand that can make or break your business.
   
2. Discuss & Finalize your business model – For instance, which business model you want to follow. You want to provide grocery supplies to businesses or direct end customers? Direct end customer’s market is big enough to take you large scale online grocery delivery business. But it needs some efforts in advertising and there is a little cost investment in acquiring new customers. Whereas when you decide to sell supplies to businesses you need to toe up with suppliers as well as targets businesses where you would like to work with. That is very tough because all businesses already dealing with some suppliers and they put numerous questions about why they will switch to your business. Few different business models are as follows:
   
   a. You provide delivery services – Customer places orders on your marketplace platform, it will reach to your registered vendors and your delivery boys handle all the deliveries of the orders. You will charge the delivery fee & commission from each order from the vendors.
   
   b. You provide platform services & your vendor arranges deliveries themselves. – Here you can charge a commission from each order and delivery will be handled by the vendor’s own drivers.
   
   c. Commission or Monthly Subscription fee – You have two options for charging fees from your registered vendors for providing an ordering platform to them. Either you can charge a fixed amount per order or a fixed percentage of each order or a monthly subscription fee from the vendors that work with you.
   
3. Tech solutions for your Grocery marketplace business – This is a digital world and you have plenty of options these days in the tech domain. There are primary two ways to procure these digital applications. One is custom app development or procures ready white-label grocery delivery solutions.
   
   Grocery Delivery Marketplace Solution
   
   Tech solutions you need for the online grocery delivery business? –
   
   a. Multi-Vendor Online Grocery Ordering Website.
   b. Multi-Vendor Grocery Delivery Mobile Apps (iPhone & Android).
   c. Web Backends for Your Vendors.
   d. Master Admin Panel to control everything.
   e. Order Management Vendor Mobile Apps (iPhone & Android).
   f. Rider Mobile Apps (iPhone & Android)
   g. Delivery Management Web Console.
   
   What options you have to get them?
   
   a. Custom Application Development – This is the model when you hire a development company to design & develop applications as per your specifications from scratch. This needs complete instructions on what you want the to UI look like and what all features you like to be developed. Cost-wise this is expensive and would take at least 4 – 5 months for the full development of applications or depends on your requirement.
   
   It cost around $20,000 – $30,000 depends on your requirements of features and applications you want.
   
   b. Ready-Made Solutions – There are many companies who have expertise in it and already developed all these solutions. They white-labeled them in your business brand and sell for reduced one-time cost or monthly subscription plans. Getting these solutions by paying the reduced one-time cost is beneficial for your business as you can take outside investors to grow your business as you own the applications and have full control over your customers. Food application developer company take your logo, brand each solution as per your branding and get ready them for your grocery delivery business.
   
   This is a quicker way to launch your business in the market and you can get your applications within 10 – 15 days.
   It cost around $2000-$3000 only… You can reach them Online Grocery Delivery Marketplace Development Company for the ready grocery delivery marketplace solutions.
   
4. Decide Revenue Model for the online grocery business – Revenue for every business is an important aspect. You should work on the revenue model before launching your online grocery delivery business. Here are a few ideas on how you can earn in the online grocery delivery marketplace business. You can use any one of them or use all case-to-case basis or vendor-to-vendor basis.
   
   a. Fixed or Percentage-based commission – You can charge a fixed amount per order or can charge a percentage of order as a margin from each order for providing your services to the vendors. This is the most popular method because vendors not need to pay you any advance without seeing the results from your platform.
   
   b. Monthly subscription fee – You can craft different plans and your vendor can opt for any one of them and start paying you monthly, quarterly or yearly fees instead of commissions from each order.
   
   c. Ad / Banner / Sponsor Listings fee – You can advertise the vendor on a premium section of your website or mobile apps. You can charge the vendor additional for this advertising. You can give them a preference to become top in searches or in the featured section of the home page of your web portal and mobile apps.
   
   d. Delivery Fee – When a vendor opts to use your drivers for delivery then you can charge them a delivery fee, obviously, that delivery fee should cover your driver cost, your margin, and actual fuel cost.
   
   e. Social Media Marketing – Another way to provide 3 – 4 different plans of marketing grocery businesses over social media like Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. these plans mostly come in the form of monthly subscription plans.
   
   f. Branding solution – You can provide pre-made packages for branding of the grocery businesses. Such as business flyers, business catalogs, business visiting cards, QR codes marketing, etc.
   
5. Ready with your Business Branding Assets – After selection of the above course you have to first ready with your brand logo for the development company and other marketing efforts. This is very important for your online grocery business. Hire some branding guy on fiverr.com who will ready your logo, App icons, favicons, stationary material, app splash screens, app store screenshots, social media assets, etc.
   
6. Hire an average technical staff – This step is not essential in the initial phase of your business launch but if you can afford you can hire an average tech guy for your business who will understand the technology, set up your vendors with their catalog on the website and mobile apps. Assist your vendor in handing the tech solutions. Simple data entry staff also works for this work. or you can also handle this stuff yourself as in the initial stage workload is less.
   
7. Marketing your business – After getting your all assets and tech solutions in place on the live domain and app store, you should start meeting with grocery vendors, get them enrolled for your services, Initially 50 – 100 vendors required to get going. then start marketing your business on Facebook, Google for the traffic of real customers.
   
   CONCLUSION:
   
   Due to the current phase of corona now customers are used to opting for online delivery services, this is a good time to start your own passive business online. The online grocery delivery business is lockdown safe and runs even in state lockdowns. Start with a Ready online grocery delivery platform that is less in cost and when you grow big you can get your custom applications with more money.