Wondering how much does it cost to develop a grocery delivery app and how you can venture into this thriving industry?

Most reputed mobile app development companies would ask you to pay around $25,000 to $30,000+ to create a grocery delivery app. Before jumping straight into the development process, many of you are doubtful whether it is worth it to invest in this overcrowded market where giant apps like UberEats, DoorDash, or Instacart are already ruling…?

According to the reports, online food delivery market revenue is forecasted to reach $1.22 trillion in 2024.

Moreover, the user base of online grocery delivery platforms are expected to reach over 3 billion global consumers using some sort of online food delivery service in 2024.

The need for on-demand services has given birth to many businesses and grocery delivery services are not an exception. As it is meeting the demand for convenience and getting orders instant and delivering to doorsteps, therefore, the user base keeps increasing. Many traditional businesses are looking to join the competitive market to expand their business reach.

Want to launch a branded on-demand grocery delivery app with unique feature listings in 14 days? Xicom enables you to hire mobile app developers in USA with flexible engagement models. Let’s discuss the details!

Challenges Faced By Traditional Grocery Stores

Undoubtedly, traditional grocery stores can’t be replaced by online grocery apps as they are available everywhere and a major chunk of people are still visiting these stores to buy their daily needs. But in recent times, the priorities have been shifted from meeting needs to convenience with instant deliveries. 

So if you’re in doubt about venturing into online grocery delivery services you need to understand these challenges which are digging into the need for online grocery delivery apps. Let’s get started!

• Physical stores may give a wider collection of items to the customers but they are far away from delivering convenience.
• The operation cost of physical stores, their overheads including rent, utilities, staff wages, and more leads to lower profit margins. 
• Managing inventory with the physical stores is another challenge and there will be a higher chance of going overstocking which will add up to the cost. 
• Failing to maintain the modern customer’s expectations with long lines and messy payment processes ultimately affects the customer experience.

Apart from many more reasons, traditional grocery stores look for top android app developers in USA who can help them migrate their stores to digital platforms. But how digitization is impacting it?

How Do Grocery Delivery Apps Make Retail Businesses Future Ready?

There are emerging technologies and functionalities that are making these grocery delivery apps a winning option for businesses and making them future-ready. As customer behavior is evolving, using features and technologies like AI algorithms for user behavior tracking, voice recognition, geolocation for real-time order delivery, quick 10-minute delivery and more can help you make a great way in this competitive market.

But still, if you are wondering how an online grocery delivery app can give a great push to your business and make it future-ready, then you need to check these facts and figures…

• Reports say that grocery delivery apps are contributing to be the largest segment with a projection to make the market volume of $1.20 trillion in 2024.
• It is expected that the online food delivery market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 9.04% by 2029.
• It is predicted that there will be 2.5 billion users using the grocery delivery app by 2029. 

With these stats and facts, it is clear that if you want to sustain your grocery retail business for the next decades then having a grocery delivery app is important.

Benefits of Creating an On-Demand Grocery Delivery App 

The market statistics have conveyed why investing in the grocery delivery app is important for business. But the central question is how it can benefit businesses and customers.

Well, it can benefit in both ways, let’s discuss it!

Benefits of Grocery Delivery App Development For Customers  

• Adding Convenience: The well-designed grocery delivery apps are designed to offer convenience to their customers and enable them to groceries from anywhere, anytime. With just a few taps on the mobile app, customers can order their daily needs and eliminate their visits to local stores. 

• Prevent Overbuying: When it comes to grocery shopping, overspending is common. However, with grocery delivery apps, customers can limit this and get straight to the products that they are willing to buy by accessing the search box and remaining stuck to their shopping list.

• Hassle-Free Payment Process: Online grocery delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats are integrated with multi-payment methods which allow customers to pay through an app with their choice of payment method. This way they can conveniently make payments and check out the process within seconds. 

Benefits of Grocery Delivery App Development For Business

• 10X Your Business Sales: By having a digital presence of your traditional grocery store offering automated operations and easier checkout process. 

• Wider User Reach: Expand your business boundaries beyond the local areas through online platforms and eliminate geographical limitations.

• Cost-Effective Solution: By hiring a grocery delivery mobile app development company, you can build a cost-effective solution that more or less looks like a clone app of UberEats or Instacart for initial growth. 

Developing a grocery delivery app has clear benefits for both your customer and business. But how much does it cost to create a grocery delivery app and how to make an app most easily…? 

How To Create a Grocery Delivery App?

With various options available for grocery app development, having an app no longer remains a daunting task for startups. However, the ultimate choice of the app development process depends upon your budget and timeline.

So broadly there are two broad approaches to creating a grocery delivery app, let’s get into it.

1. Get Your Grocery App Developed In 2 Weeks

If you’re a startup and looking to create a grocery delivery app but budget is the major constraint for you and want to land your app at the earliest in the market look forward to creating a clone app of any leading grocery delivery app. After that gradually consider updating it with unique functionalities and features. Usually, this type of approach of creating an app will cost between $15,000 to $17000+ as you are just replicating the existing app. 

2. Custom On-Demand Grocery Delivery App

To create a custom on-demand grocery delivery app, you need to hire a top mobile app development company in USA with the grocery app development experience. Here we have two reasons for hiring tech professionals from the USA- first, they understand the local customer behavior and second can analyze your business roadblocks and accordingly customize the app solution that adds value to your business. 

The average cost to create a grocery delivery app with a custom approach can start anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000+ and can go beyond $65,000+ depending upon the complex needs.

Essential Features of Developing a Grocery Delivery App

The grocery delivery apps are backed by 4 different app panels which work in conjunction to ensure hassle-free order placement and grocery delivery services. Each panel is developed with certain essential features and provides tools to make the app work flawlessly.

So let’s take a look at the essential features that are especially designed to make the app work flawlessly.

Customer Panel 

This is a common panel for users who work on both Android and iOS platforms. Here are the must-have features:

• User Signup: Let users sign up for the app using their email ID, mobile number, and passwords. To make it more easy and quick, you can consider social media integration and pull the information from there.
• Select the Supermarket: Allow users to browse a list of supermarkets and select any one and let them check the products available to buy.
• Geolocation: With this feature, you can either allow users to manually enter the location or let the app automatically detect the user’s location for the delivery.
• Search and Filters: Users can search for various products with their product names or select the category. Also, make their product search easier by enabling them to add multiple filters.
• Add to Cart: Allow users to quickly add the products to the cart along with the quantities. Make sure they remain at the same window while adding the products to ensure a hassle-free shopping experience. 
• Payment: Let your customer pay through multiple payment options including credit/debit cards or e-wallets and more.
• Return and Cancel: Keep the product return process easier, simple, and quick to gain the customer’s trust and let them return the product with which they are not satisfied buying. 
• Schedule a Delivery: You can also help users schedule a grocery delivery time on the calendar as per your availability. 
• Track Orders: Let customers track orders in real-time and view the status of the current delivery order.
• Track Order History: Let them reorder the products by simply fetching details from the history.
• Push Notifications: This allows users to receive notifications about everything from order confirmation to order delivery, promo codes to weekly deals, and more.
• Rate and Review: Help other customers to buy with confidence by adding reviews and ratings. 

Store Admin 

Admin controls the app functionalities from the backend to ensure that orders are well managed and timely delivered to the customers.

Here are the major features of the admin panel:

• Order Management: Let the admin view the list of all orders and notify a relevant grocery store about it. This would work in case you’re looking to build an aggregator model. 
• Manage Inventory: Manage all the product items available in store to avoid going out of stock or overstocking.
• Accept/Reject Order: Depending upon the product availability, the admin has the authority to accept or reject the order.
• Payment Management: Admin confirms the order after receiving the payment. 

Delivery Panel

This panel is for general drivers which helps them receive orders and manage deliveries. Here are the features that you can consider for this panel:

• Signup: Let delivery personnel sign up for the account using their phone number and email ID.
• Dashboard: This is where they can view all the scheduled and completed orders along with the current status.
• Order Request: Depending upon their availability, they are allowed to accept or reject the order and can pass it to another delivery person.
• GPS Navigation: Using this feature, the delivery person can easily detect the store’s and customer’s location to ensure smooth pickup and delivery.
• In–app Communication: Enable them to receive messages regarding order queries. 
• Order History: View the order summary for the past completed orders and view transactions.
• Push Notification: Let them receive notifications regarding order status or other order changes. 

These are the few essential features that you need to integrate. But for bug-free coding, you need to look for a mobile app development company in Chicago with the right experience and help you include more unique features that add up to success.

How Much Does It Cost To Create a Grocery Delivery App?

Estimating the average cost to create a grocery delivery app is quite challenging as it is more like buying a car without knowing the brand, model, or color.

The cost calculation of grocery app development can range between $15,000 to $55,000+ for a single platform. Even if you hire a React Native developer in USA, the gap will be still there but you can develop the app for both platforms at the same cost. Still, if you may ask why there is a huge gap in figures?

Well, the matter of fact is, the ideal cost to create a grocery delivery app depends upon various factors including features and functionalities, the complexity of the app, the app development team and its location, UI/UX design, app testing, and more. 

Considering all such factors, we have categorized the estimated app development cost based on complexities.

• Simple Grocery Delivery App Development: Developed with basic features and a simple user interface, which is more like an MVP. This type of app version can cost between $15,000 to $20,000+.
• Mid-Level Grocery Delivery App Version: This type of app version can be customized with a moderate level of features like in-app payment processing integration, social medium profile integration, location tracking, in-app chat/call, product cart, and more. The average cost to develop a grocery delivery app with mid-level complexities ranges from $25,000 to $35,000+
• Advanced Level Grocery Delivery App Development: The advanced app version of grocery delivery app development would take around $50,000 to $65,000+ as it is integrated with all the modern features like AI/ML capabilities, voice recognition, In-app chatbot support, and more.

Still, before you take these estimations as the final price, it is worth understanding that we are not saying that the app cannot be developed below $15,000 and cannot go beyond $65,000. It all depends on your business requirements and the type of app you want to develop. So for fair estimations, we always recommend consulting with experts and booking a free slot with us!

Summary

By the end of this blog, hopefully, you have an idea of why online grocery stores are gaining momentum over traditional grocery stores. Many businesses have realized the market growth at ease and invested in the idea of creating a grocery app like UberEats and DoodDash. 

But with so many opportunities knowing at the door, it’s not that too late to refrain. All you need is to hire a mobile app development company in Dallas and bring up your unique idea to the experts. Using emerging technologies like AI/ML algorithms, voice recognition, and more API integration, they can help you build an app that can transform the customer experience.

For more details, you can drop a query below or contact us!

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