In almost every corner of the world, online food delivery is being adopted, be it Doordash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, or ChowNow. Today, food is just a tap away, 24*7 and anywhere. You can satiate your intense urge for a certain type of food; you just need to tap it on your phone and, guess what, in the next few minutes, get it to your table.
In 2022, the online delivery segment is likely to capture $339,257 million in revenue. Also, you will be surprised to know, by the end of this year, around 60% of diners are expected to look forward to ordering food online comparatively more. The Meal Delivery segment is expected to have 2,644.2 million users by 2027.(Forbes)
Witnessing these figures, we can’t expect the on-demand food industry to fall so soon. An increasing number of food delivery companies are showing interest in switching their business to an online food delivery service.
It’s a good notion to start a food delivery business, but it may not be enough. Business owners need to emerge with something new, and of course, quite unique that may make them arise in a distinctive way. To meet this objective, companies are on their way to experimenting with intercity food delivery services.
Well, let you know, the intercity food delivery concept is not a new venture, but not even so popular right now, namely Goldbelly, Zomato, JustMyRoots, and more.
You can also try your luck with this new food delivery experience to grab a big chunk of revenue, as currently, the competition is not that tough, and you can easily catch up with the pace.
Let’s get deeper and understand Intercity Food Delivery service better.
What is Intercity Food Delivery App? – Let’s Introduce
For people, obviously for us too, ‘food’ is more than just nourishment. It’s love, connection, and obviously comfort. Food brings smiles to our faces; it sets up a connection with our loved ones, even when we are away from them. It can offer you a moment of nostalgic comfort, an urge from your childhood favorite food memory.
Here arrives an intercity food delivery service that lets you order your favorite meal from the other city also. Yes, you read it right! Now, in whichever city you are, you can relive your childhood taste.
Well, it may seem to be a premium food delivery service, but for a foodaholic, it would be no less than a blessing. Besides the cost, this food delivery service will demand more than the normal time it takes for food delivery.
What is the Working of Intercity Food Delivery App?
Categorized as a national dish of the US, hamburgers are almost mostly ordered in the city.
Say you are craving this food, particularly from the USA. Even in another city, you can order it and get it delivered to your place using an intercity meal delivery service.
The intercity food delivery service setup involves two parties, the food seller and the consumer. The former one is generally a famous restaurant or dish maker who has listed his place on a food delivery website or app. Without considering the location, the customers order food from their place and receive them right there within a given timeframe.
Yes, you are getting it right. It’s a premium service for people who can bear higher pricing just to satiate their hunger for their most desired dishes. On the other edge, the food stores pay an amount to the delivery personnel to get their food delivered, but the best part is they get an opportunity to widen their customer base even from other cities.
Features of Food Delivery App that Every Restaurant App Should Have
To make your app successful, you should ensure that it’s feature-packed with all the relevant and essential characteristics.
Let’s separate the features per the participants involved in the online food delivery process.
| For Customers | |
|---|---|
| Registration | The first step that any app user needs to follow is registration. Make the process seamless and fast; otherwise, a complicated process may make the users leave the app. You can allow the users to register via their social media accounts, also. Customers would love to do that, which will increase user engagement. |
| Profile Settings | Details of customers would be essential for intercity food delivery. So, offer your customers a profile setting section in which they can append or edit personal details, like name, address, contact no., and more. |
| Restaurant Search | This app feature is the core that facilitates users to search for their favorite dishes, restaurant, and more quickly and seamlessly. |
| Edit Items in Cart | Make editing easy for users during the checkout process to let them complete their orders. |
| Real-Time Tracking | Most important one, which permits customers to track their orders in real-time. |
| Payment Processing | Make payment processing smooth, allowing your customers to pay using their debit or credit cards, UPI, or even cash on delivery (COD). |
| Connect to Delivery Persons | Your app should offer the delivery person’s contact number to your customers to ease them tget connected. |
| Order History | Let the app users review their order history to help them with reorders or other relevant details. |
| For Admin | |
|---|---|
| Registration | Same as in the customer app, here you need to allow the admins to register themselves to use your app. |
| Dashboard | It’s essential that it facilitates the admin to manage everything on the app, from customer management to delivery assignment to order drop-off. |
| Order Assigning | Admin will easily assign orders to the food delivery persons using this feature. |
| Cross-Interface Communication | It’s about making customers or courier boys notify about the order status when it’s ready for pickup. |
| Content & Order Management | Admin should be allowed to check incoming orders, update the status, enable real-time notifications, and more. |
| For Delivery Personnel | |
|---|---|
| Registration | Like Admin and customers, delivery personnel should also be facilitated to register in your food delivery app. |
| Profile Settings | Besides, the delivery boy’s profile also needs to be maintained as it would be useful for customers and admins. |
| Orders Handling | Your app should ease the courier person with a list of incoming orders with details of each, like pick and drop locations, order status, and more. |
| GPS Tracking & Navigation | For an intercity food delivery app, map integration is important, which will help the delivery personnel with order pick-up and drop-off locations. |
| Food Delivery Status Update | To provide the customers with their order status, delivery personnel should be allowed to share the food delivery status with the customers. |
| Payment Handling | Taking payments and online commission settlement will be useful for delivery personnel. Along with that, the wallet feature would permit them to receive and manage payments from the restaurant and app. |
| Delivery History | Besides, the courier boy should check the payments and deliveries using the delivery history feature on your app. |
Benefits of Intercity Food Delivery
| Boost Popularity | As intercity food delivery apps allow all-sized restaurants and food suppliers to get listed, this will help them earn increased popularity that will make them celebrated in other cities also. |
| Widen Customer Base | As such, apps will facilitate people of one city to order meals from other cities; this will lead to an increased customer base for the restaurants taking part in this experience. |
| Increased Sales | Obviously, when food stores get orders from almost all the cities, this will result in increased revenue. |
| Variety | Using such an app, the users can get exposed to a variety of dishes more than what they get within their cities. |
So, the decision of an intercity food delivery app development will assist companies in attaining various relevant benefits.
What are the Challenges Faced by of Intercity Food Delivery?
1. Transportation & Logistics
On-demand food delivery services usually deliver food packages by bike or car. But, intercity meal delivery demands the usage of air and long-distance road travel that will add an extra amount to transportation and logistic services.
2. No Food Replacement/Cancellation/Return Policy
While ordering food from on-demand delivery apps, we usually get an option for replacement/return/cancellation if food is not delivered as expected. But, in the case of intercity delivery, customers would not be allowed to perform such actions, mostly after a prescribed timeline. Well, it’s tough to accomplish this; still, if one tries to resolve this, it will demand more resources, which will again affect the cost.
3. Food Packaging & Storage
As the food is going to take one day or more than that to reach its destination; here proper food packaging would serve the purpose. Food suppliers and restaurants need to use the best, top-notch packaging and storage approach to keep the food freshness intact within.
4. Real-Time Food Tracking
As we know, with an on-demand food delivery app, users have grown used to real-time food package tracking that helps them know the expected delivery time.
When it comes to food delivery between two cities, this feature is quite difficult right now.
5. Intercity Food Delivery App Development
To engage more users and keep them engaged, an app needs to be feature-packed. The same goes with the intercity meal delivery app; it should arrive fully-featured, including all the features that are quite impossible at this point.
Growing Intercity Food Delivery Services – Top Names
1. Zomato
Zomato’s mission statement, “Better food for more people,” is on its way to its successful end, uncompromising the best quality food delivery ensuring health and safety.
Using its wide-spread network of restaurant and delivery partners and its years of experience in food technology usage and relevant insights, Zomato is already performing an intercity food delivery role. From now onwards, every customer will get his favorite culinary jewels right on his table from any corner of India within a few hours of ordering.
“We have a lot of clarity. Over the next three months, we want to be in all top cities,”.
Siddharth Jhawar, head of Intercity Legends, Zomato
“This is festival time. It is a very interesting time for people, as Diwali and New Year is coming. By festival time, we want to be present in top cities; after that, we want to take a step back and see what is the next approach,”
Siddharth Jhawar, head of Intercity Legends, Zomato
2. JustMyRoots
One of the growing intercity food delivery companies, JustMyRoots, targets delivering patron’s favorite food from anywhere in India, within cities. The brand accepts about 20+ currencies. Besides, it uses best-quality packaging solutions to keep the food fresh with no added preservatives. Right now, performing with the top 500+ brands, JustMyRoots is delivering good food and running on the pathway toward expansion.
“We wanted them to live close to those memories and those foods.”
Samiran, founder of JustMyRoots
“With JustMyRoots.com you are never away from either your favourite restaurant or your nostalgic dish cooked by your mom, we have perfected the art of interstate perishable food delivery without adding preservatives or freezing the food.”
Samiran, founder of JustMyRoots
3. GoldBelly
Available On: iOS
Goldbelly offers everything across the US. The mission is to strengthen small chefs, shops, and restaurants and inspire their passion. It provides food lovers with monthly subscriptions and meal kits for varied food types, such as bagels or pizza, along with food from varied cities. This intercity food delivery service is always set with a diverse niche for all types of diners.
Joe Ariel, the founder of Goldbelly, said, “Our mission as a company is to deliver the world’s most magical food experiences, [it’s] not to deliver the cheapest commodity food experiences.” “It’s not to deliver your lunch in 15 minutes. We want to tap into something different.”
4. Taste2Plate
Currently, one of the leaders of intercity food delivery service, Taste2Plates, facilitates vendors to register and showcase their eatables and users to order the food items they cherish eating. The brand holds an agreement with third-party logistics to deliver their orders within the city.
This year in August, Taste2Plate has spread its roots in more cities expanding its services wide and accommodating varied modifications in India’s food delivery service dynamics.
What is the Cost to Develop an Intercity Food Delivery App?
Well, we can’t put forth an exact cost to develop an intercity food delivery app. But we can at least draw an estimation; it may start with $10,000 depending on the complexity, features, and other relevant factors of the app you would like to build.
Future of Intercity Food Delivery
Currently, we are noticing varied flaws and issues in the intercity food delivery segment. But obviously, things can’t be the same ahead also. We can expect improvements and changes in this segment. Besides being new, this notion of food delivery will show its positive face, not only to the customers but food suppliers also. For the time being, we need to sit back and witness this segment expanding, advancing, and providing seamless services.
Besides, food suppliers and restaurants are experimenting with drone delivery apps also with the intent to diminish the cost and speed up intercity food delivery.
Eyeing this, yes, we can say the future of intercity food delivery is going to thrive not only in India but also worldwide.
Wrapping Lines
We hope you find this write-up quite beneficial in grasping various aspects, insights, and prospects about the new food delivery venture, the intercity food delivery service.
Also, interested business owners who have read about the top apps above, their features, and unique functionalities and are planning to develop a food delivery app should hire a food delivery app development company.
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