People love to order food online, even more than going to their favorite restaurant and enjoying their meals. According to Statista, approximately 2.1 billion ordered food online in 2024. Considering this exponential growth, restaurants have also started investing in online food ordering system development.
Online food ordering systems are apps and systems that help customers browse restaurants and order food online, restaurants to manage orders, and couriers to pick up the orders from restaurants and deliver them to customers’ doorstep.
Today, if a restaurant doesn’t have an online food ordering system, it’s missing out on key opportunities for success. There are many restaurants that are already using online food management systems, and those who ain’t, are planning to use it soon in the future.
If you are also into the restaurant business and do not have a custom online food ordering system yet, then this blog is for you.
Read this blog to learn about online food ordering system, how it can help you grow your business, how you can develop a custom online food ordering and management system, and its development costs. So, let’s start.
Why Restaurants Need Food Ordering Systems
There are many wonders that food ordering systems can do for restaurants. In this section, we will discuss why restaurants must develop custom online food ordering systems.
1. Streamlines Operations
Food online ordering systems help restaurants streamline their operations. Using the single software, they can manage their orders, inventories, couriers, and even employees. They do not need to use different ledgers or digital platforms to manage their different operations; they can streamline all the operations using a dedicated food ordering system.
2. Saves Costs
Other advantages of online food ordering systems are that they can help restaurants save significant costs. If a restaurant develops an online food ordering system, it eliminates the need for paying commissions to other online platforms and saves those costs.
Also, with food ordering systems, restaurants can manage orders and inventories more efficiently and reduce wastage, further reducing costs.
3. Helps Customers Find the Restaurant
If a restaurant has a personalized food ordering system, the chances are high that customers can find the restaurant more easily, and place their orders from it.
In other online food ordering systems, such as Zomato, Uber Eats, and others, there are several restaurants listed, and chances are customers do not find you.
However, with a custom food ordering system for restaurants, customers will get engaged with only you and place orders from you, increasing your sales.
4. Facilitates Personalized Offers and Discounts
By developing food ordering systems for your restaurant, you can offer offers and discounts tailored to your customer’s preferences and your business requirements.
On other platforms, you cannot control the offers that are provided to customers; however, you can create tailored offers and discount vouchers that are created according to your business needs and can attract more customers than the former.
5. Helps Gaining Competitive Advantage
When your restaurant has a custom online food ordering system with your branding, it will help you gain a competitive advantage over the restaurants that lack it.
Also, it will make customers assume that your restaurant is more sophisticated than others, and attract their attention.
As a result, customers who prefer an exclusive dining experience, will order from your restaurant and increase its sales, helping you gain a competitive edge in the food industry.
How to Develop a Custom Online Food Ordering System
Now, that you know why you must develop a food online ordering system for your restaurant, let’s discuss the process of building it. By following the steps given below, you can build an online food ordering and management system for your restaurant.
Step#1. Define the Purpose and Requirements
First of all, you need to determine the purpose of developing your online food ordering system. The options are:
- Develop it to allow customers to order food online.
- Develop it to manage your orders efficiently.
- Develop it to manage your operations and employees.
- Develop it to communicate with your customers.
- Develop it to fulfill all the purposes mentioned above.
Similarly, you need to define the requirements. The platforms you want to develop it for; Android, iOS, cross-platform, or web-based, features and functionalities you want in your food ordering system, tech stack, and more.
Step#2. Set Up the Development Team
To successfully develop a custom online food ordering and management software, you will require in-depth knowledge of technical knowledge like programming languages, mobile app development frameworks, tools and technologies, and how the digital food platforms function.
Therefore, it is advisable that you hire top mobile app developers in India who can help you build the platform. Moreover, you can also contact a top food delivery app development company and give the project to them. They will build your custom food ordering system while you focus on your business operations.
Step#3. Design UI/UX
The UI/UX is the part of your online food ordering and management systems your users interact with. Whether the software is built for your customers or your business team to handle internal business operations, the UI/UX must be clean, well-structured, and intuitive.
Also, it must reflect your brand image, especially the food ordering system for your customers. A rich user experience will fulfill your users’ satisfaction and motivate them to use it again and again to order food from it. Hence, you must carefully design its UI/UX keeping user experience in mind.
Step#4. Develop the Food Ordering System
Once the UI/UX designing is finished, employ your mobile app developers to develop the food ordering system’s core infrastructure.
Code its frontend and backend simultaneously using the preferred programming languages. You can also leverage mobile app development frameworks, such as React Native, Flutter, or any other, to streamline the development process.
Also, integrate third-party APIs to enrich your platform with functionalities like mapping systems, payment gateways, AI-powered chatbots, personalized recommendations, and more.
Step#5. Test the Software
Post development, you need to test the finished online food ordering and management system to ensure that it is bug-free and functioning as you planned.
So, you can conduct rigorous testing to check its functionalities and performance, identify bugs or glitches, and fix them before launching it.
Step#6. Deployment
After the testing is completed, you can deploy your online food ordering system on platforms like Google Play Store and App Store, following their respective guidelines, so that people can download the software and order food.
If it is developed for your internal business use, you can deploy or integrate it with your existing software.
Also, you must promote your food ordering system to your target audience. So, leverage marketing techniques like influencer marketing, SEO, app store optimization, etc., to advertise your app and enhance its reach to the right user base.
Step#7. Maintenance and Upgradation
After you deploy the food ordering software, you need to monitor its performance and check for bugs and glitches after regular intervals. You can also refer to user feedback to get insights about how the software is working and what changes can be made.
Based on the feedback, make relevant changes. Further, upgrade the online food ordering system with advanced technologies, new UI, functionalities, and more, to provide your users something new and more so that they will keep using it and keep ordering from your platform.
Features of Online Food Ordering Management System
Features play a vital role in the success of an online food ordering and management system. Here, we have given the top features of the online food ordering system, divided into three categories; customers, restaurants, and couriers (delivery partners).
For Customers
1. List of Food Items
In this feature, customers can explore the menu of your restaurant along with the prices. You can also integrate AI to provide personalized food recommendations based on their favorite meals and past orders.
2. Search and Filters
This feature allows customers to search for their favorite meal within seconds. Also, they can use it to find your restaurant branches located nearby. Integrated voice search will enhance this feature’s functionality as well as your customer experiences.
3. Order Placement
It provides a seamless checkout process for your customers. Users can easily select the dishes they are craving, add them, customize them, and proceed to the checkout process.
4. Multiple Payment Options
Multiple payment options, such as net banking, cash on delivery, digital wallets, and even cryptocurrencies, to enable customers pay for their orders.
5. Real-time Order Tracking
A user-friendly mapping system that allows customers to track their order and estimate ETA (estimate time of arrival) for their order.
6. Order History & Reordering
Using this feature of the custom food ordering system, your customers can view what they have ordered in the past and even reorder from there, again.
7. Ratings & Reviews
Your customers can give ratings to your food, your services, and their experiences with your platform. They can also leave detailed feedback or review which can allow them to express more and you to understand more.
8. Promo Codes & Discounts
Promotional codes and discount vouchers tailored to your customers’ preferences to motivate them to order more from your online food ordering system.
For Restaurant
1. Restaurant Profile Management
Using this feature, you can manage your restaurant profile along with details like menus, business hours, images of food, and more.
2. Order Management
A crucial feature of online food ordering and management system that enables you to accept, reject, and manage orders efficiently.
3. Menu Customization
Using this feature, you can make changes to your restaurant’s menu. You can edit dishes, update images, add or reduce items, update terms and conditions, etc.
4. Real-time Order Tracking
In your food management system, you can use this feature to track the order after it is handed over to the courier. Based on the tracking, you can even estimate the time of delivery.
5. Payment Settlement
Leveraging this intuitive feature, you can track your payments, manage transactions, and process refunds to your customers if applicable, all at a single point.
6. Inventory Management
This feature of your custom food ordering and management system allows you to manage your inventories more effectively. This feature plays a vital role in reducing the chances of situations like overstocking and stockouts.
7. Ratings & Feedback Management
Using this feature, you can view your customer ratings and respond to the feedback provided by your valuable customers.
8. Report and Analytics
This feature, powered by generative AI and data analytics, allows you to generate sales reports, understand customers’ ordering trends, and help you get insights into your customers’ choices so that you can serve them better.
For Couriers
1. Courier Profile & Availability
Using this feature, couriers or delivery partners can sign up, provide and manage their details, and update their availability as on-duty, off-duty, or on-delivery.
2. Order Pick-Up and Delivery Management
Using this feature of a custom online food ordering and management system, couriers can accept incoming delivery requests and navigate efficiently.
3. Route Optimization & Navigation
GPS-enabled mapping systems that allow couriers to navigate through the routes for faster deliveries. Also, you can integrate artificial intelligence with the maps so that couriers can analyze the traffic and pick the shortest routes in real time for faster deliveries.
4. Earnings & Payment Tracking
This feature of online food ordering management systems enables your delivery partners to track and manage their earnings and count the number of deliveries they completed.
5. Customer & Restaurant Communication
This communication feature of the online food management system for restaurants enables couriers to contact customers or restaurants in case of issues. For contacting customers, calling lines are secured and diverted through third-party numbers to protect customers’ numbers.
6. Order History & Performance Metrics
This feature allows delivery partners to view their delivery history and performance scores they earned throughout their tenure.
7. SOS & Emergency Support
An intuitive feature of the food ordering and management system that enables couriers to access help in case of accidents or urgent issues.
Therefore, these are the must-have features of custom online food ordering and management systems. You can add other features that can align with your specific requirements and help you streamline your business operations.
How Much Does It Cost to Build an Online Food Ordering App
The cost of developing a custom food online ordering system ranges from thousands of dollars to over a hundred thousand dollars. Its development costs depend on various factors, such as the complexity of the system, features and functionalities, technologies and tools, food delivery app development company that will build the app, and more.
To give you estimates, the online food ordering and management system development costs are as follows:
| Platform Type | Estimated Development Costs (in $) |
|---|---|
| Simple System | $15,000 to over $35,000, or more |
| Advanced System | $40,000 to over $70,000, or more |
| Complex System | $60,000 to over $100,000, or more |
These are estimated costs of app development. To get the detailed cost breakdown for your custom food ordering system, reach out to our team.
Conclusion
Food ordering and management systems offer many benefits to restaurants. These solutions help the latter to streamline their operations, manage their teams and inventories effectively, reach and onboard new and existing customers, process out deliveries, and more. No wonder, why restaurants are heavily investing in developing custom online food ordering systems tailored to their specific needs.
In this blog, we have explained to you the benefits of developing an online food ordering system for your restaurant, a complete process to build it, and features to integrate into it. Also, we have provided the cost of developing a custom food ordering and management system for your reference so that you can plan accordingly.
So, if you are into the restaurant business and do not want to miss the opportunity to grow your business, invest in food ordering system development today. Reach out to Developer Bazaar Technologies, the top food delivery app development company in India, and create a solution that not only streamlines your business but also enhances your customers’ experiences and improves your brand image in the industry.
FAQs
Q1. What is an online food ordering system?
An online food ordering system for restaurants is a digital platform that helps restaurants manage their orders and other operations effectively. It consists of food ordering apps that customers can use to order food online, food order management systems that restaurants can use to manage orders and food delivery apps that couriers can use to deliver the order to customers’ doorsteps.
Q2. What features can be added to online food ordering and management systems?
Features such as food ordering, order management, payment gateways, live order tracking, AI-powered customer support chatbot, and more, can added to a custom food online delivery system. Rest, its features depend on the type of food management system; for customers, restaurants, or delivery partners.
Q3. How long does it take to develop a custom food ordering and management system?
The development time depends on the complexity of the project. It may take around 3-5 months to build a simple system, around 6-8 months for an advanced food order management system, and approximately 9 months to one year or more, to develop a complex food ordering and management system for restaurants.
Q4. Can Developer Bazaar Technologies build a custom food ordering system for my restaurant?
Developer Bazaar Technologies is a top food delivery app development company in India, that helps restaurant enhance their business by developing custom food ordering and management systems tailored to their specific needs.
Q5. How can contact the team of Developer Bazaar Technologies?
You can click here and fill up the form to contact our team. Moreover, you can email us at [email protected] and share your requirements or project ideas.
RM Mishra
Co-Founder
Developer Bazaar technologies
