10 Outstanding Features of On-Demand Food Ordering Apps

In this current era, Digitalization is an essential part to grow the business for any food industry operator. People's lives have been changed around the world due to the Global Pandemic situation. Online Food ordering & delivery services are the most essential business out there. As of now, people practicing social distancing, self-quarantine, and staying indoors to stop the spread of the virus so food-delivery startups are in demand more than ever.

Do you have a Restaurant or planning startup in the food industry? Digital presence is the most essential thing to run a startup successfully whether it's through a website, mobile app, or social media. So I am enlightening you on the current trends for 2021, And the features you must include while you are developing a website/mobile app.

1. Contactless Delivery

2. Realtime Tracking

3. No cash only Digital payment

4. QR code

5. Order food by voice

6. Predictive(smart) Search

7. Push Notifications 

8. Redeemable coupons/loyalty programs

9. Social Media integration 

10. Ratings & Reviews

Contactless Delivery

• At this time everyone is scared of Infection of the virus due to the human touch, to avoid this we can add a contactless delivery to avoid the chain of infection. It is a system to provide contactless food ordering and delivery operations for customers & employees of your restaurant business. 

• In this case, you need to order prepaid and pre-tipped to the restaurant and drivers, no cash or exchange needed. The driver is going to set the order to eliminate the direct contact. The driver knocks or rings the customer's doorbell, then steps back 6 feet so one can collect the order. 

• Many famous food ordering delivery businesses already started “contactless delivery'' by taking their own steps to combat the spread of coronavirus in their state. Such as Doordash, Pizzahut.

Realtime Tracking at the Time of Online Food Delivery

• In this competitive restaurant & food industry, to stay afloat, it's necessary to give 100% satisfaction on every aspect of food delivery to customers. Order pickup and delivery is the part when customers are eager to know the status of food.  

• With this feature, you can streamline your business along with monitoring your driver's performance, finding the best route, and ensuring customers receive their orders on time. 

• By enabling GPS tracking in your mobile app/website, many businesses are providing updates to customers regarding their orders even in heavy traffic. In order to route optimization and driver performance evaluation, businesses can generate more revenue and gain customer trust.

No Cash only Digital Payment

• In-app ordering: Easy payment options are always leading to convincing customers to use your app flawlessly. Avoid long-line and transfer cash one to one, Digital payment convenient and safe option for anyone. 

• You can add famous and daily usable options to provide a seamless experience through this app such as google pay, apple pay, credit-debit cards, Paypal, and more…

QR Code

• With a QR code, you can not only make the payment but you are able to order food by scanning the menu too. customers can order by themselves so there will be no chances of manual errors that often happen while taking orders manually by waiters. 

• It's a completely contactless payment system. Payment with a QR code is an effortless option for anyone. Scan -> pay -> paid. With fractions of seconds, payment will be made without any hassle. 

• With sharing options, you can reach more and more people through social media. This option is perfect for quick service restaurants, kiosk/kiosks, takeout, or food delivery via an ordering website. Convenience and comfort provided by the digital menus with QRcode make the overall ordering to payment experience much better.

• Very popular food ordering and delivery system Grubhub is using the QR system for payment. 

Order Food by Voice

• As per the current trend, many of us order everything via home smart speakers such as “Alexa” “Siri” whether it's for pick/dial a call, or playing music. As per one of the reports 500 million, people are using Google Assistant with voice commands and by 2023 usage of voice assistants will increase 80% more than now.  

• Voice commands solutions involve your consumers while delivering your orders, order estimates, offer various food options and upsell a particular meal of the day while adding the order in the POS directly. 

• Read More: Top 8 Reasons To Choose React Native For Your Mobile App in 2021

• Voice ordering is not a theoretical concept but famous pizza chain Dominos has been using voice ordering through the Amazon Echo

Predictive(smart) Search

• This feature will work based on the Users’ most recent and frequent searches. On these previous selections, It will suggest a relevant restaurant and food items.  

• Smart search filters make the customer’s ordering process smooth. They will get data exactly as per their expectation, if any customer needs to find a restaurant with a 10 m radius and free delivery, they will receive the result by checking two parameters only. 

Push Notifications 

• To stay ahead of your customers, push notifications are necessary to include. With the help of push notifications, you can connect with your customers anytime. It covers offers, discounts, loyalty programs, location-based alerts.  

 (image source: Zomato, Swiggy notification center)

• In your On-Demand Food Ordering App, push notifications should be managed in a good manner (at what time customers will get notification) as well as add some value to customers (not just commercial).

Redeemable Coupons/ Loyalty Programs

• As per human psychology offers on anything makes people crazy. According to one research around 70% of customers use food ordering apps to find deals and offers. It's leading way to increase your sales in a short period of time

• In the food sector, companies should introduce customer-oriented programs such as Monthly/quarterly/annually to reward and retain them for a long period that's how they will become your Brand Ambassadors. To cover and reach the biggest audience, redeemable coupons and loyalty programs help a lot. When you post coupons and loyalty offers on social media, you can measure the effectiveness of marketing for your restaurant. 45% of customers say a loyalty program would encourage them to use online ordering more often.

(image source: Starbucks loyalty program)

• One can offer a particular membership which includes a discount on food delivery and dine in. 

• Starbucks has adopted loyalty programs to increase sales by more than 80%.

Social Media Integration 

• As per the current market, social media plays a vital role in any business. Through social media one can up their business by providing the best services and getting the best customers’ feedback.  

• With social media integrations, customers can share photos and videos of their favorite dishes with their followers. you can leverage the social media and tie it with your loyalty/discount programs to entice existing customers to earn points and rewards for inviting new customers/friends. By doing that you can convert those one-time customers to long-term repeat customers.  

Ratings & Reviews (The Food)

• Adding this feature to your app will give your audience a platform to express their experiences about the food and service. According to the report, 82% of customers place orders by checking correspondence restaurant ratings & reviews. 

• On the other hand, This is a great idea for preventing any crises – you can react to certain feedback before it reaches social media. This way, you are ensuring a good reputation for your restaurant.

Last but not the least, with an attractive & user-friendly design you can enforce customers to use your app frequently. 

The online food orders market worth will increase by up to 79% in 2022 and reach a threshold of 76 billion Dollars. (source)

To sum up, You must be aware of the latest trends with technology and customer’s interest that influence your business. You can operate all the types and sizes of restaurants It depends on the range of your business, cost of app development, and your needs. I would recommend or suggest you implement these innovative new trends.