Online Food delivery apps like GrubHub are ruling over the hearts of the foodies.  Many people satisfy their hunger more easily and quickly with food delivery apps like GrubHub, Uber Eats, etc.

The Pandemic has also led to a significant boom in the food delivery market. The world is witnessing a change of lifestyle where food delivery apps have become the ultimate business saviors for restaurants and a source of delicacy for epicures. 

According to Statista, 53.9 million people in the United States will use online food delivery apps by 2023 to order their favorite food anytime.

Food delivery apps have become the target of all startups and entrepreneurs who want to do their business on the top in this digital world. It is because you could generate colossal revenue in the business of online food delivery apps.

According to the stats of the online food delivery app, revenue in the online food delivery segment amounts to US$7,730m in 2019.

Total Revenue shows a CAGR (in 2019–2023) of 10.01%, resulting in a market volume of US$ 449,292 Million by the year 2021.

Let’s look at the below-given image showing the popularity of the Food Delivery Apps:

Food delivery stats


What is GrubHub?

grubhub app

Food delivery apps make people’s lives entertaining, and GrubHub is also one of them. GrubHub is trending these days. The reason behind the popularity is that it is easy to download from the App Store, and its delivery service is up to the mark as it delivers your food within time.  

Grubhub is an online food delivery company based in Chicago that currently spans across 4000 cities. This company is scattered in various locations and gets connected with different diners and local restaurants. The firm has more than 31.4 million active diners and approximately 3,00,000 restaurant partners.

Well, this is a brief introduction to the Grubhub food delivery company. But let me tell you that, like Grubhub, more food delivery companies have gained popularity and become more client-oriented with the introduction of mobile applications. The reason behind this is that food delivery apps provide much convenience to customers. The customers can order and get their food at their doorsteps just with the help of a few clicks on the apps.

This convenience of mobile applications is the primary reason the online Ecommerce food industry leaves the offline sector behind.

Let’s look at the below-given graph, which clearly shows how big the online industry is, then the offline sector.

food delivery market share

Source: McKinsey

All these stats indicate that the online food industry is flourishing and going to be flourishing more in the coming years, and this is happening just with the help of Mobile applications.

Now various questions might be arising in your mind regarding the food delivery mobile applications. Don’t panic, and let me tell you that you will get quick answers to all these mobile app development questions.


Types of Food Delivery Apps:

Here are two kinds of food delivery apps that are available in the present mobilized economy:

#1. Aggregator

In this kind of model, you can make a kind of app that will act as a platform that can connect users and restaurants. This Aggregator model of the app helps the users order food and helps the restaurants view and complete the order without the help of any delivery support.

#2. Platform with Logistic Support

This kind of model helps restaurants in providing support to deliver food to a large number of users. You can get a complete service offering of the restaurant (except for food preparation).

This kind of app helps the users with the option to choose their food items from the menu, make an order and track that particular order. For example, where it has reached & simultaneously offers the restaurants the benefit of following the order status & handing over the food to the delivery person who is basically from your side and then get paid for that order.

Now you have seen the kinds of food delivery apps, now it’s time to see which are the best food delivery apps. Let’s have a look at them:

  1. Grubhub
  2. DoorDash
  3. UberEats
  4. Postmates

create food delivery app


Thinking about how a food-delivery app makes money & what are the costs involved in getting an app developed? 

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How to Make Money in the Food-Delivery Business?

There are diverse ways through which you can make your on-demand restaurant app monetization. But the most common methods are as follows:

#1. Delivery Charges

It usually happens that sometimes some restaurants do not offer the facility of home delivery. And here, when you provide the facility of home delivery personnel, then, in that case, they have to pay you the delivery charges.

This kind of business model where you take the responsibility of handling on-demand home delivery is one of the best sources for generating a profit. It is mandatory to mention that many food delivery restaurant apps are dependent on food delivery revenue as one of their primary sources.

#2. Rise in Pricing

Let’s take an example. On rainy days, you might have seen the food delivery apps increase their prices on every order, even if the number of orders is less. There are various food delivery brands like UberEats that raise their prices according to the demand.

They limit the menu options and apply extra charges when the order is getting placed. Although this whole process does not affect the incoming request rate, this affects the per delivery significantly.

#3. Advertising

What do the apps do? Well, they offer restaurants a smaller section in their running advertisements and charge in return. Apart from that, these apps can generate Revenue by running Google Adsense on the platform. It is among the most effective ways of generating colossal Revenue.

#4. Time to Market a Food Delivery App

Well, there are many food delivery apps available these days. Here is an excellent example of food delivery services like UberEats, Seamless, GrubHub. All these food delivery apps are top-rated, so the competition is tough here. All the benefits mentioned above are aggregators of the menus from many places. Among multiple apps, we will discuss how long it takes to develop an app for one restaurant to provide delivery services to potential clients.

Well, almost all restaurants these days offer delivery service, but everyone has different ways of ordering. For example, customers do not like to order from the app, where they have to go through extra clicks and steps to order their food. They want easy and simple steps to order their food.


Now, we will discuss how long it takes to create an app that can straightforwardly satisfy customer needs and improve the business.

timeline food app

Let’s have a quick look at each development stage and give their average timeline using the example of such an application:

Planning Stage  (2 – 3 weeks)

It is the most unique and initial stage of app development. Planning should get done, keeping into consideration the benefit of both the customer and the development team. This stage involves a period of usually 2-3 weeks.

Business Analysis  (2 – 3 weeks)

This stage of development usually takes 2-3 weeks. The business analysis specialists,  app developers, and project managers work with the customers to discuss better solutions. For example, in the food delivery app, they discuss a catalog of the goods, the ability to make an order, enter the address for the delivery, pay for it, and track order.

Design and Pre-Development Stage  (5 – 7 weeks)

UI and UX

This stage of development involves multiple stages on which the actual time of app development is based on:

  • UX Design  (2 – 3 weeks)

In this stage of development, the UX designers decide how the user interface will work and which screens & buttons need to get added.

In a good UX design, customers can easily interact with the application, completing some goals. This stage of development requires 2-3 weeks.

  • UI Design  (3 – 4 weeks)

This stage of development is all about the presentation. Where UX designers are working on how the app will work, on the other hand, UI designer works on how the app will appear. This UI stage of development takes 3-4 weeks because designers must create a unique and attractive interface for your application.

Development Stage  (8 – 10 weeks)

This stage of development also involves multiple stages. Let’s discuss:

  • Back-end development  (6 – 8 weeks)

This Back-end stage of development takes 6-8 weeks as it works with the app server and the database. For any service application, all data gets stored in the back-end server. Whenever the user launches the application, the data automatically comes from the back-end service and is reflected on a mobile phone screen managed by the app installed on the phone.

And this is very crucial for a food delivery app as food delivery apps don’t need offline functionality.

  • Front-end development  (6 – 8 weeks)

The Front-end development part involves rendering and organizing the data from the back-end as mentioned above server. It takes 6-8 weeks.

When the development of an app gets almost done, the app will get tested for the next 1-2 weeks, and developers will be working on the bugs that the testers will find out. Having good testing & quality analysis team is a must.

 Having good testing & quality analysis team is a must

Finalization and Launch (1 week)

After the testing part of an app, the final preparation stage comes, which is essential when we have to finalize the details, fix the last bugs, and publish the application to the App Store and Google Play. This stage takes the time of 1 week.

Post-Launch Support and Maintenance Stage (2 weeks)

After the app gets launched, it becomes the duty of the development team to observe the performance for about two weeks to ensure it works appropriately and corresponds to all set needs.


Cost of Creating a Food Delivery App?

Well, various factors involve the total cost estimation of mobile app development. But still, we can say that you will get a clear idea of this question.

The estimated cost of an app also depends on the number of features you require in your on-demand food delivery mobile and the resources needed to develop your app from the beginning to the active phase. So you could say that the cost of developing a food delivery app like Grubhub or uberEats will involve the approximate amount of around $30,000 to $40,000. 

The estimated cost of one food delivery mobile app involves the delivery charges of all like Mobile app design, development of both Android & iOS versions of the app, app testing, and app launch in the market.

If you desire to make a web app for restaurants, this may cost around $50k to $60k.

With this, we have now attended to everything you need to know in the present day for entering into the on-demand food delivery app market & the probable online food delivery app cost. And it is now time to prepare for the future.


Also ReadHow To Create A Food Delivery App? Food Delivery Business Model Explained


Final Words

Well, I have tried our best to provide you with all the accurate information you were looking for regarding the on-demand food delivery app development and market. Now it’s your turn to follow these tips and to build an app like these. 

As you are properly aware of the facts that lie in building one app, now it could be said that by following these tips, you can surely hire a mobile app developer in order to scale your app in such a way that will add flavors to food and to your future too.

mobile app development company

3 thoughts on “Time-to-market & Cost of Food Delivery Apps like GrubHub

  1. I want to get a food delivery app developed. can you tel me the exact cost for the same? From where can i talk to your team?

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