Features and Cost To Develop A Food Delivery App Like Potafo

You must have a restaurant to develop a food delivery mobile application, says no one. The gigantic online food delivery industry valued at 35.7 billion in 2020 and is projected to grow by 63.6 billion in 2025. And to your surprise, the platform-to-consumer model holds the largest segment of the food delivery market. 

The model offers benefits to all parties involved – from restaurant owners, customers, and the delivery service business itself. In contrast, mobile apps are the prominent channel to run a food delivery business. Many business tycoons with the Platform-to-Consumer model have marked their success in the global food delivery market by recognizing the market opportunity. Food delivery apps like UberEats, Zomato, Talabat are the perfect example.

Similarly, Potafo is a food delivery app created by four food lovers and thrived in India’s food capital, Kozhikode. Potafo name derives from a French dish, Pot-au-feu (Beef Stew). By developing a food delivery app like Potafo, founders have let gourmands order their favorite food from any corner of Kerala through their iOS and Android devices. Since its inception in 2017, Potafo has been able to onboard over 50000 users. 

Currently, the app serves up to 500 orders daily with an average order cart size of 360 bucks. It is said that Potafo has been recording about 15% growth each month from the launch. Talking about the revenue streams, Potafo collects a 15% commission on every transaction from partnered restaurants and charges a particular amount as a delivery fee.

Potafo is gaining significant traction because they put customer satisfaction first. And the user-friendly app design and prompt delivery service have helped them fulfill customer needs with a lasting experience. Plus, partnering with decent and good quality food restaurants adds up to their customer happiness. 

Now let’s talk about developing a food delivery app like Potafo for your startup, starting with a business model.

Business Model For Potafo-like Online Food Delivery Service Business

As mentioned earlier, Potafo and many popular food delivery apps are based on the platform-to-customer business model. Under this model, your app works like a food aggregator that facilitates customers to order food online from their preferable restaurant. You let customers access various cuisines, five-star restaurants, and local food stores through a single mobile app.

Furthermore, users must be able to check out menus, compare prices and ETA, and restaurant reviews before placing an order. Such food delivery apps harness the power of their resources. Meaning you need to create a widespread network of restaurants and delivery personnel to fulfill foodies’ demands online. 

Features to Make an App Like Potafo Food delivery mobile app

Since you are following the Platform-to-Consumer model, you will need to develop three separate apps like Potafo. 1. Customer App – take food orders, 2. Delivery app – delivers food and 3. Restaurant partner app.

Let us peep into must-have features for each app.

“Customer App”

Sign up/Sign in

Search for food items

Search for restaurants

Set quantity 

Place an Order

Real-time tracking

Online Payment Gateway/s

Write a review

Order & payment history

Repeat order

“Delivery App”

Register as a delivery personnel

Set up a profile with necessary details

Manage availability

Accept or Reject order

In-app chat with restaurant & customer

Collect payment on-site

Update delivery status

Google Map

“Restaurant Partner App”

Set up online restaurant

Manage working hours

Confirm orders

Upload menus

Upload delicious food images

Manage item prices

In-app chat with delivery personnel

Daily order history

Reply and appreciate customer reviews

Food Delivery App Development Like Potafo

Decide Your Budget

You have a clear idea of the operating model. However, before you start the food delivery app development, you also have to be clear about the budget. How much budget you would need to develop the food delivery app, and how it will make money. Because it is better to fix a budget limit and stick to it and maintain everything under budget. Otherwise, you may end up making a costly mistake that will require another funding to fix. 

Learn how free apps make money.

Technology Selection

It is suggested to hire a veteran on-demand mobile app development company to build an app like Potafo employing a robust technology stack. Many ventures fail because of the wrong technology choice. In the worst case, they need to start the app development all over again with a new technology stack. And you will not want that to happen to your app, will you?

Market Research

If you want your app to appear more user-friendly, start drafting project requirements by answering questions like, Who is your target audience? What are their preferences when it comes to food? How would they like to make the payment? Which operating system do most of your audience use?

Custom Admin Panel

Despite three apps for your three different audiences, you need a central panel to control them all. You should develop a custom web-admin panel embedding features like users, restaurants, delivery personnel management, and a dashboard to keep every activity under control. 

Mobile apps cannot override leisure websites render. Hence, in addition to a food delivery mobile app, brands maintain a responsive, mobile-friendly website to let their customers decide wherever they want to order from.

Create Own USP

To stand out from the crowd, food delivery startups need to build their own unique selling point. You should analyze your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses to come up with your USP. You can offer the services that they are missing out on.

Know more 13 things to consider before developing a food delivery app 

How much does it Cost to Develop an Application Like Potafo?

The on-demand food delivery app development cost starts around $10K to $15K. When we talk about the cost to build a food delivery app like Potafo, it includes;

Cost to hire developers

Cost of app UI/UX design and back-end app development 

Features & functionalities and their complexity

Required hours for development 

Testing and deployment cost

Maintenance and bug fixing, if any

Marketing and promotion cost

We only mentioned its starting cost as there is no definite limit of development cost and depends on a few factors. These factors are the same as those mentioned above that cause variation in the development cost.

Want More?

Well, the guiding article on how to build a food delivery app like Potafo does end here. But your development journey should start from here. We are an on-demand app development company with a team specializing in the food delivery segment. There is a large scale of ground you still need to cover before you delve into food delivery app development.

If you are eager to start your online food delivery business ASAP, we can help you make it happen. You just fill in a few details in the form on our website and hit us up. The rest will be taken care of together!

Sanjay Kidecha

Sanjay Kidecha is the CMO of Kody Technolab, a Web & Mobile App Development Company. He loves to explore and write about the latest web & Mobile App Development Trends, Digital Marketing Trends, Startups, and Entrepreneurship.