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You might see dollar signs flashing when thinking about jumping into the on-demand delivery solutions space.
But here’s the harsh truth: you can’t break in with just an “app.” You need something strategic, grounded, and holistically built. An app like DoorDash in the US or Zepto in India!
We’ve been in the trenches developing custom on-demand service platforms, and here’s what we’ve learned: it’s way more complex than it looks. However, that doesn’t mean you drop the idea. It means you partner with a mobile app development company that brings real experience — the kind that leaves you impressed and excited.
At Unified Infotech, we get the difference between cobbling together an app over a weekend and building one that performs like DoorDash. Here’s your no-BS, end-to-end guide to building something that actually works.
According to Statista.com, revenue for platform-to-consumer delivery is now $70,741 million. And, it’s projected to swell and reach $346.81 billion by 2030. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, experts expected 8.2% growth annually.
Given the numbers, the on-demand delivery avenue seems to be a lucrative one. However, it’s important to understand what you’re looking at before diving into the code and architecture behind it.
You’re creating a complex, multi-layered ecosystem that connects very different types of users who all have completely different needs and expectations. You’ve to consider customers wanting food on their tables — they want real-time tracking, easy payment, and a strong customer resolution center (where they can complain).
Along with customers, you’ve to think about restaurants who are already stressed running their kitchens, and now they need to manage online orders on top of walk-ins. They need simple interfaces, clear order notifications, and reliable payment processing.
Lastly, you’ve to pay attention to the needs of your delivery partners, one of the most complex user groups to pay attention to. They’re independent contractors trying to make money, so they need super efficient routing, transparent earnings calculations, and tools that help them maximize their income. They’re also the face of your brand to customers, even though they technically don’t work for you.
Each of these groups have uniquely different mobile usage patterns, different tolerance thresholds, and different expectations for support. Safe to say, you’ve to walk a path strewn with challenges, and this is where our guide comes to help.
One of the prerequisites of starting a delivery business like DoorDash is getting a hold of personas you’re catering to — and building three separate apps that work together as one. Each of these apps is a different product altogether.
The Customer App is your marketing face. It needs to be intuitive, aesthetic, and fast. Your menus must be neatly laid out; your search needs to be lightning fast; and your checkout flow must be frictionless.
The trickiest part about customer apps is the fundamental need to balance features with simplicity. Everyone wants to add more filters, more customization options, more everything. You’re responsible for addressing your market’s peculiar needs without throwing off ease of use or overwhelming the user. What we’ve learned as an experienced application development company is that the best converting customer apps are almost boringly simple. Search, browse, add to cart, checkout, track. Period.
The Restaurant App (or dashboard) is all about buttery flow, speed, and efficiency. Restaurant staff are busy, stressed, and work against the clock. Your app must have a clear hierarchy; your interface should be easy to navigate; every tap needs to have a clear purpose.
The biggest mistake we see is making restaurant interfaces too fancy. Anyone who provides custom mobile app development services must understand that people at restaurants are running a kitchen. They need big buttons, clear text, and obvious status indicators. They must make sure everything is readable even with greasy fingers on a tablet screen.
The Driver App is the most complex because it needs to work reliably in all kinds of conditions. It’s running GPS constantly, managing multiple orders, handling payment processing, and doing all of this while the user is driving. The app needs to work smoothly even when switching between multiple other apps (maps, music, phone calls).
We’ve seen many delivery app features that miss the mark because developers build them with a typical e-commerce mindset. The real-time nature of enabling a food delivery model creates unique challenges that you need to plan for from day one.
1. Use Microservices But Don’t Go Overboard
We’ve seen mobile app development teams build 50 different microservices for their MVP and then spend the next three months just to get them talking. That’s where failure waits to sweep you off. Start with 5-7 core app-based delivery services. Focus on user and delivery management system, restaurant management, order processing, real-time tracking, and notification service. You can integrate services as you scale.
2. Solidify Your Database Strategy
If your database goes down during the dinner rush, you’ve 500 angry customers and 50 confused all at once. Plus, your business attracts bad name. It’s recommended that you use a powerful database solution like PostgreSQL for your main transactional data. It can handle complex queries well and has excellent ACID compliance. But for real-time location tracking, you’ll want something like MongoDB for the geospatial queries.
3. Emphasize Real-Time Everything
WebSocket connections for live order updates, push notifications for status changes, and real-time location tracking. Tools like Socket.io that allow real-time, bidirectional communication can help you weave reliability into your communication and handle connection drops gracefully.
Key Insight: You need offline-first architecture for your driver app. Drivers often work in areas with spotty cellular coverage, and you can’t have them losing orders because they drove through a dead zone. Build your driver app to queue actions locally and sync when connectivity is restored.
4. Remember the Cloud
Cloud infrastructure is where everything business-critical lives and breathes. We recommend moving to AWS Cloud because of its mature ecosystem. You get EC2 for computation; RDS for databases; S3 for storage, and Lambda for serverless architectural functions. Alternatively, you can try Google Cloud, and more so if you’re planning heavy machine learning integration into your app for route optimization. Azure is a top choice if you’re already in the Microsoft ecosystem. The key is picking one and sticking with it. Multi-cloud sounds cool in theory but it’s a nightmare to manage in practice.
5. APIs are the glue
APIs hold your entire ecosystem together. You’ll be integrating with mapping services for routes, payment gateways for transactions, SMS services for notifications, and probably a dozen other external services. Design your API architecture to be resilient because external services will go down, rate limits will be hit, and timeouts will happen. Build retry logic, circuit breakers, and fallback options into everything.
6. Invest in robust routing algos
Routing algorithms are where the big things happen, and honestly, it’s exactly where most apps either win or fizzle out. You can start simple with Google’s Directions API, but as you scale, you’ll want to build your own optimization engine. Machine learning helps, but don’t overcomplicate it early on. Start with basic factors like distance, traffic, and driver availability, then gradually add more sophisticated variables like historical delivery times and driver preferences.
7. Put your mind to payment processing
Payment processing integration is non-negotiable, and security here is the cornerstone. Stripe Connect is my go-to because it handles the complexity of multi-party payments without me having to become a payments expert. The platform takes its cut, restaurants get their portion, drivers get paid, and everyone’s happy. Just make sure you’re PCI compliant and never, ever store raw credit card data.
Wondering which features your on-demand delivery app needs? Here’s everything you should consider.
1. User Registration and Authentication
2. Restaurant Discovery and Browsing
3. Shopping Cart and Order Management
4. Payment Processing
5. Real-Time Order Tracking
6. Coupons and Promotions
7. Customer Support and Feedback
1. Restaurant Onboarding and Profile Management
2. Order Management System
3. Menu and Financial Management
Bringing an app to life with the complexity, rigor, and scale of DoorDash isn’t something you can achieve on a lean budget. The process is cost-intensive; however, with the right app development partner like Unified Infotech, you can get started while navigating the cost barriers efficiently.
Here’s the complete cost breakdown we’ve arrived at after delivering multiple delivery platforms.
1. MVP Development will run you $150K to $300K if you’re building custom with a good development team. This includes basic customer, restaurant, and driver apps with core functionality. You can cut costs by using more template solutions, but you’ll sacrifice differentiation.
2. Ongoing operational costs are significant and often underestimated. Cloud infrastructure typically runs $2K to $10K monthly depending on your user base. Payment processing fees are usually 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Map API costs can get expensive quickly. Budget at least $500 monthly even for modest usage.
3. Customer acquisition costs in competitive markets can be brutal. We’ve seen CACs of $15 to $50 per customer depending on the market and competition level. Retention is crucial because most delivery apps lose money on the first few orders from each customer.
4. Driver incentives and bonuses can eat up a lot of your budget, especially during launch when you’re trying to build supply. Budget for sign-up bonuses, delivery bonuses, and surge pricing during peak times.
Making mistakes is inevitable. However, if you can learn from others’ mistakes, there’s one way you can avoid your app development project from going downhill. Let us share some painful lessons we’ve learned, so that you can avoid making them.
1. Underestimating restaurant onboarding complexity: We thought restaurants would just upload their menus and start taking orders. In reality, menu digitization is complex, restaurants need training on the platform, and ongoing support requirements are the key to streamlined growth.
2. Building too many features too early: Our first delivery app had loyalty programs, group ordering, scheduled deliveries, and a dozen other features that nobody used. Focus on nailing the core experience first. Other fancy, peripheral features can come in the matrix as you scale.
3. Ignoring driver economics: We built a platform where drivers could theoretically make good money, but in practice, after gas and car maintenance, they were barely breaking even. Unhappy drivers provide poor service and quit quickly. Ensure you’ve a well-built delivery ecosystem and an agile response and resolution center.
4. Inadequate customer service planning: When things go wrong with food delivery, customers are hangry and want immediate resolution. We underestimated how much customer service volume we’d have and how quickly we’d need to resolve issues.
5. Poor testing of edge cases: The happy path where everything works is easy to test. But what happens when restaurants run out of ingredients, drivers get in accidents, or customers move between ordering and delivery? These edge cases will break your app if you don’t plan for them.
Building a delivery app like DoorDash is definitely doable, but it’s more complex than most people realize. Our advice? Start small, focus on one market, and nail the basic experience before adding fancy features. The key to success isn’t having the most features. Instead, it’s having the most reliable service. Customers will forgive a simple interface, but they won’t forgive cold food or long waits.
The delivery space is big enough for multiple winners, and the more good platforms there are, the better the entire ecosystem becomes for everyone involved.
"Saptarshi Halder is the Executive Director and COO of Unified Infotech and the strategic mind behind the company's growth. His expertise in operational efficiency and team leadership empowers his colleagues to excel and innovate.”
DoorDash is an online food delivery platform where customers browse restaurants, place orders for delivery or pickup, and track their orders in real time. Restaurants list their menus on DoorDash, and delivery drivers (Dashers) pick up and deliver food to customers’ locations, offering convenience and a wide selection of eateries.
Key features include user registration, restaurant and menu browsing, secure payments, real-time order tracking, push notifications, order history, ratings, and reviews. For admins and delivery agents, features like order assignment, intuitive dashboards, GPS navigation, and efficient order handling are essential.
Developing an app like DoorDash typically costs between $20,000 and $150,000, depending on features, complexity, platforms, and team location. Basic versions are less expensive, while advanced apps with real-time tracking, in-app chat, and AI features are at the higher end of the range.
Common technologies include React Native or Flutter for cross-platform mobile development, Node.js or Ruby on Rails for backend, PostgreSQL or MongoDB for databases, and AWS or Google Cloud for hosting. AI and machine learning are often used for route optimization and personalized recommendations.
Development timelines range from 3 to 12 months, depending on the app’s complexity and feature set. Simple versions may take 2–4 months, while advanced, highly customized apps can require 10 months or more to complete.
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