Food delivery application — Advantageous solution amid COVID-19 pandemic

Kevin Nguyen
Product Coalition
Published in
4 min readJan 11, 2021

--

Many delivery services have responded to the disease outbreak by introducing contactless food delivery software to minimize the risk of spreading between customers and shippers.

Food delivery has been around in the food industry; however, it hasn’t been popular among citizens and is considered an excessive service. But in recent months, with more people quarantine at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, witness a surge in demand for food delivery services. Now, more than ever, swift, convenient, and efficient digital food delivery has become a benchmark. Another factor that drives the demand for food delivery solutions is the increased number of restaurants adapting home delivery due to being forced to close in the social-isolation period.

It did not take long for software developers to realize the importance of food delivery apps and focus on app development and created a new competitive market that boosts the country’s economy during the crisis.

Critical reasons behind the applications’ needs amid COVID 19 pandemic

  • Increased demand for food-delivery: As people participated in social distancing, self-quarantine, and staying indoors to minimize the virus’s spread, digital food delivery is in demand more than ever. The system can actually promote people to keep at home.
  • Provide healthy food guidance: While collecting data, the software can analyze personal data and provide eating guidance to increase immunity to better virus protection.
  • Offer digital payments: Exchanging cash might also lead to virus infection, so e-wallet and credit card payments are preferred and prevent refunds or money exchange disputation issues.
  • Offer jobs for unemployed: The COVID 19 crisis had damaged many businesses, making people lose their job; as the demand for food delivery is high, drivers’ need is also at the same trend, and everyone can apply and make money.
  • Sanitization: Hand gloves and mask cover are required in the delivery process to ensure the safety of drivers and clients.

Food Delivery App solutions are keeping the economy alive.

The revenue in digital food delivery is $94.385 billion in 2019 and estimates to grow 9.3 percent, at $134.49 billion by 2023 (Statista). As home isolation is still a problem in many countries, lockdown orders continue its growing trend and help local restaurants, and the fast-food industry stepped out of its difficult period and quickly recovered since the dine-in option was banned by the government.

Supermarkets have seen phenomenal demand for food as citizens prefer to stock groceries and frozen food at home as citizens are still limited to purchase food offline. Also, storing massive food at home gives food delivery is the most beneficial choice in this pathetic environment. Supermarkets give credit for this situation, and food and grocery suppliers also have advantages as the restock demand in supermarkets is impressively high. According to Reward Network, a finance company in the USA, 31% of supermarkets planned to continue to invest in the service, as the demand for delivery will grow in the following years.

Food hygiene and safety are a constant concern, and during the pandemic, most consumers were highly cautious about the potential risk of infection with food. Therefore, many consumers purchase vegetables and raw produce in food apps as the groceries are clean and guaranteed. Consumers will continue behavior to remain cautious and will incorporate fresh and frozen food delivery into their regular routines.

The global food industry witness one of the segments that are unaffected by the crisis but thrives in this period. The demands for creating new food delivery software are booming, leading to mobile app developers being the top searching keyword.

Users get benefits from food delivery apps in this situation

One of the significant benefits from a customer standpoint is the seamless process. It allows customers to place an order at any time, from anywhere that minimizes time-consuming when picking up a meal, and a better experience that customers can reorder, customize favorite orders, and food delivery tracking. Delivering food to home can avoid long-line waiting at the restaurant, especially in this quarantine period, clients can enjoy meals without going out.

Following is the improvement of the accuracy of the order that most orders though phones often misunderstand cause of background disturbances or different accents. But now, thanks to online food delivery, everything is clear on their end, specifying what customers want, and all the above difficulties are solved.

It is common practice now that customers regularly receive discounted deals, permissions, or packed deals. Consumers would prefer to choose an app with a number of discounted codes and catered by most delicious deals and with the cheapest offers. Digital payment is also applied in those applications and now becomes essential during the Covid-19 pandemic; thus, online payment is a precaution and self-protection method; with one-step checkout and fast delivery, it is effortless to place an order.

As the mobile food delivery market is growing, software development companies should focus more on developing more and more functions to better user experience. In the following year, maybe some of the modern technology will be applied in apps such as VR or Crypto food delivery for better methods to eliminate the diseases.

In conclusion, food delivery application is considered as the lifesaver to many restaurants, and businesses are on the edge of collapse during the pandemic, help them to boost their revenue and create jobs for the unemployed, also change customers’ behavior and become a stimulating environment in the food industry.

--

--