Last Updated Date 06 May, 2025
In today’s technology-driven grocery industry, consumers prefer buying groceries through a grocery delivery mobile app rather than visiting a physical store. According to a study, 39% of shoppers prefer buying groceries via an online grocery delivery app. Moreover, the revenue in the grocery delivery market is expected to reach USD 1.38 trillion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 10.07% in the forecast period of 2025-2029.
Aspiring entrepreneurs can leverage the advantages offered by mobile apps for their online grocery delivery business. That said, there is a surge in grocery app downloads as they offer quality, convenience, and speed at the same time, as consumers don’t have to go trudging around a conventional store. Hence, grocery delivery app development presents lucrative opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to enter this promising domain.
Covered in this blog are insights about grocery delivery app development, its essential features, and estimated development costs.
Individuals prefer shopping online through grocery apps because of the convenience, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness they offer. Here are some perks of using grocery shopping apps:
Mobile Apps offer a flexible shopping experience to consumers, enabling them to order grocery items with just a few clicks. Individuals can browse and order groceries from anywhere, anytime, without having to visit a brick-and-mortar store. Grocery delivery app caters to diverse individual preferences, ranging from busy youngsters to children, or adults with limited mobility.
Physical grocery stores are restricted by their physical location, whereas grocery delivery apps break this geographical barrier, enabling businesses to cater to a wider audience beyond their immediate neighbourhood. This helps businesses in attracting new customers who might not be able to visit the store physically.
With a grocery delivery app, you can cater to the needs of the shopper by providing a hassle-free grocery shopping experience and enabling the clients to get whatever they want, at their convenience. Moreover, buyers would be able to easily explore a large selection of products and schedule grocery deliveries.
A grocery delivery app enables business owners to position their brand as innovative & customer-centric. Cutting-edge grocery delivery app enhances the brand image of your business and provides a competitive edge in the industry, setting your business apart from your rivals.
Grocery delivery apps have transformed the way people order groceries. The demand for grocery delivery apps is on the rise. Launching a feature-rich online grocery delivery app will help in catering to this rising demand, boosting your sales eventually.
Mobile Apps provide reliable insights and data that help business owners in making informed decisions related to their grocery delivery business. By analyzing the browsing behaviour and app usage patterns of the customers, you can gain insights into customer preferences, identify popular grocery items, and tailor the offering accordingly. This data can also help you in enhancing your overall customer experience.
Before starting with the grocery delivery app development process, it is crucial to gain an understanding of the diverse grocery delivery app business models prevalent in the industry. Choosing the right business model will decide the future of your business. In this section, let’s explore some of the profitable business model ideas for your grocery delivery app.
In this business model, the customers order grocery items through the delivery app, the business owners maintain an inventory of the goods and items. This business model requires a high initial financial investment as business owners need to maintain their own warehouse to store the items. Additionally, it also calls for warehouse management, quality control, administration, and transportation.
FreshDirect is a renowned grocery delivery platform working on an inventory business model.
Advantages
Challenges
Peapod is a popular online multi-vendor marketplace that works on this business model.
This business model involves providing a single marketplace for multiple vendors and buyers. This business model can also be termed as a zero inventory model, as the business owners need not maintain any inventory. In this business model, either the owner of the marketplace is responsible for managing the packaging and dispatching, or the sellers handle the dispatching of the grocery items.
Advantages
Challenges
The hyper-local business model, as the name suggests, involves launching a hyperlocal marketplace that caters to the needs of a limited area. This business model works on the principle of delivering fresh groceries instantly to the customers. Business owners can collaborate with local vendors through their marketplace.
Instacart is a leading grocery delivery player that works on the hyperlocal delivery business model.
Advantages
Challenges
The aggregator grocery delivery business model involves bridging the gap between grocery stores and buyers directly. The business owner here acts as an aggregator, and will be responsible for managing delivering grocery items from grocery store to user’s doorstep. Customers can view and select products from multiple stores and place their orders.
Instacart works on the aggregator business model to connect users with local stores, allowing customers to select products and have them delivered within sometime at their doorsteps.
Advantages
This business model doesn’t require management of inventory
Challenges
There are primarily four user types involved in an online grocery business: buyers, vendors (sellers), delivery staff, and the admin. Let’s have an in-depth look at each user type and their must-have features.
Buyers purchase grocery items from the comfort of their homes using the grocery ordering and delivery app. Grocery delivery apps make online shopping an enjoyable and flexible experience for individuals. Customers search for items on the marketplace, make a purchase, and get the items delivered to their homes at any time.
A Grocery ordering app allows customers to buy groceries without leaving their homes. These apps are designed to make online grocery shopping an enjoyable experience for all buyers. A grocery buyer app lets customers do online grocery shopping and provides home delivery services as per their preferred time. Here are some crucial features of a grocery shopping app:
The registration process should be simple and user-friendly. Giving instant access to customers via multiple social media profiles could be a great way to retain them and reap more visitors.
Integration of smart search in your on-demand grocery app is inevitable as it will help users to find preferred items with specific keywords without navigating through the entire app.
This feature will help a customer to save an item for future purchases. Customers can add grocery items to their wishlist and buy them later on.
It is an excellent feature for increasing cart value and reducing cart abandonment rates. Customers can share their shopping carts with their friends and family through the cart sharing feature.
This feature will display the recommended product list on the basis of the previous search preferences of the user. Moreover, providing targeted product recommendations could play a crucial role in increasing the average order value of your online store.
It is another must-have feature of a grocery shopping app that will help users to know what other brands are priced at for similar products. This feature will allow customers to compare similar products without making them leave the app.
This feature is also known as click and collect which enables shoppers to place an order online and schedule an in-store pick up as per their comfort.
From the order dispatch to the estimated time for delivery, this real-time tracking feature will help users to know the status of their order.
Adding a multilingual feature to your grocery shopping app can help you expand your customer base over multiple regions and stay ahead of your competitors.
It will help your grocery shoppers to select regularly used items quickly from their purchase history.
Adding a voice search to your grocery shopping app could play a key role in improving the user experience. It will allow users to use a voice command to place an order or find a product.
This allows the users to schedule their delivery in advance as per their convenience. The customers can select a delivery date for their order during the checkout process.
It is a great feature for increasing customer engagement and triggering app usage. Push notifications will allow you to update your customers about flash sales, ongoing deals & discounts, and much more.
Including multiple payment methods like cash on delivery, credit & debit cards, digital wallets, Net banking, etc. in your grocery app will make your customers feel the ease of getting payments done in a quick manner.
Most of the customers are always on the lookout for rebates and offers. So, the integration of discount coupon codes and loyalty reward programs will enhance user engagement and encourage them to purchase more.
This feature is vital for creating an exceptional shopping journey for consumers. A simplified checkout process will help users to place an order within a few easy steps and increase conversion rates.
With reviews & rating systems, customers can share their buying and browsing experiences. This feature will play a crucial role in building trust among customers.
Delivery staff leverages the delivery staff app to accept deliveries through the app and deliver them to the customer’s doorstep. The business owner releases the commission of the delivery personnel after the successful completion of the order deliveries.
A Grocery delivery app is designed to streamline the delivery process for all the grocery delivery staff, to ensure a seamless and on-time grocery delivery. Discussed below are some of the necessary features of a grocery delivery app:
The delivery boy can register in the grocery delivery app by filling up a few details like name, email ID, and phone number. Once the delivery staff registers himself, he can log in to the app anytime by using his username & password/OTP. You could also include social media profiles for providing instant app access.
This feature will help delivery staff in managing their profiles in an efficient manner. They can easily update their profile by adding personal details, uploading a profile picture, and adding bank account details.
This option will allow drivers to manage all their payments and virtual credits. Delivery staff can also check and manage the withdrawal requests with this feature.
The delivery agent will be able to check the number of orders placed, manage order delivery status, and accept or reject order requests.
These notifications will appear on the customer’s device when the order is placed or will be out for delivery. Buyers, vendors, and the delivery staff will receive order status emails, cancellation, funds & replacement requests emails, withdrawal request emails, gift card emails, share & earn emails, etc. with this feature.
It is one of the must-have features through which the delivery staff will get the location of the customer through GPS. The delivery boy can find the best route suggestions to make multiple deliveries easier using route optimization.
The delivery staff can check their order delivery history, how many orders they have delivered in a day, or even the total number of order requests to date.
This feature will help delivery drivers to keep a track of their earnings. Moreover, delivery staff will be able to transfer their earnings to their bank account as and when required.
This feature resolves the linguistic differences between buyers and delivery staff.
Vendors (sellers) list their grocery products for the customers to purchase. Once the order reaches the customer successfully, the business owner releases the share of the vendors after deducting a commission fee. Vendors can easily manage their operations through a robust vendor panel.
Vendor’s panel streamlines the operations, such as order management, shop management, deliveries, and more. Here are the most important features for a Vendor panel.
Vendors can seamlessly manage the total number of orders received, active orders, delivered orders, and more. Robust order management features make the process of tracking and managing orders easy for the vendors.
With shop management capabilities, the vendors can easily sign up by adding their necessary details. After registrations, they can seamlessly set up the shop, list grocery products, update the information in the profiles, and more.
By leveraging this functionality, sellers can themselves manage the delivery of the orders received, by either broadcasting or manually assigning the order deliveries to the delivery personnel.
Vendors can view the reports and insights, gaining an understanding of important analytics such as sales, product inventory, stock status, top-performing products, top categories of grocery items, and more.
Many working professionals and individuals prefer to buy groceries at a dedicated time slot. With this capability, vendors can set up the date and time of the delivery slots as per their availability.
This module enables the vendors to manage the refund requests for canceled orders easily. They can process the order refunds, update the inventory records, and regularize the orders further.
The admin panel is an integral part of an online grocery delivery business. The admin is responsible for managing every business operation, ranging from user management, delivery management, to payment processing, and more.
Here are the important features to look for in the admin panel to perform all the functions efficiently.
With robust order management features, the admin can efficiently oversee the orders. Admin can track the orders, deliveries, and ensure a faster fulfillment to provide a top-notch grocery delivery experience to users.
Admin can easily create, import, export, and manage the list of grocery products, categories, inventories, and more with an efficient product catalog system.
With an efficient delivery management system, the admin can self-manage the deliveries by either manually assigning or broadcasting them to the delivery staff. Moreover, the admin can also grant access to sellers to manage order deliveries.
This functionality enables the admin to effectively promote the grocery delivery business by leveraging various promotion channels such as discount coupons, loyalty programs, promotions, and more.
Content management tools enable the admin to seamlessly handle the content marketing aspect of an online grocery delivery business. Capabilities such as blog publishing, social media platform management, management of content pages, content blocks, and language labels help admin in efficiently implementing their content marketing strategy.
Admin can easily view important reports and analytics related to the business, including sales, top-selling products, top categories, bad categories, and more, to make informed business decisions. A quick hand at business insights and data is helpful in the sustainable growth of the business.
The commission management is an important part of running an online grocery delivery business. With commission management capabilities, the admin can define the commission rates for seller and drivers and seamlessly handle all the transactions, deliveries, and seller wallet calculations.
The overall grocery delivery app development cost depends on numerous factors. Let’s have a look at the ones that influence the app development price the most:
Your app complexity and the number of features you’re willing to add will be the biggest cost drivers in your grocery app development.
The cost of your grocery app will highly depend on the number of app developers involved in the app development process. The price could also vary depending on the incorporation of niche developers and specialists.
In this modern era, android is the most used mobile platform with iOS following the suit. So, your choice of platform would play a major role in depicting the cost of your application.
The hourly rate charged by the developers fluctuates from region to region. This is because the availability of resources, expertise, and experience of the company varies significantly.
Breakdown of Cost Involved in Grocery Delivery App Development from Scratch
| Factor | Description | Estimated Cost |
| App Platform | The cost of development for iOS, Android, or both apps. | $5,000 – $30,000 |
| UX UI | Intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, custom designing, and branding elements. | $5,000 – $15,000 |
| Backend Development | The cost of server infrastructure, database management, APIs for functionality, and more. | $15,000 – $40,000 |
| Frontend Development | Cost of creating user-facing app interfaces for seamless user engagement. | $10,000 – $25,000 |
| Third-Party Integration | Cost of third-party grocery delivery industry-specific APIs, such as Payment gateways, map services, SMS notifications, and analytics tools. | $5,000 – $15,000 |
| Testing & QA | Cost involved in ensuring app quality, performance, and bug-free experience. | $5,000 – $10,000 |
| Deployment & Launch | Launching the app on the App Store and Google Play with required configuration. | $2,000 – $5,000 |
| Post-Launch Maintenance | Bug fixing, regular updates, and the addition of new features from time to time. | $5,000 – $20,000 annually |
The above-written facts are more than enough to clarify the fact that developing an app from scratch is an arduous task that requires time & effort, along with huge capital investment to hire a development team. This is where an on-demand, readymade grocery solution like Growcer comes to save the day. Readymade grocery delivery software is highly cost-effective in comparison to custom development from scratch.
Growcer is a feature-packed eCommerce grocery software that has been developed by FATbit Technologies. It provides ready-made android & iOS mobile apps for buyers as well as delivery staff. Moreover, this impeccable grocery solution comes with web portals for admin, buyer, seller, and delivery staff that makes it a one-stop platform for creating an online eCommerce grocery website and launching a readymade grocery app at optimal prices. Benefits include:
The future of online grocery industry is highly lucrative. It is safe to say that the shift in consumer behavior has marked the golden era for grocery delivery marketplaces. Hence, investing in developing a grocery delivery app is going to be the way forward. So if as an entrepreneur, you are looking to develop grocery delivery apps, get in touch with us.
Q 1. How long does it take for grocery delivery app development?
Ans: The time for grocery delivery app development can vary depending on the development approach you are considering. Custom development from scratch can take around a few months or years. With readymade software, you can develop your grocery delivery app in just a few weeks.
Q 2. How do grocery apps make money?
Ans: The admin of the grocery delivery app can make money by charging commissions, vendor subscriptions, commission on delivery, on-site promotion for merchants/grocery sellers, hosting banner ads, and more.
Q 3.How can I ensure scalability for my grocery delivery app as my business grows?
Ans: You can ensure the scalability of your grocery delivery app by selecting software capable of accommodating the increasing needs of your growing business. Software like Growcer, for instance, offers high scalability, allowing you to serve and onboard an increasing number of users without any constraints. This ensures that as your business grows your evolving needs are met too.
Q 4. How do I create a grocery delivery app?
Ans: Here are the steps to create a grocery delivery app:
Step 1 Conduct market research
Step 2 Choose a business model
Step 3 Select the features
Step 4 Define a monetization strategy
Step 5 Decide a development approach
Step 6 Launch and market your grocery delivery app
Q 5. Which is the best software for grocery delivery app development?
Ans. Growcer is one of the best software solutions for grocery delivery app development because of the several features and capabilities it offers. This software is fully customizable and can be customized as per your unique business needs. Moreover, Growcer has helped several clients across the world in successfully entering the online grocery delivery industry.
All innovation starts with an idea to solve real-world problems. At FATbit Technologies we are passionate about driving digital transformation to prepare businesses for a digital-first tomorrow. Let’s discuss your BIG idea NOW.
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Comments (4)
Chad
FATbit Chef Post author
Michael
FATbit Chef Post author
Thanks for sharing this article it will be helpful to everyone who wants to develop a Grocery delivery app, keep sharing like this Mam/Sir. Good luck!
You’re welcome! I’m glad this was helpful. I’ll keep sharing more tips and tricks in the future.
Cheers!
FATbit Team
Well-written and Informative article about grocery delivery apps! The author has done a good job of explaining the must-have features of grocery delivery app development and the factors that affect the cost of development.
Thanks for sharing!!
We are glad you liked it. Keep visiting us for more such posts
Cheers!
FATbit Team