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“Every year, the on-demand food delivery market collectively grows by 8%, and DoorDash acquired 67% of consumers in March 2024 from the entire market size.”
DoorDash is one of the most forward-looking food delivery apps, which has dominated the whole industry. Entrepreneurs out there are looking to build apps like DoorDash to make money, but most importantly they need to understand the app’s working, functioning, acquisition, and DoorDash business model.
Understanding the concept of application is imperative; otherwise, you will be lost in the middle before reaching the goal. Well, we got you here. The blog will discuss DoorDash’s business model, how it works, revenue-generating ways, competitors, etc. Know the significant information to build an on-demand food delivery app matching the competitive edges.
When you have planned to build a mobile app like DoorDash, it is suggested to acknowledge its market value and other important stats. Learn the interesting facts about DoorDash:
| DoorDash has acquired a 66% share of the food delivery market in the US. |
| The App has made a gross order volume of 67 Billion US dollars (approx.) |
| DoorDash expanded the business with 70 restaurants in its first year of operations in the Bay Area with funding of $2.4 Million. Every week the business had growth of 20%. |
| DoorDash attained 20 Million active users in 2024. |
| DoorDash skyrocketed its customer acquisition model with 28 Million users in the US, 1.7 Million in Canada, 896000 in Australia, 76800 in New Zealand, and 44800 in the UK. |
| The local merchants have made $50 Billion, and also approx. 7 Million dashers made $15 Billion in 2023. |
| The on-demand food delivery app “DoorDash” is available in 7000 cities across 4 countries. |
The on-demand food delivery app named DoorDash has built an impressive image and gained massive growth in the industry. Also, these stats prove its worth. Building an app like DoorDash requires extensive brainstorming, for which an experienced mobile app development companies can help. Consult and build the best comparatively.
DoorDash is a type of online food delivery app, that connects consumers to local restaurants/cafes/food stores; and independent contractors/drivers deliver the items to doorstep in the minimum possible time. These delivery partners are called “Dashers”, who take up orders and deliveries if it is convenient for them and charge $2-$10 on every delivery.
This impeccable online food delivery app was founded in 2013 by Stanford University students Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Evan Moore, and Andy Fang. Initially, the founders launched PaloAltoDelivery.com in Palo Alto in Jan 2013, and later incorporated in June 2013 as “DoorDash”. This application was intended to help retail stores and restaurants to reach a vast audience base and grow. On the other hand, the customers are also gaining leverage through receiving necessary food items delivered to their doorstep. DoorDash is available in 30 countries as of now and still growing.
It is very easy to access DoorDash for consumers. It works in a streamlined and appropriate manner; like:
| Order Placement: | Users have a wide range of options (restaurants, cafes, food stores) available. You choose the suitable or most favorite store to order food. |
| Pay for the Order: | Once the order is placed, afterward the consumers are required to make payment through chosen payment gateways (debit/credit card, UPIs, NetBanking, etc.) |
| Dispatching the Item: | The dasher is responsible here for collecting the food items from the store. Order is dispatched here. |
| Delivery At the Doorstep: | The dasher will deliver the item to your doorstep following the map to the location. The delivery will be completed in an hour or less than that. |
DoorDash works on a Y-Structure business model, which acts as a bridge between consumers and local restaurants. The consumers place an order, the restaurant prepares the order, and the delivery partner will deliver items to the doorstep.
The online food delivery app has a community of Dashers (Delivery Agents), and the app assigns order deliveries to available dashers. On the contrary, DoorDash earns a commission from businesses of 20%, as well as Dasher will charge $5-$8 for delivery charges.
DoorDash revenue model follows numerous practices for monetization. Here are the ways to monetize on-demand food delivery apps like DoorDash to make money:
When the restaurant receives the order, the platform ‘DoorDash’ charges a commission for that. The average commission is 20% of the order value from the restaurant. On the contrary, the commission percentage varies on the size of the business and order value sometimes.
The delivery fee is another income source charged by consumers. The average delivery cost ranges between $5-$8. These fees depend upon the basis of pickup to delivery locational distances.
If any restaurant or business wants to advertise their products & services on DoorDash, they have to pay certain costs to sustain top rank on the platform. These advertisements enable boosting restaurants and other advertised business sales with increased visibility and reliability.
It is a sort of B2B model, where the restaurants seem to serve their customers only. The consumers in corporate catering are the big companies, which raise demand for huge bulk food items orders.
DoorDash also provides a subscription plan named “DashPass” as another income source, in which the subscribers can place orders at reduced delivery fees on orders above $12. Online food delivery apps like DoorDash can gain vast audience traction and more loyalty through subscription plans. The subscription plan cost $9.99 per month.
The DoorDash SaaS Model called the DoorDash storefront is the software, which is opted for by the restaurants to set up their personalized order-taking and delivery system. These restaurants and businesses have to pay a fixed amount every month to the app to access the SaaS Model.
If anyone wants to build an app like DoorDash, it is a must to acknowledge and add the common imperative features in the application. Let’s go through the feature list, and add them to yours.
Tracking will satiate both restaurants and consumers.Inventory Tracking and Management DoorDash also keeps tracking the inventory and its management, so consumers will get their desired food items when needed.
| Features | Description |
| Consumer History and Database | The app store database of consumers, and also have the history of consumers’ purchases to allow restaurants to know consumers’ interests. |
| Order and Delivery Tracking | The consumers can track orders and delivery till it is done through the application. |
| Notifications | DoorDash will share notifications to customers, restaurants, and dashers on every upgrade and update about order dispatching, deliveries, and everything. |
| Customer Support | DoorDash is a good on-demand food delivery app, which provides great customer support to consumers, dashers, and restaurants – all. It resolves the queries of all three parties in real time. |
| Routing and Route Management | The application has integrated maps for the dashers to reach the delivery point, and consumers to track the order. These are on-demand delivery apps; so proper routing and route management features must be implemented. |
| Payment Gateways | The app should have multiple payment gateways; so the users can choose one dedicated and favourable gateways to make payment. |
| Ratings and Reviews | Allow the restaurants, consumers, and dashers to give reviews & ratings for the services. It enables the admin to see the loopholes and make alterations required for improvement to the app. |
Go through the DoorDash alternatives shown below. Building an online food delivery app with just one app’s study is not enough. You better know the competitors, how they work, and what they build in the market to create something competitive and strong.
| Sr. no. | Apps like Doordash | Downloads | Rating | Platform | ||
| Android | iOS |  |  | |||
| 1. | Uber Eats | 100M+ | 3.7 | 4.8 | Android | iOS |
| 2. | Grubhub | 10M+ | 4.4 | 4.7 | Android | iOS |
| 3. | Postmates | 10M+ | 4.4 | 4.8 | Android | iOS |
UberEats is similar to DoorDash, where the consumers will connect to the restaurant and the delivery partner will be assigned to do a doorstep delivery. Hope none is unaware of the popularity of Uber Eats. Through the Uber ridesharing app, the online food delivery concept also took a vast surge.
Do you know what makes UberEats more attractive; well here the delivery agents can withdraw their earnings in cash-out regularly, whereas DoorDash does not allow doing that (else you have to pay to get daily paid off). Moreover, the driver of Uber Eats can also switch to the Uber Ridesharing app whenever desired.
There is a huge competition between DoorDash vs UberEats; so look thoroughly and know what innovations you can add to make your app market well.
Market Size of Uber Eats: Uber Inc. made 12.2 Billion US dollars in 2023 through its delivery segment (Uber Eats and Uber Direct.)
GrubHub is another popular food delivery application, which is accessible in 4000 cities in the US. It is a great competitor to DoorDash, which has covered almost 42% of the US market since its inception.
GrubHub and DoorDash – both share similar interests and operations. The app is supposed to manage connectivity between consumers and restaurants for seamless food delivery. On the other hand, GrubHub managed to sustain a top position in the online food delivery industry due to its seamless user-friendly mobile app.
The mobile application of GrubHub has offered easy navigation, ease of use, and a satisfying user experience since its launch. The end users’ satisfaction with the application makes GrubHub stand out among all the competitors available.
Market Size of GrubHub: GrubHub made $2.1 Billion in 2023, which decreased by 15% over the year; but still the business has immense popularity with growth.
It is also an on-demand delivery app, which facilitates food, groceries, alcohol, and other necessary doorstep deliveries. Postmates is accessible in 4200+ cities in the US and Mexico with 600000+ restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores in the US only.
In 2020, Postmates was acquired by Uber, but still, both platforms work separately. Also, the application received traffic of 9.3 million active users monthly with 5 Million items ordered. However, postmates is also like other online delivery apps, but the variety of products it manages for deliveries makes it stand out from the competition.
Market Size of Postmates: In 2021, Postmates made revenue of $730 Million with an increase of 14% every year.
The above-mentioned online food delivery app has marketed well and gained vast popularity. The businesses are growing rapidly. If you wanna build your app with a good revenue-generating DoorDash business model; you better concentrate on competitors and add some uniqueness to your product.
Without any denial, you need to spend enough on mobile app development cost and at the same time take care to hire professional experienced developers to create the app. Besides that, here you read and know how the apps like DoorDash build:
With the idea of building an app like DoorDash, the first thing that should be done is “App Idea Analyzation and Planning.” Know whether your idea is in demand, and if yes then how development will process, what features to implement, what will be the USP to make it stand out, discuss with developers, etc. It is the first and most important step, where you have to look forward and acknowledge how things will happen streamlined.
The app development, efforts, investment, and time – all be worth it if you have a correct business model to make money. Know how apps like DoorDash make money and prepare your monetization strategies for revenue generation.
Once you know what to build, how the development needs to be processed, and how you will monetize the app; now here comes to hiring a mobile application development company. Experienced professionals can build a robust app that stays engaging based on concurrent market standards.
Before the app development process initiates, it is advisable to build MVP. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) built with basic features and common functionalities will help you acknowledge how the app is performing. Building the MVP is a good idea to save money and prevent big disastrous results afterward.
If the MVP will give prominent results, then you can choose to initiate with the custom design, fix the UI/UX, prepare the wireframes, and do the designing of the application.
Here comes the backend and frontend development part, where the app developers will use core technologies to support the functions and user interface. Developers will code the app for its strong development.
When the app is developed, it is later set for testing to identify if any errors or bugs exist. Testing is important to make the app bug-free and accurate to work.
Once the app is good to use, launch it on the dedicated platform Google Play Store or App Store (iOS or Android).
After launch, ask for support and maintenance to acknowledge the performance and make alterations, add features, and do better to market the product well.
| For Application and Data | JavaScript, Python, nginx, React, CloudFlare, Java, Redis, TypeScript, Django, AmazonCloudFront, Redux, AWS Lambda, Swift, Kotlin, Retool |
| Utilities | Google Analytics, Stripe, Twilio SendGrid, Optimizely, Segment |
| DevOps | GitHub, Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Webpack, NewRelic, Yarn, Sentry |
| Business Tools | Jira, GSuite, AdRoll |
Konstant Infosolutions is the best on-demand food delivery app development company, which adheres to all the core technologies and modern trends to build robust apps. Also, do not worry about the guidelines and compliances required. We will do whatever is required to create market-engaging and interesting applications for the clients.
Our mobile app development company has years of experience and expert app developers, who know what and how to develop a mind-blowing application with genuine profitable revenue-generating strategies. Also, we can prove ourselves the right app development company for your next project:
The decision you have taken to build an on-demand food delivery app is incredible, as the demand will continuously increase. The influence from DoorDash is fair enough because the business grew very high and impressively. If anyone wants to build apps like DoorDash, that’s completely the right decision.
Seeing the success rate and profitability of DoorDash is not enough for own project creation. You better be careful and acknowledge the DoorDash business model. Learn how the app is generating revenue, how it has run the marketing, and what made it so popular to achieve the targeted audience. One has to understand the functions and strategies of DoorDash to understand how to process with own app development.
The average cost could be $40000, but this cost may increase depending upon several factors:
Yet, discuss with the on-demand mobile app development company to find out the project development cost based on deep evaluations.
DoorDash is a food delivery application that ensures picking up orders from the restaurant and delivering them to the doorstep of the customers.
In on-demand food delivery apps like DoorDash, there are certain features that must added; such as real-time order tracking, delivery driver management, customer support, push notifications, different secured payment gateways, reviews & ratings, etc.
It might take several months to build an app like DoorDash, yet the duration cannot estimated without considering some important factors; such as complexity, team size, deployment platform, features, functionalities, etc.
Manish Jain is the co-founder and Managing Director at Konstant Infosolutions. He is responsible for the overall operations of the company and has played a major role in bringing Konstant up from its humble beginnings and, with his immense energy and drive, transforming it into a globally trusted name in IT solutions.
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