How Can I Build a Scalable Food Delivery App Using Bubble?

[ankitshekhawat]

I’m planning to build a food delivery app using Bubble and would like some advice from the community. What is the best way to structure features such as restaurant listings, food menus, user accounts, cart and checkout, online payments, order tracking, and delivery partner management?

Also, has anyone built a multi-vendor food delivery marketplace on Bubble? I’d love to know how you handled database structure, workflows, API integrations, and scalability as the number of users and orders increased.

[senecadatabase]

Haven’t done this, but I would say it’s possible.

If you’re planning on doing live updates by showing a car moving on the map or something like that, I would say it could use a lot of work units and might not be the best idea.

Other than that, you can ask Bubble’s AI and get some feedback on the whole thing. Here is a post from Bubble that explains how they can help you:

[Feature update] Introducing app planning sessions: Shape your app plan before Bubble generates it

Hi everyone, I’m Elisabeth, a product manager at Bubble. Today we’re launching an exciting update to the AI app generation flow by introducing app planning sessions! Starting now, you can fully shape your app plan before anything gets built. Right after you submit your prompt, Bubble asks clarifying questions, acting like a partner helping you think through key decisions for your app, and lets you add context, refine details, or upload images — so the app it generates is fully fleshed out and …

[boston85719]

@senecadatabase

If you’re planning on doing live updates by showing a car moving on the map or something like tha

Definitely only area really as a feature that is of concern.

@ankitshekhawat somebody asked same question a month ago, below is link to thread

Has Anyone Built a Food Delivery App with Bubble?

I’ve built food delivery apps for clients. One area that is tricky is real time driver location. Otherwise, Bubble is great for such a platform. For map plugin I used leafy maps, all other integrations were api integrations. And bubble is great for multiple user types. If you start building and have any implementation questions post on forum as most of what you’ll be building is pretty straightforward.

[senecadatabase]

Sorry, don’t recall seeing that post.

I did play around with doing a local taxi app on Bubble but determined Bubble was not the place to build an app that needed real-time updates…

like users requesting rides and drivers seeing them and accepting them in real time.

Was just too many work units involved.

[boston85719]

Simple estimated delivery time is fine, but real time updates definitely not worth it.

Did estimated delivery time where driver logs to pickup, then check estimated drive time to drop off automatically via api and log estimated delivery time….hopefully people have enough patience these days for that to suffice.

[senecadatabase]

Yes, I could live without the live map…

but still, having drivers see requests in real time and accepting them, and having the rider see in real time that they had a driver, was too many work units.

Bubble is great for most apps, but in cases like I mentioned, it’s not.

[boston85719]

@senecadatabase

but still, having drivers see requests in real time and accepting them, and having the rider see in real time that they had a driver, was too many work units.

Wouldn’t it just be cost of fetching for driver to see the requests, cost of update to request to accept and cost of individual item request for user to see request confirmed by a driver?

I mean, yes, not going to scale to be an Uber Eats on Bubble with WU costs, but to take a 15-25% commission on an Order from local restaurant could be justify spending 3-4 WUs per driver claim of an order.

[senecadatabase]

@boston85719

Wouldn’t it just be cost of fetching for driver to see the requests, cost of update to request to accept and cost of individual item request for user to see request confirmed by a driver?

I may not know enough about Bubble as you and others do…

but if there are 10 drivers that can accept jobs, and say 50 people at any given time requesting a ride, that would take refreshing the app at a minimum of every 5 seconds?

I played around with it all and couldn’t see how I could get it to be profitable.

Maybe, as I said, I just don’t know how to use Bubble as well as I should.

[boston85719]

@senecadatabase

that would take refreshing the app at a minimum of every 5 seconds?

No need to refresh. If a driver has app open and is therefore already initiating a search of all jobs whose status is pending, then 15 riders log in and each create a separate ride whose status is pending, the driver doesn’t need to refresh the app to see those 15 new ride requests, since bubble searches get updated automatically unless develop does something that breaks that like using workflow actions to filter or sets search as static.

But, I do think a ride hailing app and a food delivery app are two completely different beasts…food delivery on bubble can be profitable, but I’ve never built a ride hailing app and I do imagine a ride hailing app would not be as easily monetized as a food delivery app.