How to Create a Recipe App?

Technology has brought remarkable change in people’s lives and now, technology is also making its mark in the kitchen by creating exciting applications to make cooking exciting and easy. Yes, you heard it right! Now you can use a mobile application for cooking amazing food, be it Chinese, Italian or anything else that may tantalize your taste buds. Times have drastically changed since when people used to search recipes from a cookbook to people turning towards mobile apps to learn how to cook with renowned recipes from around the world.

Research shows, over 23 million people worldwide have searched Google for food recipe apps. For some people, cooking is a hobby and for some, it is a profession, but cooking takes time and effort and this is where recipe apps become useful.

In this guide, we will explain you about the process of creating a recipe app.

What is a Food Recipe App?

People who love to cook, try out new recipes every day from internet. It would be easier for such people to cook and learn about new cuisines if they get recipes from a mobile app. A recipe app is a mobile application to guide you through meal preparation and provides functions to cook meals easily, even for an amateur. It provides videos and food blogs to users. Having a cooking app in the kitchen would save users’ time. They will have all the food recipes together in a single app. An innovative cooking app provides:

• Meal planning
• Measuring ingredients
• Calculating tools
• Content to boost cooking skills
• Recipe boxes
• Step-by-step cooking instructions

Identify Your Target Audience

Before creating an application, it is necessary to identify your target audience. By knowing your target audience, you will be able to better develop an amazing mobile application for food recipes that is useful for your users. Apart from people who love to browse food on social media, you can target those audiences who search for food recipes frequently. Those people maybe:

Frequent Travelers

These are the people who love to travel or have to for work purposes. Usually, these people do not have much time for cooking and they end up ordering food online. Therefore, they will love a recipe app on their smartphones that provides them with amazing recipes with the ingredients they have.

New to Cooking

This app will be a great rescue for those people who are amateurs in cooking and do not know much about recipes. They will be able to follow various meal recipes step by step to prepare amazing meals easily. The food articles and app’s videos will be useful for people to gain culinary experience.

Health Conscious 

Health-conscious people who are vigilant about their calorie intake will appreciate a recipe app that displays the ingredients and the number of calories in a specific meal. So, this app is perfect for those who thoroughly research about calorie counts before consuming any meal.

Hence, you need to keep this audience in mind when you’re create a recipe app. Moreover, if you want to start a business for guiding people about recipes and daily meal plans, read more here about why your business needs a mobile application.

Choose a Right Framework for Your App

Image source: Retrocube

Now that you have an idea about the target audience. Let’s discuss what kind of framework you should choose. There are different types of mobile application frameworks, which include:

• Native apps: these mobile apps are designed for specific mobile devices such as iOS or Android. An example is Overcast. This app is compatible with iOS only.
• Hybrid apps: these apps are built to run on different operating systems. An example of a hybrid application is Facebook that is compatible with several devices.

At Retrocube, we have previously discussed about the top frameworks to build mobile applications. Read further to get more detailed information regarding choosing the right framework for your app.

Main Features of a Recipe App

Your recipe app should have unique features if you want to stand out from the competition. The user interface of the application should be simple and easy to use. Consumers do not like to scroll through complex features, so try to make your app simple yet innovative. Here we have listed down some must-have features for mobile recipe applications.

1-Registration and Profile Creation

The first process for creating a recipe app is the registration phase. Authentication in business apps can be done in various ways via the phone number, email, or other social media profiles. Users can register to the app and create their user profiles where they can add their personal information and a profile photo. They can also select what kind of recipes they want to see.

2-Subscriptions

This feature provides subscription packages to users. They will have monthly and annual subscription plans. They can subscribe to any package of their choice by inserting their information, choosing a package and agreeing to the app’s terms and conditions.

3-Recipe Tutorials 

If you want to reach a wider audience, you cannot miss out on this feature. People will be attracted towards your app if you add video tutorials of recipes. A video of the recipe will deeply explain the cooking procedure and people will get to see the final look of the meal once it is finished.

4- Ingredient Calculator

This feature can help amateurs who are new to cooking and cannot figure out how much amount of a specific ingredient it would take to make a meal. This feature will provide people with specific amounts of ingredients to use in a meal.

5-Social Media Sharing

Most people use social media to get the latest updates from all around the world. Add this feature to your recipe app and make your app popular on social media. People can follow recipes to make food and share them with their friends and relatives.

6-Meal planning

This feature will help app users to plan out their meals according to their preferences. They can also select meals from the meal planning list.

7-Food Blogs

It would be best to incorporate this feature in your recipe app. The food blogs will provide insights about delicious food recipes and cuisines. People will be able to read blogs and articles from chefs and nutritionists to know about specific meals and their health benefits.

8-Add Comments and Reviews

Users can add comments on recipes and ask queries from chefs. They can give reviews on food recipes and also rate the food and meal plan according to their preferences. This feature is a good source to build an online community that communicates virtually.

Administration Panel

Every app must implement an admin panel along with the user panel. So far, we have discussed the user features of a recipe app. Now, let’s get started with the explanation of admin panel features.

1-Manage Comments

This feature provides access to the administration of the app to view, read and add comments. Admin can delete the comments that spread negativity and violate rules. Moreover, the admin will have access to block users who put someone down by commenting or reporting against them.

2-Manage Recipes

With this feature, the admin will be able to view and manage food recipes uploaded by chefs and other people who take subscription packages to upload their content on the app.

3-Manage Payments

This feature gives admin access to manage the payments made by users for their subscriptions to the app. Admin will keep track of inflows and make sure every user pays before the subscription plan’s due date. If some users are unable to pay, the admin can block their access to few app features.

4-View Dashboards

By implementing this feature into the app, the admin can keep track of monthly earnings. There are graphs for revenue that is generated every month.

5-Add New Features

Admin will be able to add new features and update the app. Admin can also add new policies and update the old ones on the basis of users’ requirements.

6-Upload Articles

Admin can upload the new articles and e-books about healthy meals and their recipes on the food recipe app. This feature will also enable chefs to upload their articles.

These are the main user and admin features that you must incorporate in your food recipe mobile app. Now that we have talked about features, let’s discuss how you can generate revenues from your cooking app.

Monetization of Food Recipe Mobile App

Image source: Retrocube

The features that we have discussed above are important for your recipe app to generate revenues.  You can monetize your app in the following ways:

1-Sponsorship

Get in touch with a sponsor and offer them to design an app to match the sponsor’s brand. In this way, you will get a monthly subscription fee and split the revenue with the sponsor. In order to monetize your app, it is very important to choose the right sponsor for your app.

2-Paid Version

You should have a second and paid version of your app. The paid version will provide extra features and users will use them for their ease.

3-In-App Purchases

This strategy is used by many apps that are available in Google Play and Apple Store. This feature will enable your food recipe mobile app to provide new content and subscriptions for a specific period of time. Once the subscription period of new content is over, users can subscribe again if they liked and benefited from the content.

4-Advertisements

Digital apps are a driving force for the technology world. You can advertise your partner’s products. People will interact and watch those ads and your revenue will be generated accordingly.

Hire a Development Team

Developing an application from scratch is a complex process. The development team of a food recipe mobile application requires several sub-teams. The app market has a vast array of apps that provide easy to access features to its users. The goal is to hire a firm that includes experienced UI/UX designers, back-end developers, Android developers, iOS developers and QA engineers.

Here, we have broken down the role of each sub-team:

User Interface Team

The user interface of an application is designed by UI/UX designers. They gather the requirements and understand the purpose of the application. Developing an easy-to-use interface is the job of these designers.

Back-End Development Team

They are responsible for integrating the work that front-end developers do. They build server-side application logic. In the case of the food recipe mobile app, they integrate and store users’ data in databases.

Android Development Team

These developers make the application compatible with devices that run on Android operating systems. Programming languages that are used in this process are Java, C++ and Kotlin, etc.

iOS Development Team

These developers make the application compatible with Apple’s operating systems. They use Objective-C and Swift for this kind of development. The user interface of the application is also made compatible in order to use easily on Apple’s phones.

QA Engineers

Now the QA engineers test all the builds of the application. They make the test cases against the functionality of the code. They run the tests and make sure every build is up to the mark. If a bug or error incorporates, they inform the development team to make changes to the code.

We have discussed the core team and their responsibilities for developing a recipe app. Since mobile applications are evolving every year, people are becoming more tech-savvy and they demand mobile applications for their convenience. For this reason, hiring an efficient firm for application development would help you in standing apart from the app market.

How Much Does It Cost to Make a Recipe App?

When it comes to mobile applications, the development cost depends on many factors. Good firms did a survey analysis and mentioned that an average food recipe mobile application costs between $40,000-$60,000. On the other hand, a complex application can cost up to $80,000 to $100,000.

The cost of developing a basic recipe app depends on factors including the functionalities, design, features, back-end structure, firm’s location and maintenance of the app.

Features’ Cost

The basic functionalities decide the cost of your recipe app. The cost depends on all the features from registration, authentication, video tutorials and other features that we have described above.

Design Cost

A user interface is a crucial part of a food recipe app. This feature provides the customer an easy-to-use interface which is costly to implement, so if you want to create a unique user interface then be ready to increase your budget.

Back-End Structure Cost

In back-end structuring, developers connect APIs to users’ databases and the cost depends on many factors, including parameters, tracking and admin panels.

Maintenance Cost

You should reserve almost 25% of your initial development cost for the maintenance of your application. Maintenance includes adding new features and fixing bugs in the existing code of your recipe app.

To Wrap it Up

The demand for food recipe and cooking apps is increasing drastically. Every day, people explore a new way to learn and cook different meals. There is no perfect recipe app, but all the recipe apps include delicious food recipes and pictures, which is an efficient way to attract users and increase traffic on your app.

Finally, it takes a lot of decision making and planning, from platform selection through user input to the size of the interface. The coding part is also not an easy task to handle, but it can be done in the right way with teams of expert developers.

Smart applications are everywhere these days and people use them to make their lives easier. These recipe apps are a gateway to a new experience in the digital world. People can download the recipe app on their smartphones as well as access through browsers and avail the benefits that technology has provided them.

This guide was to explain you about the implementation and features of a food recipe application from scratch. In today’s fast-paced world, we understand that with each passing day, technology is getting advanced.

Interested in Creating a Food Recipe App?

Image source: Retrocube

At RetroCube, we create phenomenal applications that offer great user experiences through highly interactive interfaces. We make sure to keep your customers enthralled with the best features.

If you are interested in creating a food recipe mobile application, get in touch with us and discuss it with our app experts today!