With blockchain technology, it is possible to track your meals’ entire journey – from the farm to your fork using your food delivery app. The online food delivery industry has grown exponentially over the past few years. This industry has been gearing up to meet customers’ demands by making significant investments in its production and supply chain.  The current pandemic has forced this segment to look for ways to make the supply chain more transparent and traceable. Blockchain technology is the way forward for the food delivery industry that aims to address information safety, food hygiene, expenditure, and overall operational efficiency.

What is Blockchain Technology?

When investing in food delivery app development, service providers should consider implementing blockchain technology. And investing in blockchain technology seems to be the order of the day as this technology is slated to see massive growth in the coming years. The market is forecasted to climb in size to more than $36 billion by 2025.

Blockchain technology can bring innumerable benefits to both service providers and end customers. But what exactly is blockchain technology?

Blockchain is a decentralized, digitized, and shared ledger for keeping records, and tracking all transactions – not only financial but everything that adds value to the asset.

Pros of Blockchain based Food Delivery Apps:

Food Safety

One of the first concerns of the food delivery business would be ensuring food safety and hygiene. With a Blockchain-based delivery app, it is possible to maintain complete transparency in the supply chain. It will help reduce food safety disasters that might be lurking in the corner. According to a study by Juniper Research, blockchain technology will help $31 billion globally in food fraud savings by the year 2024.

Using these apps, customers can identify their food products’ origin and ensure authenticity and adherence to safety regulations.

Reliable Supply Chain

At times, the restaurant doesn’t fully know the quality of its products in preparing the food. It impacts the quality of the food, and the trust in the restaurant takes a beating. A food delivery app cannot check the quality of food owing to an unreliable supply chain. When information about each product is collected, stored, and validated in each step of the process, it becomes easier to ensure quality and safety.

Smart Contract

A food delivery service provider can verify and ensure the quality of food delivered by them with a smart contract. Each stakeholder involved in the production of that food can record information about it in the digitized ledger. This information can then be accessed by the food delivery service provider and the end customer as well.

Faster and safer payments

Unlike traditional payment methods that require cross-checking of information by a variety of players, blockchain technology-based apps can ensure faster and safer payments. Since the data can be accessed by those who have permission, misuse of identity or disclosure of transaction details is reduced drastically.

Verification and Security Check

The authenticity of the delivery partner can also be easily verified when using a blockchain-based app. You can use this feature to check the credentials of the delivery agent and restaurants. In case of any discrepancies, the same can be noted. The end-user will also benefit from such a feature.

Cons of Blockchain based Food Delivery Apps:

The food delivery industry has its own peculiar set of challenges, and blockchain technology doesn’t mitigate some of these issues.

Unreliable Data Collection

Collecting and maintaining reliable blockchain data is challenging in the food delivery industry. The very nature of this industry involves processes that are difficult to trace and catalog. For instance, it is not easy to trace the wheat in the pizza we ordered. The grain is harvested over many fields and mixed with other grains produced by other farmers. The flour is distributed to many manufacturers. By the time it reaches retail, its journey cannot be accurately traced.

No system can tie all these different elements of manufacturing, supply chain together across its many transformations.’

The Human Error

When any system works on the efforts of human beings, it is bound to run into some discrepancies. Blockchain technology is usually explained as being inscrutable and water-tight. However, this explicit guarantee of the information is not entirely valid as the data entered into the blockchain is subject to human error.

Blockchain stores and verifies data (not the events), and this data is only a representation of the events. The risk of information integrity – either intentionally or by accident – is always present. Despite the promise of transparency and traceability, it is tough to guarantee accurate information, especially when blockchain is only digitally documenting manually entered information.

Wrapping Up

Blockchain technology is evolving, and the food delivery industry can reap huge benefits if it eagerly follows this new technology. Blockchain is especially remarkable when it comes to the food delivery industry’s aid in supply chain tracking, increasing transparency, ensuring food safety, managing inventory, and ensuring faster and safer payments.

Author Bio

Oliver is a Founder and CEO of CeloApps, a Leeds based digital agency that specializes in ready to deploy web development and mobile applications including taxi app solutions, Food delivery app development, AI solutions, E-commerce solutions, and many more.