How I’ve built a Restaurant Ordering App that Saves waiters over 100 trips/day

The Problem

Back home in Romania, I’ve noticed that a lot of restaurants menus are behind a QR Code. I expected to be able to see the menu and order what I needed. But this wasn’t the case.

The QR code was just sending me to a Landing Page or to a PDF. With no other functionality.

The Vision: What If...

As a frequent restaurant customer, I wanted to do so much more with my effort of scanning the QR code.

What if…

• …I could add food an drinks to make an order?
• …People at the table could add their items too?
• …We could add comments (i.e. “no salt”)?
• …A waiter would get a notification everytime a customer needs help?
• …We could pay right from the app?

It would save us time and each waiter at least of 3 trips:

• Menu bringing trip
• Collect the order trip
• Bringing the Bill trip

“At every 100 orders, it would save waiters at least 300 trips!”

Building the Solution: From Idea to Reality

Technical Challenges

The project has several must-haves:

• Scan & Order: No account & No App to Download
• Staff side-app with notifications
• Easy restaurant onboarding, finances, dashboard and QR Codes ordering
• Multi-language menus
• Tips functionality when ordering

The plan

We’ve decided on building 2 Web Apps:

1. Restaurant Admin Dashbaord - accessible via Desktop
2. Customer & Staff Web App - accessible via QR Scan

Biggest challenge

The payment system is the most complext aspect of the project.

We wanted to charge restaurants based on usage and not based on a fixed monthly fee.

In order to automate the billing process, we’ve built a Marketplace of Restaurants. Our business holds other businesses who get paid, and we get a % cut - similar with the Amazon model.

2 way payment for customers

We gave users the options to “Pay Now” or “Pay at the End”

• “Pay now” would mean a seperate order from the others
• “Pay at the End” means you add items to the Table Order based on a security code

The Staff App

This is embeded in the customer app, but with added functionality, that customers don’t have access to:

• Authentication
• Orders Status
• Notifications

The Results

All in one time-saver for restaurants, customers and waiters

Takeaway lessons:

• If you think something should be different, just ask: “What would it take for me to make this a reality?”
• If you start your journey, don’t settle until every customer need is satified. The product should not be good. It should be great!