Executive summary
Customers should also be able to choose the restaurant and their meal using filters to specify their preferences, such as type of cuisine, ingredients, allergies, distance from their current location, and the price of dishes.
Looking to minimize the risk and enter the market as soon as possible, the founder of the EatApp asked ValueLogic for the technical implementation of their idea. Our remit was to bring the highest quality programming and to verify the compatibility of the business idea and the proposed technological solution.
About EatApp
EatApp is an application that takes the restaurant menu experience to the next level. It is a platform that connects chefs, restaurants, and diners.
Intentions
A Mobile app offering a new, innovative visual menu experience like never before offering flexibility to all its users from the manager to the diners.
"Where shall we have lunch?" It’s an old question and one made harder by the ever-growing range of choices we now have. EatApp was designed to give users a visual menu experience—using high-resolution photos, along with nutritional and allergy information—so they can assess the offerings of different establishments near their current location and make an easy, informed decision about where to eat.
Joshua Gofman, Founder of EatApp
Outcome
- The product launched to the mass market on time, on budget
- The application can easily be managed by restaurant owners, with hi-resolution photos directly uploaded by the chefs instantly
- The solution that brings more to the table - vast scalability and preferences, cuisine, ingredients, allergies, distance from their current location, pricing and more
It was during our early product definition and project management meetings that I developed my comfort zone. I met VL’s executive team, as well as the project manager, the designer, and coders. Reviewing the early versions of the proposed GUI, screen prototypes, and other visual elements gave me the confidence to proceed with ValueLogic.
Joshua Gofman, Founder of EatApp
Challenge
The requirements for EatApp were clear from the beginning. The application had to be built in two formats: a web application where restaurants could easily add photos and descriptions of dishes, and an iOS and Android mobile application in which end users could filter their dining choices and see photos of available offers. The requirements were simple, but delivering both in beta versions within 6 months was a huge challenge.
Approach
We developed in short sprints, consulting with our partners at EatApp at each stage, to evaluate if we are moving in the right direction. This was very important for the founders of EatApp because, with each iteration, they were able to set up meetings with potential investors based on what we were creating.
My dream of the last 25 years is now a functioning reality which I can bring to the rest of the world. In 1995, one couldn’t ever imagine displaying the menu as we now do in EatApp on a mobile phone. Today we have these amazing smartphones that make EatApp a practical reality
Joshua Gofman, Founder of EatApp
Result
Since the application was intended to engage guests through the visual restaurant menu experience, a very important factor in its design was an appealing and intuitive user interface upon a reliable backend structure.
We based the EatApp infrastructure on AWS - Amazon Web Services. It offers a safe and scalable solution in which EatApp can regulate its costs against the number of subscriptions in a simple pay-as-you-grow pricing plan.
We used technologies including Javascript, Vue, Java Spring, AWS, MySQL, Swift and Kotlin. The beta version of the project was delivered on time, in budget, and we have now started a new development phase that will bring new functionalities and will enable customers to directly order their menu choices from the app.
Chefs and restaurant owners are able to easily upload rich media content to tell their stories and create striking rich visual menus, while diners get a whole range of benefits from EatApp It is an easy-to-navigate menu app with a warm and inviting design that showcases images of dishes and adds depth to the menu with descriptions and backstorie.
Close cooperation with the client made us feel part of this project. We feel a responsibility for the development. Weekly meetings made it really easy for us to understand the idea of the application and propose innovative solutions. Working on EatApp is partly about our implementation skills but also requires a lot of creativity - Bartosz, Project Manager at ValueLogic
Joshua Gofman, Founder of EatApp