Client

The customer is RequiSit, a startup based in Dublin, Ireland. Established in 2020, the company delivers services to the hospitality industry.

Project goal

The hospitality industry is an essential component of the Irish economy that is worth €7.6 billion and employs 180,000 people. However, the coronavirus pandemic had a negative impact on the restaurant sector in Ireland.
To reduce the spread of COVID-19, the Irish government required bars and pubs to close from March 15, as well as imposed strict restrictions on social distancing in venues since March 2020. As a result, the annual number of seated diners decreased by 70% in the Irish OpenTable reservation network.
With the view of helping local businesses survive during an economic crisis, RequiSit wanted to build a pre-pay online restaurant table reservation system that would let venues take bookings, allocate space, and maximize revenues while users would be able to secure seats.
Cooperating with Arateg, the company needed to create 2 software solutions: a cross-platform mobile app for users (iOS, Android) and a web app for restaurants.

Project summary

Project duration

2.5 months.

Team

2 React Native developers, 2 frontend developers, 2 backend developers, 2 UI/UX designers, a quality assurance engineer, project manager.

Technologies

TypeScript, React, Redux, Golang, React Native, Docker, Bitbucket Pipelines, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront, App Center, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Google Places API, Google Maps API, Stripe API.

Solution

Our custom mobile and web development company created a pre-pay online table booking system within 5 stages:
  1. Discovery — collecting and analyzing the project requirements, preparing a technical specification, choosing the technology stack, and estimating the work scope.
  2. UI/UX design — from wireframes to a dynamic prototype.
  3. Software development — building mobile and web applications.
  4. Testing — checking the product for bugs, errors, compliance with the requirements, etc.
  5. Launch — releasing the system, gathering user feedback.
A mobile application for users lets them search venues on the map, make advanced payments for restaurant tables, as well as view reviews and ratings. The product provides a real-time display of working hours, allowing people to book places regardless of time zones, for instance, when a businessman books a table in Ireland when flying from the USA.

When making an online restaurant table booking system, we solved the following challenges:

  1. Since the platform was intended to help local businesses survive during and after the COVID-10 crisis, it had to be built as fast as possible.
    To create a pre-pay restaurant table reservation system within tight deadlines, we provided the client with a dedicated development team, consisting of 10 members. Following the Agile methodology, we were able to deliver new functionality every 2-3 weeks and quickly make changes in the product according to the customer’s feedback.
    With the purpose of automating the development process, our engineers leveraged a CI/CD pipeline based on App Center and Bitbucket Pipelines. By using continuous integration (CI), we made it possible to faster assemble apps and detect errors in the code.
    Employing continuous deployment (CD), our software experts improved the speed of making app updates and deploys. Thanks to using this approach, we built the project within 2.5 months.
  2. An online restaurant table booking system had to provide an online payment system that would freeze money until a restaurant confirmed a reservation and made automatic refunds. In addition, the customer wanted to avoid currency conversion fees.
    Our team integrated the Stripe payment gateway to allow users to pay for reservations online. Using Stripe Connect, we made it possible to automatically freeze money and make refunds in certain cases.
    With this tool, our engineers ensured that transactions would be processed in the currency of a restaurant’s country for both parties to avoid conversion fees (e.g., American restaurants would always receive the payment in dollars, Irish restaurants—in euros).
  3. It was important to automatically verify restaurant banking details and enable paid subscription to different plans.
    To verify banking data when a new restaurant is connected to the system, our developers used Connect Onboarding, a pre-built UI to easily onboard service providers.
    Employing Stripe Checkout—a hosted payment page optimized for conversion—our software engineers enabled secure payments for subscriptions. As a consequence, we delivered this functionality much faster if we used Stripe API only.

The key features of a pre-pay online table booking system

Our team created an online restaurant table reservation system, consisting of 2 applications.
Features of a web app for restaurants:
  1. Registration
  2. Venue profile
  3. Admin panel
  4. Data visualization dashboard
  5. The possibility to add places
  6. Seat management
  7. Booking management
  8. Venue management
  9. Restaurant verification
  10. Verification of banking details
  11. Online payments
  12. Integration with Google Maps and Google Places
  13. Paid subscription
A mobile app for users includes the following features:
  1. Registration and authorization
  2. User profile
  3. Restaurant search on the map
  4. Restaurant search by multiple filters such as time, date, location, the number of people, etc.
  5. Online booking
  6. Geolocation
  7. Order history
  8. Order cancellation
  9. Online payments via Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, etc.
  10. Money refund
  11. Verification of customer identity
  12. Email notifications
  13. User settings

Result

Collaborating with Arateg, the customer built an online restaurant table booking system that consists of a web app for restaurants and a mobile app for users. With the delivered solution, the company was able to help local businesses mitigate a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by predicting the number of reservations, allocating space, and increasing revenue.
Using a smartphone application, people were able to secure seats while making sure that social distancing would be kept. Today RequiSit operates in the Irish and US markets. At the moment, our team provides post-launch project maintenance while the client is collecting features for the second product version.

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