Challenge: Create a food delivery service from scratch.
- Timeline: 3 months, 2021
- Type/Setting: Start-up
- Team: Bogi Napoleon Wennerström, Tummas Jóhan Sigvardsen
- My role: I was in charge of the general visual development of the product, front-end development, and development of an android app for our partners.
- Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, React, AndroidSDK, JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, JetBrains Webstorm, HTML, CSS
- Skills: Problem Scoping, UI/UX Design, Brainstorming, Concept development, Visuals, Front-end development (React), App Development (Android), Partner relations, Contracts
While working at Polytope, we often sought possibilities for multiple income streams. One of the solutions that we explored was a food delivery platform for the Faroese market. Before starting the development, we tried to purchase different white-label solutions, but they were either not customizable or too hard to work with, making them less than ideal for a new start-up idea.
We looked at some of our biggest competitors from abroad and noticed some similarities. The similarities were:
- An app for delivery partners
- An app for restaurant partners
- An app for customers
- A website for customers
- A website “backend” for restaurant partners
App for delivery partners
The Faroe Islands have very bad weather, compared to many of the country’s close neighbours. It is not uncommon to experience all the four seasons the same summer day on the islands. This harsh weather created a requirement for car-only delivery. The Faroe Islands have taxies on all the islands, and they were the perfect partners for delivery. Most of them have digitalized their everyday life, and have adapted some kind of service to help them keep track of their trips. Because of this digitization, we could partner up with their taxi companies and automatically send orders to their systems, when the food was ready to be picked up and driven to the customer - thus eliminating the need for an app for the delivery partners.
An app for delivery partners
Website for customers/partners & app for customers
We wanted to create a website that was easy to understand and easy gain an overview of the possibilities for ordering ( pick-up/delivery), possible locations, and more.
We wrote a responsive website in React and planned to use the existing code to easily convert it into a React Native customer-facing app. Due to the wish of opening the service as soon as possible, we did not deem the app important at the stage of development. The requirement of a “backend”-website for the restaurant parters was also put on a hold, due to the unimportantance at the time of development. To by-pass this requirement, we decided to get around the need for it by sending the partners a weekly e-mail with their orders, earnings etc.
An app for customersA website for customersA website “backend” for restaurant partners
The frontpage of the website can be seen below:
App for restaurant partners
We researched the apps from our competitors and identified some key features, e.g. the general layout of the application, the most important information to display and the alike.
The application is written in Java, using the JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA and AndroidSDK. To make the process as easy for us as possible, we required the restaurant partners to purchase hardware (tablets, printers) from us, thereby making it possible for us to decide the exact dimensions of their screens and printer paper.
An app for restaurant partners
The layout of the app was divided into three main groups: Incoming orders, Outgoing orders and “On their way”-orders. The app, running on an Emulator can be seen below:
Solution
