Foodie.mobi?

I just don't know how I missed this!?!

To bring in the New Year cheer et al, we have launched a WAP solution for the Food industry.

Here's some background about the problem that its trying to solve and what it will do.

An out-of-the-box mobile (wap) solution for the order bookings. Essentially, it will allow (food) take-aways and delivery shops - like a franchise of Domino's or a Subway to use as a new sales channel.

We envision it will be something like a wap order booking solution. It will only collect orders and possibly collect feedback. It will not process them or manage financials.

Its a solution with which a mobile user can easily place an order - sms / email (both) can be sent to the vendor to login to the system (via their mobile phone and see the order details) - they then contact the person to confirm the order - they process it as per their existing system and user comes to collect (in the case of a take-away) or payment is collected on delivery.

It will provide location-sensitive information related to closest restaurants - of the mobile user, or his home/work.

Key business targets:
- takeaways
- mobile wap directories
- mobile location aggregators (something like a foodie.com - for the mobile)
- speciality restaurants

User stories:
Here are some of the user stories that we are attempting to address with the solution followed by some of the implicit attrib/characteristics associated with it:

Perspective: Customer
1. I feel like "Chinese" tonight (for an individual)
- implicit - fast food, chinese, veg / non-veg, offers

2. How about "Chinese" tonight (for a group)
- implicit - fast food, chinese, veg / non-veg, offers

3. Lets discuss this over dinner at "Chez Nous"
- implicit - gourmet restaurant, chinese, veg / non-veg, "waiting token"

4. "Birthday party" - lets celebrate with "pizza"

5. Its 10:30 pm! - who can deliver tandori food
- implicit - fast food, tandoori (ie. any speciality), veg / non-veg, offers

6. Its 10:30 pm, I'm starving - I just want to eat - who can deliver food the fastest to me?
- implicit - fast food, veg / non-veg, best delivery time, gps

7. I'm in the mood for some real good food
- implicit - veg / non-veg, best quality

8. I want to try something new
- implicit - veg / non-veg, exotic?, quality?

9. I want to try something new -- what's popular?
- implicit - veg / non-veg, frequency across speciality?

10. I'm on a budget - what are my options?
- implicit - veg / non-veg, average cost, type, quality, offers


Perspective: Restaurant - User
1. confirm / reject an order (due to time, etc) - (auto reject orders which have not been processed in 5, say, min)

2. Start an offer / promotion?
- across items, time, or dependencies (buy 1, 50% off on 2nd), start/end, comments (for example, 30min delivery guarantee invalid with offer)

3. End an offer / promotion?


Perspective: Restaurant - Manager
1. MIS - popular menu items, across day, month, delivery area, holidays, feedback, price range, veg / non-veg, popular combinations
2. Assign blanket offers - e.g. all HCL employees entitled to a 25% discount

It is being designed to have minimal "integration" needs - (ie - I just a phone number to send the sms or email to and a one time job of adding the menu items to the menu - along with the user's "logo").

Hosted vs. roll-your-own?
Will be offered as a hosted solution - that can be done off a subdomain of ours - or integrated with the respective customers domain (will use: wap.theirdomain.com) for hosting.

Deployment time : 1 week.

P.S. I'm back on my soapbox. ;)