Modernize the Technology Layer in the Restaurant Tech Domain
Blackbird built a brand new customer-facing food ordering platform for a restaurant chain within just eight months.
The Challenge
Freshii, a restaurant chain with 350 locations across North America, approached Blackbird with a challenging request: deliver a new ordering platform within short project timelines. With hundreds of stores, an existing mobile application with data of several hundred thousand registered users, and complex business logic of managing the capacity and stocks, Blackbird faced a daunting task. Additionally, there were a lot of different use cases to consider due to the scale: real-time menu changes for any store, third-party services to integrate with, payments, and so on.
Outcomes
Blackbird delivered a modern and innovative solution for Freshii: Java SpringBoot microservices in AWS Cloud on the back-end, Admin app, and new food ordering apps for iOS, Android, and Web UI. This allowed Freshii to have greater control over the customer experience and provided the ability to develop new functionality as needed. Additionally, Blackbird conducted a proper soft launch into the market for the entire user base two weeks before the deadline, providing ample time for testing and refinement.
Impact
Since the launch of the new food ordering platform, Freshii has seen tremendous success. Over $1M in monthly sales are processed, with steady growth. The platform has also unblocked new business opportunities, allowing Freshii to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving industry. It has reduced its dependency on third parties, allowing greater flexibility and customer experience control.
”We've never worked with a company where we don't have to push to get work done except for Blackbird Lab.”
Umair Vanthaliwala, VP of Digital Products
51-200 employeesHQ Toronto, CanadaClient since 2022 | Restaurant TechThe story
Freshii, a popular health-food restaurant chain, needed help, like many other businesses in the industry, to build a custom platform to support their web and mobile channels. Their previous attempts had failed, and they were looking for a technology partner to help them bring their vision to life. That's where Blackbird came in.
Background
Freshii had tried to build its own custom platform three times, but each attempt had failed. Freshii needed a custom platform to support web, iOS, and Android channels and route orders to hundreds of stores with point-of-sale terminals. They needed a flexible platform to allow for updates and complex logic. The old mobile application had 350,000 registered users, and Freshii wanted to retain them.
Collaboration
Freshii needed a technology partner who could deliver a custom platform that met their complex needs, and that's where Blackbird came in. We assembled a team of experts who took on the entire technical component of the project, from architecture and development to deployment and maintenance: Technical project manager who drove the execution, three back-end developers, two iOS developers, two Android developers, one Web developer, an Architect on a part-time basis, DevOps, and two Quality Assurance specialists.
We worked closely with Freshii's product owner and designer to understand their vision and refine the requirements. We then built a flexible, scalable platform that supported integration with third-party platforms like OLO and Order House, which allowed Freshii to route orders to points of sale and store loyalty data, respectively.
Over the course of several months, we developed three applications on the front end - Web(Javascript), iOS(Swift), and Android(Kotlin) - and a microservice architecture on the Java back end in Amazon Cloud(ECS). We also used GraphQL for integration, enabled posts card payments, including Apple and Google Pay, and menu management. After the release, we continued to build new features, giving Freshii complete flexibility to extend the platform as they saw fit.
Summary
Thanks to the custom platform we built, Freshii processed over $1 million in monthly online payments for orders purchased through their food app.
Overall, the collaboration between Freshii and Blackbird was a great success. We built a custom platform that met Freshii's complex needs and helped them achieve their business goals. Creating a custom platform for Freshii was challenging but rewarding. Working closely with Freshii's team and leveraging our expertise, we were able to deliver a platform.
Brands and restaurants must observe market leaders investing in technology and building their digital experience and loyalty programs to improve customer relationships. It is essential to have a loyal customer base to make the restaurant business predictable and controlled. If they have these tools and know their clients, they are enabled to rapid growth.
