yumchat.io

helping local F&B connect with more customers through social channels

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Inspiration

We wanted to build a concept that would help local businesses connect with their GenY and GenZ customers in Singapore where many of us are from. Social chat interfaces are the perfect platform for this as many of use are on these platforms anyways playings games, chatting with friends and family. Most of all we want to help small and medium size business automate their work and make more revenues from online ordering.

What it does

The Bot would find nearby shops to order food and drinks. Customers can chat with the Bot and we collect the data and forward it to the appropriate Merchants. On the Merchant side we built a dashboard for processing the orders and updating the status which gets sent back to the Customers chat session. We generate receipts for Customers and Merchants as well as offer both onsite and online payment options.

How we built it

We are building this completely open-sourced and public. We use Github for communication and collaboration: https://github.com/adrienshen/facebook-bizchat-hackathon/issues

We used an all javascript stack for speed. Node.js for the backend and React (thanks FB!) for the frontend and PostgreSQL for the database layer. We deploy on Heroku using CI.

We discussed the architecture and the services we want on GH and Telegram and then split the task up to work on individually. We worked completely remotely and reviewed and collaborated whenever we have time.

Challenges we ran into

At first, I didn't have FB dev account and it took awhile to get it verified so it was hard to get the Messenger APP up and running to being setting up the webhook. Afterwards, I found team members who already had an account so we resolve that issue.

Other challenges include getting team members onboard and caught up with the tech stack as some have not used React or Node before. We resolve this by working together on issues so we can all learn from each other.

Building the ordering system: We had to figure out how Merchants think and what their problems are. How to build the features in a way that is most convenient to them. What fields and data we need to track for their benefit. We ended up talking to a few local coffee shops and got one to sign up for the Beta!

Remote working is another one. We had to figure out how to coordinate across timezones.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Just strangers working together to build something is pretty amazing. Collaboration is always a difficulty, especially remotely and I think we did pretty well. It was pretty surprised seeing team members help each other and solve problems along the way.

What we learned

A couple of us are new devs, so they learned a lot about full stack development from working on these project. I learned about chat APIs and NLP, as well as figuring out how to build an ordering system on a tight timeline!

What's next for yumchat

We think it could be a useful tool for Merchants that they can use for free. It'll be like a white labeled solution that they can adapt to their business needs if they want to host themselves. We plan on building Marketing features next for Merchants to send out text to their existing customers base. As well as tools to help with Delivery Drivers get the food to the Customers with more efficiency and save costs. If we make any money from a hosted version with support, it'll go towards improving the product and tech education fund for the contributors. It will always remain fully open sourced.

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