Inspiration
In Chicago, we visited a restaurant called Wow Bao. This restaurant used robots to prepare the order, and then it would to place the order into one of the cubbies. This system seemed perfect for today's circumstances. With the demand for contactless/curbside pickup increasing. Issues such as limited parking spots and increased wait times also factor into hindering the flow of business for restaurants and stores. With FoodLocker, we plan to solve problems and help customers in endeavors such as: having germ free transactions/interactions, Reducing the likelihood of abandoned carts and the risk of fraud for e-commerce, improve delivery/curbside pickup for NCR's merchants and consumers, and help handle surges in online orders.
What it does
Restaurants and stores can manage food/item lockers where they can place finished orders into. With the application the store/restaurants would be able to view various types of info. This info would include items such as: the order information, the customer name, the locker the items are currently placed in, the list of items, the quantity of each item, the status of the locker, and the time elapsed since the order was placed in. When the restaurant or store places the item in a locker, the locker will send a notification to the customer side application to notify that their order is done and ready to be picked up. The customer would then use a the mobile application to check in and open the locker. Once the order is taken, the restaurant/store side application will clear that locker's information and reset it's status.
How we built it
We used React.js for the frontend UI and NCR's Catalog and Order API to retrieve the information we needed. We were trying to use the Catalog API to add items with prices in the stores so that it can calculate the total price of the cart before the customer checks out. We also tried to use the Order API to get the order from the customer and send it to food lockers.
Challenges we ran into
For this project, it was some members first time interacting and using React.js. It was a slow start to get them acquainted with the program, but they were happy and excited about learning a new language. The API was a challenging part of the project because we are fairly new to React JS and we spent good amount of time learning and debugging the application. We were able to get the API connected to application but we ran out of time to complete our project.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We were able to develop a demo despite being relatively new to React.js and connecting APIs to it.
What we learned
We learned a lot as a team. This was the first time some of us have worked with React. We learned more about API's and Postman as well.
What's next for FoodLocker
We are going to further iterate on this idea and refine it. In addition, we are going to start trying to implement hardware as well.
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