Spoon.ai, your assistant for eating out.

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  Here's the customer surfing and checking restaurants

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  Here's the customer choosing to book a table in a restaurant

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  Here's the customer determining the date of the booking

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  Here's the customer determining the timeslot of the booking

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  Here's the customer confirming the booking

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  Here's the customer finalizing the booking and being asked if would like to share email with restaurant owner

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  Here's another way using messenger webview to book a table in restaraunt

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  This sign up page for restaurant owners

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  This profile settings where restaurant owners add they can add their restaurant info and address

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  Here the restaurant owner manages how table they have and their availability

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  That's a real time notification when the restaurant owner has a new booking

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  That's a real time messenger notification for the restaurant owner when the restaurant owner has a new booking

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  This is the page where new booking are list for restaurant owner

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  This is the page where the restaurant owner creates new deals

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  This is the page where new booking are list for restaurant owner and analytics

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  This is the page where past bookings show up for restaurant owner

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  This is the messenger chat plugin landing for restaurant ownerac

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  Main Homepage for restaurant owner

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  This is restaurant owner checking booking details

Inspiration

When we go on a night out with friends, we tend to go spontaneously in restaurants without really caring about it much. After deciding at which restaurant we should go, sadly sometimes we find it either full or they ask us if we have made a booking. This is a waste of time as we have to repeat the same process finding another restaurant, which sometimes does not fit our need.

After digging deeper, we found out that chat-bots could be a great additional way for restaurants to advertise, The advantage they offer in terms of visibility are very interesting comparing for example to newsletters.

What it does

At Spoon.ai, our goal is to make reservations as simple as sending a message. The visitor knows in advance the different tables available in the city and can activate the notifications to let him know in case of unexpected last minute availability.

Offers, discounts and promotions are submitted by partner restaurants and made available to customers so they can eat well without spending too much. A win-win situation for both parties, an email confirming the reservation will be sent directly to the user.

The digital reservation booklet offers restaurateurs a faster, easier and simpler way to manage reservations rather than the traditional telephone reservation method.

Spoon.ai Gives the visitor to the restaurant the possibility to change the time or cancel the reservation in advance, this will allow the restaurant manager to become more flexible, will give him more time to find alternatives to bridge the gap and reduce the risk of No-Show.

Spoon.ai also provides an environment where the restaurant can advertise, submit offers and promotions to increase traffic during off-peak hours and increase digital presence at the same time. In addition, a study shows that people feels more comfortable texting rather than calling. (CNN).

How we built it

We've built it using node.js, on top of it express.js framework mainly for the chatbot server and api development. The client dashboard (restaurant owner) was built using React & Material-UI Framework.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge of the project was the restaurant management platform development, we had to put ourselves in the shoes of a restaurant owner. We had to ask ourselves important questions and think in a perspective of how to offer a product that would bring an added value to the restaurant and not become a liability for him. We want our product to be a complementarity to his restaurant and not a substitution. The restaurant industry is all about details and time efficiency. We always put in our mind that we should minimise to the maximum the risk of No-shows and it required logical thinking and extended problem solving. Especially with tables flexibility.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First of all, we never gave up. The team was always strong. Even from distance, the Goal was always the same. We are proud of the progression of the chatbot, how we started from the initial implementation to the wit.ai integration. It was purely fun.

What we learned

We learned that everything in building and developing and maintaining a project isn't just about the code and coding. now It's about getting to know the audience/customer and who is our target. And then design the best suited experience and also put in mind when designing the potential scaleability of the project.

What's next for Spoon.ai

In the future, our mission is to help restaurants thrive and connect them with their beloved customers. Our tech mission is to make reservations as easy as sending a message and become a hub for restaurants. The next phase is to implement a commercial strategy, choose a starting city and attract partners to start testing the idea. we believe that the next wave of UI will be conversational and that it could benefit many industries in a positive way, for both customers and business owners, like for instance the restaurant industry

Note: In the link down there provided a restaurant account has been created for testers. website: https://spoonai.herokuapp.com username: facebooktester password: facebooktester123

Built With

• express.sj
• heroku
• material-ui
• node.js
• react
• wit.