Word Wok: Your personal AI menu content designer

Word Wok is an online platform helping Square restaurants merchant to creatively word their dish / drinks menu content using Google MakerSuite AI technology. Whether its your first launch or relaunch.

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Inspiration

Opening a restaurant is a tedious operational and planning tasks for merchants. With Square, the hassle of bringing the restaurant to digital space and accepting payments is extremely simplified. However, many low end merchants often end up printing simpler menu cards since they may not have the resources to invest in agency to help them out.

Would you prefer a little detail to know what Shirley Ginger when you read this on a menu card?

  1. Description Option 1: Ginger, lime juice, grenadine, Ginger Beer
  2. Description Option 2 (AI Generated): Stirred ginger beer, lime juice, and grenadine in a pitcher. Poured into tall glasses with ice. Garnish with lime rounds and or maraschino cherries. Perfect for an evening hangout drink.

Yes Word Wok, helps articulate description option 2, which is more expressive.

Word Wok helps these square merchants to creatively assist in generating a different dish name and possible descriptions. Now the dish / drinks on the merchants menu card is more modern and expressive.

What it does

Word wok, pulls your items / menu content from Square platform helping you further customize the content (name and description) using Google AI MakerSuite generative AI platform with text-bison and chat-bison models.

Further, you can simply update these updated descriptions back to your Square platform by submitting the changes and your changes would be reflected instantaneously.

How we built it

The application consists of two components

  • A backend based on Node.js express (Javascript) framework. This also interacts with the Square APIs (namely OAuth and Catalog) and Google MakerSuite AI platform.
  • A frontend based on Vue using Vite (Typescript) framework.

The frontend interacts with the backend and authenticates users using the Square OAuth APIs. Post which a dashboard displays the items / catalog hosted by merchant accounts.

For fastest and simplicity of hosting, the application is hosted on Vercel platform, thereby making the entire process of local setup to production a breeze (along with auto generation of SSL using Lets Encrypt).

The AI models are based on chat-bison (for description) and text-bison (for name generation)

Chat-bison is used in the description considering future benefits where the user can have a control to fine tune the description. Example: "romanticize the content", "make it shorter", etc.

Although for quick demonstration it is hosted on Vercel, in production it is best recommended to be hosted on a dedicated containerized setup.

Challenges we ran into

Working with Google AI, I started with Vertx AI platform. However, when hosting to vercel, online articles suggested a longer process for access token (needed for vertex AI). Further this means, hosting the setup on GCP. Thankfully got the access to MakerSuite on time and the API calling process was simplified. In additional MakerSuite has official SDK supporting Node.js which simplified the process further since the application was build on nodejs.

By default I would have gone for Vercel platform has a single installation, i.e. Vue Frontend + Golang for Services as a package (Since i am not familiar with NuxtJS). However, Since no SDK is available for Golang out of the box in Square, I then decided to build the backend using Express JS and host it as a separate services app. This also helped segregate the front-end and back-end for full scale deployments in future on dedicated containerized systems.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Although, from a utilitarian perspective Word Wok may be useful to restaurant merchants when they launch or reword their menu cards only. The idea to help these merchants be more creative while hosting the SaaS platform helps merchants be more modern and expressive. Reducing the queries from customers for the items displayed on menu

What we learned

There are a lot of potential areas where Square and Generative AI could help assist, facilitate merchants harnessing Google AI MakerSuite. without having any developer knowledge. While Word wok is only assisting in content creation for menu cards. Square along with AI could help simply for non-developers bring possibilities right from onboarding, customer experience to payment services a breeze

What's next for Word Wok: Your personal AI menu designer

  • [ ] Google Auth for authentication where Square details are stored in Database
  • [ ] Storing in keywords in database for pre-fill in future
  • [ ] Extending the description component (hence used chat-bison) as stated earlier in the article earlier
  • [ ] Dockerizing the platform for cloud hosting
  • [ ] Auto generation of keywords during the descriptive AI generation process
  • [ ] Keyword based inputs in name generation / suggestion process
  • [ ] Using Google Imagen to generate menu background images, simplifying the process of physical printing the menu cards

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