Just Eat POS: From Startup to Global ePOS Provider

main products developed for Just Eat POS:

Just Eat POS system took care of the whole process of managing restaurant orders: from ordering the meal, providing kitchen staff with details to delivering the order to the client’s table or home. It also supported daily running of the restaurant by managing employees time, creating menus or providing tools to build their own restaurant website.

the system was built around these products:

• ePOS iOS and Android applications used by restaurant staff to take orders and manage payments.
• White label application for restaurants to take orders via their own, dedicated website.
• iOS and Android delivery drivers applications which assisted couriers in delivering orders.
• A website that enabled to display restaurant’s menu and offered integrations with online food delivery providers like JET or Wolt.
• Backoffice solutions including managing integrations and API connections.

main features developed by Bright Inventions:

Bright Inventions’ technology stack and skills:

technologies: React, TypeScript, Kotlin, Swift, Realm, Firebase, Fastlane

about Just Eat POS and Bright Inventions cooperation

The client reached out to us in 2013. At that time it was an early-stage Israeli startup “Practi” that offered web application solutions to users. Since 2013 the company has transformed from a promising startup to an international ePOS applications provider.

In 2019 Practi was acquired by Just Eat Takeaway. Bright Inventions had a great opportunity to assist the client during this incredible ride, including the whole business transformation.

client’s expectations

The client expected us to actively take part in creating the whole system. We were not only “code suppliers”, we were technical partners offering years of software development experience. Our mobile and web knowledge, and the fact that we have been working on this system since 2013 enabled us to evaluate technical and business decisions. As a result, when needed, we gladly offered alternative solutions that would benefit the client and end-users.

challenges and goals

Just Eat POS system (prev. Practi) was a product with over 10 years of history. It was built as a startup solution for a small group of clients with specific needs. The system became a part of the Just Eat Takeaway's family.

Therefore scalability was the key. Our teams took care of rebuilding some applications to make them more accessible for a growing number of users.

The increasing number of users also meant that Bright Inventions’s team had to actively monitor services, especially metrics such as CPU usage, number of database connections and average response time. The goal was to predict and solve any potential issues before they could affect clients.

process of building Just Eat POS retail system

All Bright Inventions’ developers worked closely with the business side. Bright Inventions’s was represented by 8 development squads (each squad had about 5 developers and 2 dedicated QA engineers) who took care of various areas of this massive hospitality system. Let us show you some of the development teams.

Read about iOS and Android development teams's products in a Just Eat POS mobile applications case study.

Frontend team

One of Bright Inventions Frontend team priorities was the development of the Just Eat POS Backoffice. This was a web application that enabled managing business daily activities and gave access to financial reports.

Here are examples of many features of the Just Eat POS Backoffice:

• Dashboard with all necessary information that shows the financial condition of your restaurant.
• Restaurant menu creator.
• Establishing prices of items on a menu.
• Managing the team and adjusting their roles e.g. cashier, branch manager and more.
• Access to sales reports and other crucial business data. Inventory management.
• Setting up basic restaurant configurations e.g. taxes, operating hours, delivery hours, delivery charge and more.

Frontend team took an active role at every phase of frontend app development process working closely with a product manager and product designers.

The Backoffice system had been on the market for around 10 years. Therefore one of the priorities of the frontend team was to migrate the app to modern technology while delivering new features to users who used this platform everyday at work.

Thanks to the trust of the client, the team took part in the decision-making process regarding which libraries, tools and technologies to choose to rewrite the platform. The migration didn't include only changing to newest technologies. The essential part of it was also implementation of new designs maintaining the best possible UX and UI experience.

Backend team

The team was responsible for maintaining and developing backend. All applications within Just Eat POS ecosystem were connected to the same backend. The main job of backend team was delivering features, supporting any initiatives on the Just Eat POS applications.

It was crucial especially in terms of white label apps where the clients incorporated changes and decided about the final look and functionalities of their app. In this case, the backend team had to step forward and support clients with appropriate changes in backend.

Additionally, the Backend team paid much attention to the performance. Since all Just Eat POS apps were connected to the one shared backend, any hiccup that happens on the Backend propagated to every client, affecting UX. We relied on the observability of our services. We tried to detect any abnormalities in the CPU usage, number of database connections or average response time to detect issues before they became visible to our customers.

Data we stored provided our client with significant insight into the behaviour of our customers. Feeding this data into the data lake gave the data science team a way to study the customers, and helped make more meaningful, data-driven features.

Backend integrations team

This team took care of integrations with food delivery platforms and menu platforms. Thanks to their work restaurants using Just Eat POS solution could change the menu in only one place and it would be automatically updated on every possible platform the restaurant used to display its menu.

Another responsibility of this team was integrations with online food order and delivery providers like Just Eat or Takeaway. The goal of backend integrations team was to enable management of orders from different platforms in one device. So restaurant employees didn't have to use different apps and devices to take care of orders from other platforms.

result

Just Eat POS (prev. Practi) and Bright Inventions have established a long-term business relationship. Practi was one of our first clients. During almost a decade of our cooperation the client transformed from a startup to a global Point-Of-Sale system provider used by businesses in Israel and the UK.