Introduction
Introduction
SMS ORDERING SYSTEM FOR RESTAURANTS (foSMS) Abstract
It’s no secret that consumers in today’s high-speed environment spend a lot of time being busy — busy with work, errands, email, driving, shopping and countless other activities. But no matter how busy you are, you still have to eat and drink to survive. Smart entrepreneurs, like us have come up with a unique solution for busy consumers who want to spend as little time as possible on food and beverages, leaving them with more time for their other activities. This project seeks to implement a nationwide order-by-text service, giving consumers even easier access to their preferred tasty meals in their own convenience. To take advantage of this sms feature, one has to visit a website for a one-time registration of your mobile number, along with user details to enable easy ordering. One can also satisfy their thirst by hitting up the same site on a mobile browser, which provides an optimized version of the desktop ordering system. With this system, users would be able to do pre-ordering (ie. Placing order ahead of time) as well as place order for door step delivery which would not be any different from the existing delivery structure of a particular restaurant.
Details
Architecture
This system would provide two platforms for serving two categories of users. A Web application and a mobile SMS application.
The Regular user
User visits the website to create an on-line account. All user's SMS text ordering, must be placed from the mobile number associated to user's on-line account using a predefined SMS ordering format. *User sets up at least one preset Favorite meal associated to user's on-line account when creating the account, this favorite meal is optional and could be changed later by user.
The Ordinary User
User does not have an on-line account, but wants to order. All users' SMS text for ordering, must be prefixed with user's first name followed by the predefined SMS ordering format.
Order For Delivery
After system receives the sms from any of the above users, a reply is automatically sent confirming receipt of order, notifying user when order will be ready. All orders are then saved in a database with order status as pending. When food is ready, restaurant changes order status to dispatched, and an sms is again sent to user informing user the food has been dispatched. Then after the food has been delivered and user has signed, restaurant changes order status to delivered.
Pre-Order.
Users who want their food to be ready before they get to the premises of the restaurant, will have to place a pre-order sms. In this part, after system receives sms, a reply is automatically sent to user confirming the receipt of the order and informs the user when the order will be ready. When food is ready and restaurant changes status to ready, system sends an sms to user giving them a code with which to receive the food. After the food is served, status is then changed to delivered.
Problem Statement
The original idea of setting up a restaurant is to provide an avenue where people can be served as and when they need to eat, hence the name “fast food” meaning food is eaten whilst being prepared. But the current system we have has made this “fast food” concept a cliché, by introducing delays in serving hungry and impatient customers whose numbers keep increasing daily. With the limited facilities (sitting capacity, number of serving plates, etc) provided by these restaurants due to inadequate space being occupied by these restaurants,hence the introduction of a system called “take-away” (which means, the hungry and busy customer gets served but leaves with his well packaged food to enjoy in the comfort of his home). The “take away” system has solved the problem of limited facilities to some extent by enabling the restaurant to use the limited facilities to serve the increasing number of customers. Even with this solution, restaurants still cannot meet the demands of the increasing customer numbers, hence the long queue at most of the restaurants taking the whole system back into this cliché. The aforementioned have the following repercussions to the restaurants:
- Lost of potential customers of the restaurant due to the long queue.
- Reduced quality of service as a result of serving the ever growing number of customers with these limited facilities.
- Reduces the quality of customer care.
- Customers schedules are always compromised upon due to the long queue.
- Customers always leave these restaurants unsatisfied with their quality of services.