Neverside

Fast Food Ordering System

Hi all,

The company I work for (a small expanding take-away restaurant chain) is looking to implement a web based ordering system.

Simply put, customers can place orders for food on-line which will live feed to the nearest restaurant of their choice to be picked up when ready.

I'm looking for something well coded and stable, which looks modern and is easy to use (I'm thinking web 2.0 style)

Let me know what you think it would cost to put something like this together, front end and back end (including everything on our end i.e. the order receiving side of things, and implementation of everything (remotely of course, we don't expect anyone to come in).)
And what programming languages would be used (i.e. what the server requirements would be)
Oh and also, would this sort of thing need a dedicated server? would that have significant advantages? And, what would be the significant disadvantages of having the server outside the country of our operations? (or would that be OK?)
Oh and what hardware would be suitable on our end (in the restaurants themselves, to display orders to staff etc.)

Oh and if you could direct me to someone with experience is something similar I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,
-V

(P.S. sorry that post got a bit messy; feel free to post or PM or email for clarifications)
vierstein@gmail.com

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It depends if u hire a programmer or u do it yourself. If it's DIY then it's free except u need a to purchase a web hosting plan and register a domain with the register. For example www.neverside.com. Otherwise it would be either www.name of host/whatever or an ugly ip address like 81.215.1.1 . I recommend crystaltech if u're in the states because I have heard they gud host. My university uses them for hosting final year projects. They said it's a gud cheap host. Your domain name is normally charged on a yearly basis so make sure u renew the contract otherwise people can steal your domain. It happend to my friend once.
Also be on the look out for the bandwidth allocated. For example if u allocated 5gigs a month then u mustn't exceed 5000MB worth of traffic a month. Though for an application like this I cant imagine u need alot of bandwidth. I leave this to more expereienced NS volunteers to answer.

IT doesn't need to be a dedicated host really. The only advantage is it that u can do what ever u want on the server. Being dedicated it will only be your site on there althrough it would be faster but in a domain like this I dont think that would be nesscessary. Having it hosted outside your country can make it slower for customers to access. Just depends on the server. If u in the states hosting is already cheap there!!

PHP(programming language) and MYSQL(database) are both free to install on your computer so u can develop your application. However hosts may charge u extra for mysql.

There are plenty of tutorials on the internet so I would suggest u try implement it yourself. Or maybe someone on NS is nice enough to do it for free

Just to get u started your application just needs a database to store the availble dishes and price, and orders customers have made. So u need to read up on php, mysql and sql( a language used to communicate with the database). I hope I haven't frightened u by all this technical speak but it's really easy to program this sort of thing in PHP. Am sure everyone on NS will back me up on this.

Last edited by schoi, November 4th, 2006 04:53 PM (Edited 1 times)

Originally posted by vierstein:

The company I work for (a small expanding take-away restaurant chain) is looking to implement a web based ordering system.

Someone's been ordering too much Hell online . But apart from that, I suggest that you look at http://www.forthemasses.net (Local NZ Designer and Developers) - of you want someone local to do the job - also giving an estimate of what its going to cost.

I really don't suggest buying hosting with a NZ company. Their prices are extremely high compared to other hosting companies in the world. The only advantage is to your customers (Where its free to surf your site, if the server is in NZ) But here is a list of NZ hosts anyway - http://www.hostinghub.co.nz

Oh - if you are paying more that $30 for a .co.nz domain. You are being ripped off.

this is a MASSIVE project that would be far too much to be undertaken by a single person unless you had a massive timeframe(year+) to work with. You're looking at a single point ordering system (web) with a multipoint transaction system that assigns orders to stores, then at store level you have to be able to livesync with the ordering system and have some level of redundancy. I mean sure you _could_ conceivably do the entire thing in php and mysql using an ajax frontend to order, but that wouldn't be a very robust or scalable solution. Really you're looking at a php/mysql (maybe) web frontend with some sort of proprietry program at store level.

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angelessme, antagonising neverside members, staff and administration since 2001.

oh, haha, I didn't realise Hell had online ordering. I just checked it out and their system is pretty good, but I don't really like that it's all flash based.
Anyway, I'm going to talk to the developers who set that up (spikefin), as we're looking for something pretty similar (except no deliveries)

and yeah, thanks angelessme, i would never attempt something like this, I'm way out of my depth with programming something like this myself. What you said is helpful and I think I've found something useful: Gobius (http://www.spikefin.com/index.jsp - the system hell's pizzas uses - which has the ordering system and a POS system integrated)

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|'Personal Growth'|'Personal Development'|
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
|Threadless T-Shirts|Last.fm:NS Group|