Lunch Food Ordering of Kids for Private Schools in Miami USA

Challenge

Creating an online food supply with the targeted audience consisting of students and teachers is not an easy task – especially when parental permission is involved. A custom solution was needed for the client, in which a system where users could select different meals, drinks, and side meals, would be developed, while also addressing the end users’ concern of food allergies. In addition, the client wished to reduce the work of users by providing the functionality to repeat meals on selective days and weeks.

Solution

For a site that needs lots of customizations and which should be user-friendly, Sigma Solve chose the nopCommerce platform. An open-source code gave the developers unlimited possibilities to build custom features according to the client’s needs. To meet the requirement we have started from different users' roles (parents, teachers, admin) registration for the solution. Parents were able to select the meal for more than one child with the same login credentials. They were also able to set login credentials that their child(ren) could use to place an order.

The solution has the functionality to customize the kids’ lunches for daily combinations, weekly, or the full school year. Users can select previously ordered customized lunches repeatedly. The customized lunches are saved automatically for customers to reuse to streamline the process; as such, users do not need to set the customization each time. Users can set the lunches for upcoming days/weeks/a full year ahead by selecting days and meals that they wish for the food to be delivered to the child at the mentioned school.

Kids’ allergies can be identified and orders managed accordingly. Using nopCommerce’s flexibility, we developed the customized registration functionality where users can add their kids’ allergies at the time of registration and edit the details from the profile. The items that contain the product kids have an allergy to will not be displayed, so each user will be having a different list of items to order as per added allergies.

Customized Product adding functionality for backend where admin can add the ingredients used in the item, so kids allergic to the ingredients won’t be showing this dish in their item list.

• Parents can attach notes and/or guidelines for handling the food when they place the order.
• If the user’s school is not on the list, users can request to add services with the school name and respective details.
• The ‘order in bulk’ functionality for schools was implemented to enable teachers to view and order meals as per the requirement.
• Customized menu options for admin to manage the categories and meals were provided.
• Admin can now receive and manage the orders, products, schools, categories, sales, delivery, etc. without having any technical knowledge. To deliver the daily lunch orders (customized), a feature to check the status of the order was employed while accounting for the selected days that customers wished to skip meal delivery.

Customized allergies management functionality for admin to add/ edit/ delete the list of allergies.

Reports Management: Functionality developed for web admin to view and download the reports. The report for “Lunch Bag Label”, will allow admin to sort the orders by date and view the placed order of that date and can print the labels directly by connecting to the printer which includes basic details of order like customer’s name, address, etc.

Payment Plugin: Customized payment plugin for users to add & save the payment details at the time of registration to use later.

We developed the customized website solution in nopCommerce to take advantage of the flexibility of the platform.

Result

Upon launching the nopCommerce website, business boomed, and high levels of growth and revenue resulted. The website helped users select meals as per their needs, offering a convenient method to select meal choices for up to the next 4 weeks. Clients could keep track of and monitor the orders, given the ability to generate different reports as per the availability in the admin panel.

The mobile app offered an additional means to purchase meals and it provided Kids Deli with another source of revenue. The mobile app housed features such as promotions, notifications, and reorders resulting in higher sales.

Sigma Solve, Inc is a leading custom web & mobile application development company based in Florida. As a nopCommerce expert, its differentiator is low cost of development (less than half of most development companies) and excellent customer service to ensure client satisfaction and success in the marketplace.