§ masterplan.md

Hyperlocal Food Circle

A classy, minimal food-ordering site for a single neighborhood that only shows today's menu from home cooks and cloud kitchens.

All ideas

Classy Minimal

App overview and objectives

A neighbourhood-scale food ordering site that only ever shows what is cooking today, within walking or short-ride distance. One page, today's menu, order before the cut-off. The objective is fewer choices and better food, not another endless marketplace.

The problem worth solving

Big delivery apps drown neighbourhood cooks in fees and search results. A single-neighbourhood site with a daily cut-off matches how home kitchens actually cook — in batches, for a known number of people.

Target audience

Primary — Home cooks and tiny cloud kitchens serving a few hundred nearby households.
Secondary — Residents who want fresh home-style food without scrolling through a thousand restaurants.

Roles and permissions

Visitor — read-only public pages, can sign up.
Member — owns their own records, cannot see other users' data.

Core features

Today's menu with per-dish quantity remaining and an order cut-off countdown
Cook profiles with kitchen photos, hygiene notes and ratings
Guest checkout with address pinning and cash or online payment
Order tracking states: accepted, cooking, out for delivery, delivered
Cook dashboard to publish tomorrow's menu and cap quantities
Community board for requests and recurring favourites

Deliberately later

Weekly subscription meals
Multi-neighbourhood expansion
Rider assignment and routing

Technical stack

React front end, Postgres for orders and menus, realtime subscriptions for status, hosted auth for cooks.

Why: Order state changes must appear instantly for both sides; everything else is standard CRUD that a managed backend handles well.

Alternatives: A WhatsApp-and-spreadsheet operation (zero build cost, breaks past ~30 orders a day) or a full marketplace platform (over-engineered for one neighbourhood).

Conceptual data model

Cook — name, kitchen story, photos, service area, payout details

Dish — cook, name, description, price, allergens, photo

MenuDay — cook, date, dishes with quantity caps, cut-off time

Order — customer, items, address, total, status, timestamps

Review — order, rating, comment, cook reply

Integrations

Payments
Map and address autocomplete
SMS or push notifications for order status

UI design principles

Generous whitespace, a two-font system, and a palette of three colours at most.
Photography and typography do the work; borders, shadows and gradients stay almost invisible.
Every screen has one clear primary action, placed in the same spot each time.

Security considerations

Customer addresses visible only to the assigned cook and only until delivery completes.
Cook payout details stored with the payment provider, never in the app database.
Rate-limit ordering to prevent fake-order attacks on small kitchens.

Development phases

Phase 1 — Prove the core

— Today's menu with per-dish quantity remaining and an order cut-off countdown
— Cook profiles with kitchen photos, hygiene notes and ratings
— Guest checkout with address pinning and cash or online payment
— Static content and design system in place
— Basic analytics

Phase 2 — Make it real

— Order tracking states: accepted, cooking, out for delivery, delivered
— Cook dashboard to publish tomorrow's menu and cap quantities
— Community board for requests and recurring favourites
— Accounts, sign-in and password reset
— Empty, loading and error states everywhere

Phase 3 — Polish and launch

— Performance, accessibility and SEO pass
— Legal pages, contact route and 404 handling
— Wire up: Payments
— Wire up: Map and address autocomplete

Phase 4 — Grow

— Weekly subscription meals
— Multi-neighbourhood expansion
— Rider assignment and routing

Challenges and solutions

Risk — Empty-menu days kill the habit

Solution — Guarantee a minimum number of publishing cooks per day before launch; show tomorrow's menu when today sells out.

Risk — Food safety complaints

Solution — Mandatory hygiene checklist per cook, visible on the profile, plus a fast complaint path.

Risk — Delivery logistics

Solution — Start with cook-delivered or customer pickup only; add riders once volume justifies it.

Future expansion

Neighbourhood franchise model
Catering for small events
Ingredient group-buying for cooks

Page list (13 pages)

01 PUBLIC Today's Menu — The whole product: what is cooking, how much is left, when ordering closes.
02 PUBLIC Cooks — Who is behind each kitchen, with photos and ratings.
03 APP (signed in) Order — Cart, address and payment in one short flow.
04 APP (signed in) Track — Live status for an active order.
05 PUBLIC Community — Requests, feedback and recurring favourites.
06 AUTH Sign up — Create an account with email or a social provider.
07 AUTH Log in — Return to the account, with error and lockout states.
08 AUTH Reset password — Request a reset link and set a new password.
09 APP (signed in) Account settings — Profile, email, password, language and delete account.
10 PUBLIC Contact — Contact form plus real address, phone and email.
11 LEGAL & SYSTEM Privacy policy — What data is collected, why, and how to remove it.
12 LEGAL & SYSTEM Terms of service — Rules of use, liability and account termination.
13 LEGAL & SYSTEM 404 not found — Friendly dead end with search and links back.

Page map

PUBLIC           AUTH               APP (signed in)      LEGAL & SYSTEM
───────────────  ─────────────────  ───────────────────  ───────────────────
├─ Today's Menu  ├─ Sign up         ├─ Order             ├─ Privacy policy
├─ Cooks         ├─ Log in          ├─ Track             ├─ Terms of service
├─ Community     └─ Reset password  └─ Account settings  └─ 404 not found
└─ Contact

key flows:
  Today's Menu ──▶ Order
  Order ──▶ Track
  Cooks ──▶ Today's Menu
  Track ──▶ Community