Retail Sector Breakthrough: Microfrontends Revolutionize the Food Industry

Overview_

Partnering with Euvic, our client revolutionized the restaurant industry’s online ordering practices with a scalable, efficient mobile food ordering application and B2B admin panel by:

• Moving from a monolith to a microservice-based architecture.
• Enhancing operational efficiency for some of the largest retail restaurant groups in the world, such as Burger King, Arby’s, Subway, Popeyes, and Sbarro.
• Enabling the client to onboard new restaurants, expand their customer base, and provide greater value to end-users.

Additionally, Euvic’s solution architecture expertise:

• Improved the client’s engineering practices.
• Elevated code quality and development standards.
• Solidified the client’s position in the retail technology sector.

Background_

Tıkla Gelsin is an online hub for ordering platform for the global restaurant industry, used by giants such as TFI TAB Food Investments, the fourth largest restaurant group in the world. Tikla Gelsin enables customers to order from popular restaurant chains like Burger King, Arby’s, Subway, Popeyes, and Sbarro. The platform makes it easy for customers to invite friends, browse menus, place orders, make payments, coordinate delivery, and more.  

Unlike most competitors in the space, the custom-built Tikla Gelsin platform allows customers to combine multiple products thanks to an integrated order management system and a product management system (among others). The Tikla Gelsin platform comprises several integrated systems including a mobile application, web application, and third-party applications to manage the underlying restaurant ordering infrastructure.  

Challenge_

Scale the solution from thousands to tens of thousands of restaurants

Scale: Tikla Gelsin had acquired a legacy mobile food ordering application that was capable of hosting approximately 1500 restaurants, and now wanted to expand the offering to serve tens of thousands of restaurants.

Speed: The project leadership needed to aggressively accelerate the timeline to modernize the legacy application. 

Integration: Real-time visibility of orders and integration with existing microservice system architecture, web, and mobile applications was critical.  Each restaurant brand has its own system requirements, and the platform needed to accommodate variables like location, pricing, product, and categorization from one restaurant client to the next. Additionally, the admin panel needed to be customized to match restaurant organization structures based on user responsibilities. 

Focus: Tikla Gelsin is a technology-first organization with a solid engineering team, expert in mobile application development, but less familiar with the nuances of microfrontend programming. TG preferred to focus its engineers on feature development than diluting its focus by skilling up on microfrontend architecture. To preserve the team’s focus and efficiency, Tikla Gelsin needed an external partner for infrastructure improvements and the admin panel.

Solution_ 

Shoulder-to-shoulder Partnership with Euvic  

After analyzing the solution, Euvic architects proposed a strategy that would include  microfrontends and microservices. This strategy allows the company to deploy separate parts of the application independently so that, for example, the order management module would not be impacted by changes to the invoice feature. While they are gaining in popularity, microfrontends are less common than monolith applications. TG needed to augment their inhouse expertise with a team experienced with these technologies. 

Tikla Gelsin chose Euvic as its development partner because of the team’s deep experience engineering similar solutions combined with the respected reputation of Polish technology talent. It was clear that Euvic’s team was prepared to work shoulder-to-shoulder with TG’s in-house engineers, and share accountability for outcomes and app performance.  

Euvic kicked off the project by conducting in-depth needs analysis, followed by design, development, testing, and implementation, all working in close partnership with TG’s inhouse engineers. The project was delivered using Scrum in two-week sprints, which allowed for speed and adaptability, with an iterative delivery of functionalities.

The new and improved admin panel features large forms, tables, dashboards, and implements fine-grained attribute-based access control. It supports translations and internationalization, offering a seamless user experience across different regions. Features of the updated admin panel include:  

• A unified order processing system that optimizes the work of restaurants and employees responsible for supporting their customer. 

• A single source of truth web platform and mobile app data aimed at end-users 

• Hierarchical organizational structure that allows TG to authorize users according to their role, with access only to necessary functionalities. 

• The ability to create marketing campaigns with insight into sales effectiveness and accounting data.  

• Rigorous security measures were embedded in the project strategy, including authentication and authorization services designed in .NET.  

I love frontend and new technologies, so I was deeply involved in the architecture. I’m most excited about collaborating with clients to set the vision for architecture, standards, processes, and code optimization.

Euvic designed a seamless front-end experience where users enter the website or shell application, sign-in, and order through three distinct applications. The infrastructure integrates these distinct services with a frictionless experience for the customer.  

Technology Overview_

Managing the multiple modules and combining them into a coherent app for the end user was a fascinating effort because of the uniqueness of this microfrontend approach.  

This project was extremely fun.

The Dream Team_

Euvic provided between 6 and 9 front-end developers, QA, Devops, and a scrum master, along with 3 backend developers. 

As the project progressed, Euvic worked with Tikla Gelsin’s leadership to fine-tune the team composition and provide TG with exactly the resources it needed.  

The Euvic and Tikla Gelsin teams worked shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing ideas, best practices, and innovations.The Euvic team included:  

• Dariusz – Frontend Developer – ~12 years  

• Wojciech – Frontend Developer – ~5 years 

• Daria – Frontend Developer – ~6 years 

• Marcin – Frontend Developer – ~5 years 

• Monika – QA Engineer – 3 years 

• Bartosz – Backend Developer – ~7 years  

• Martyna – Backend Developer – 3 years 

• Michał – Backend Developer – ~5 years 

• Piotr – DevOps Engineer – 2 years 

Result_

Euvic designed a seamless front-end food ordering experience where users enter the website or shell application, sign-in, and order through three distinct applications. The infrastructure integrates these distinct services with a frictionless experience for the customer. Meanwhile, Euvic also transformed the solution architecture and reimagined the platform infrastructure, successfully moving from a monolithic-based to microservice-based architecture, which was an innovation win for the brand. 

Impact on the Industry:  

By developing a scalable, efficient B2B admin panel, Euvic laid the groundwork for Tikla Gelsin to revolutionize the restaurant industry’s online ordering practices. The platform enhances operational efficiency for restaurant owners and sets a new standard in the use of microfrontend architecture in enterprise applications. 

Impact on TG:  

The project was completed within 12 months, and thanks to the stability and scalability of the solution, Tikla Gelsin has been able to begin onboarding new restaurants. This strengthens TG’s customer base and extends more value to end-users. 

Tikla Gelsin took a significant leap forward in its ability to manage and support thousands of restaurants, and consolidated its position in the market thanks to this unique and user-friendly system. 

Impact on the Engineering Team: 

By including Euvic in the code review process, TG was able to deepen its practices for code quality and mature its standards.  

The collaboration was central to the project’s success. There was an active exchange of ideas, and Euvic demonstrated new ways to architect solutions such as a new approach to dividing and managing the code repository that was more efficient and effective.