Coffee King
Mobile Barista Franchise Platform
Coffee King is a mobile barista franchise that lets resellers distribute the company's products and run on its software. The customer application lets people book coffee ahead of time, pay online, gift a coffee to someone else, and arrange meetings at company venues. The project was initiated by a well-established UK coffee production company as the digital transformation of its business.
Platform:
iOS, Android, Android for tablet, Web
Industry:
Retail
Team size:
8 people
Country:
United Kingdom
Project Duration:
1 year
The year started & completed:
Mar 2021 – May 2022
We designed and built four connected products: native customer apps for iOS and Android, a barista app for tablet, a web back office, and the backend and AWS infrastructure underneath them, and took the franchise from project initiation to live release.
Scope and Objectives
01
Customer Applications
02
Barista Application
03
Admin Back Office
04
Franchise Software for Resellers
05
PayDoo Payment Gateway
Project Milestones
01
Project initiation
02
Client visit, workshops, design
03
Development start
04
MVP completion
05
Live release
Map Integration
Google Maps integration lets customers find the nearest van, shop, or spot, track Coffee King sellers, and see their own position, with an in-app route planner that hands off to car routes in Google Maps.
Flexible Bonus System
An internal loyalty programme where users earn points on purchases, exchange them for products, and share them with friends. Point movement is tracked visibly, which keeps the process clear and interactive.
QR Scanner
A QR scanner awards points when buying from nearby partners selling Coffee King drinks and goods.
Referrals
Gift cards and referral sharing give customers several ways to bring friends and family in.
Architecture
Native clients over a layered backend, running across two AWS availability zones.
Clean separation on the clients
The mobile clients separate presentation from business logic and from data, so each layer can change without disturbing the others.
One backend, three APIs
User, barista, and admin APIs sit over one shared business logic layer, so all four clients work from the same rules and the same data, each with its own access rights.
Built to stay up
The backend runs across two availability zones with auto scaling behind a load balancer, so the platform holds up through the morning rush and stays available if a zone fails.
Challenges Identified
Four Clients, One System
Customer apps on two platforms, a tablet app for baristas, and a web back office all had to run on the same business logic and data, each with its own API surface and its own access rules.
Choosing Native Over Cross-Platform
The team went native rather than cross-platform: the product needed advanced performance, a strong connection between app and device, and sophisticated features with high reliability and security, which justified the higher maintenance and update cost that comes with native.
Multi-Merchant Payments
A franchise means money moves between many merchants rather than one, so the payment gateway had to handle multi-merchant transactions, several payment methods, and cross-border flows from the start.
Finding a Shop That Moves
A mobile barista van has no fixed address, so schedules and locations set by baristas had to reach the customer map accurately enough that people could actually find their coffee.
Built for Expansion
The company's stated plans run to expansion across Great Britain and then localisation to Spain and other European countries, so multi-currency handling and cross-border payments had to be in place before the expansion, not after it.
Results of the project
A live franchise platform in the App Store and Google Play.
Coffee King reached MVP completion in December 2021 and live release in May 2022, with the customer apps published on both the App Store and Google Play.
The platform gives customers ordering, payment, gifting, maps, loyalty, QR rewards, and referrals; gives baristas scheduling, route planning, and order handling; and gives administrators a single back office controlling all of it under role-based security.
Business Value
A traditional coffee producer turned into a software-run franchise.
Digital Transformation of a Traditional Business
A well-established coffee production company moved from selling product to running a digital franchise, which was the stated goal when the project was initiated.
A Franchise Resellers Can Run
Resellers get both the products and the software to operate with, making the platform itself part of what the company sells.
Loyalty That Brings Customers Back
Points on purchases, QR rewards at partner sellers, gift cards, and referral sharing give the business several routes to repeat custom and word-of-mouth growth.
Ready to Cross Borders
Multi-currency handling and secure cross-border payments mean expansion across Great Britain and into Spain and the rest of Europe is a commercial decision.
Tools & Technologies
Kotlin
Spring
TypeScript
AWS
Firebase
Bitbucket
SonarQube