OluCater — the spec

A catering marketplace for Olu's business that lets customers browse a weekly menu, select catering event or meal-prep orders, pay online, and receive instant confirmation via WhatsApp and email. The operator (Olu) controls every menu item, photo, and promotion from a single admin panel without touching code.

---

Decisions locked

---

The core loop

1. Browse — Customer lands on the storefront, sees the current week's menu with photos, prices, and any active offers.
2. Configure — Customer selects items (meal-prep portions or a catering package), specifies event date and delivery/pickup notes, and applies a promo code if available.
3. Pay — Customer completes payment via card, bank transfer, or mobile money through the payment processor.
4. Confirm — System fires a WhatsApp message and an email receipt to the customer immediately on payment success.
5. Track — Customer checks order status (received → preparing → ready/dispatched) via a link in the WhatsApp message or the email.
6. Manage — Olu reviews incoming orders in the admin panel, updates order status, and customers receive a WhatsApp push at each stage change.

---

v1 scope

Weekly menu editor with photo upload — Olu creates, edits, and publishes menu items per week, each with a name, description, price, category (meal-prep or catering), and one or more uploaded photos. Lives on the Admin: Menu page.

WhatsApp order confirmation and tracking — On payment success and on every status change, the system sends a templated WhatsApp message to the customer's registered number via the WhatsApp Business API. Lives as a background notification service triggered from the order pipeline.

Email receipt and order history — Transactional email delivers a formatted receipt immediately after payment; customers can log in to view past orders. Lives on the Customer: Order History screen and is backed by the email service integration.

Weekly offers and promotion builder — Olu creates time-boxed promotions (percentage or fixed discount, tied to specific items or order minimums) with a start and end date. Customers see active offers on the storefront and enter promo codes at checkout. Lives on the Admin: Promotions page and the Customer: Checkout screen.

Payment processing with multiple methods — Checkout supports card, bank transfer, and mobile money through a single payment gateway integration. Payment status is confirmed via webhook before any order is marked paid. Lives on the Customer: Checkout screen.

---

Deliberately later

• Social media profile link in checkout — adds brand trust but does not affect conversion mechanics; validate the order flow first before layering in social proof.
• Order cart with event date picker — a dedicated event-date picker and multi-item cart UI requires additional scheduling logic; the event-date note field in v1 covers the use case without the build cost.
• Admin dashboard for order management — a full analytics and order-management dashboard is high value once order volume justifies it; v1 order listing in the admin panel is sufficient for 10 weekly users.

---

Data model sketch

• users — id, name, phone, email, hashed_password, role (customer | admin), created_at
• menu_items — id, title, description, category, price, week_start_date, is_published, created_by
• menu_photos — id, menu_item_id, storage_url, sort_order
• promotions — id, code, discount_type, discount_value, min_order_value, starts_at, expires_at, is_active
• orders — id, user_id, promo_id, subtotal, discount, total, status, event_date, notes, payment_ref, created_at
• order_items — id, order_id, menu_item_id, quantity, unit_price
• payments — id, order_id, gateway, amount, currency, status, gateway_ref, paid_at
• notifications — id, order_id, channel (whatsapp | email), event_type, sent_at, status

---

Screens

• Storefront / Menu — weekly menu browsing with photos, prices, and active promotions
• Item Detail — single item view with full photos, description, and add-to-order action
• Checkout — order summary, event date/notes field, promo code entry, and payment method selection
• Order Confirmation — post-payment success page with order reference and WhatsApp/email reminder
• Customer: Order History — logged-in view of all past and active orders with current status
• Admin: Menu Editor — weekly menu creation, photo upload, publish/unpublish controls
• Admin: Promotions — create and manage time-boxed offers and promo codes

---

How to use this document

• Bring it into Mind Palace; the guided platform and its AI coach pick up from exactly this document and build the product with you step by step.
• Hand it to a developer as the complete v1 brief — scope, data model, and screens are fully defined.
• Keep it as the single source of truth to resolve any scope question during the build.