Context
Mitto is a food-delivery platform built for KwaMhlanga, in Mpumalanga. It isn't a copy of the big delivery apps. It's a system sized for a real local market.
Challenge
A marketplace has to work for every side at once: customers, riders, restaurants and the people running it. Getting that right on the first build means specifying every role and every hand-off before any code is written.
Approach
Four connected products, a customer app, a rider app, a restaurant interface and an admin portal, designed around card-first payments and a hybrid rider model. We specified the platform end to end across all four roles, then planned a phased build so value ships early and risk stays low.
How it's built
- Apps Flutter for customers, riders and restaurants; a web portal for admin
- Backend Firebase, hosted in the Johannesburg region
- Payments Card-first, through PayFast
Status
In development, built in phases across the four apps.
What we've learned so far
- Four users at once is hard. Designing for customers, riders, restaurants and admin together, where every hand-off has to work, is the hardest part of a marketplace.
- Payments and riders take the most work. Card-first payments and the rider model were the decisions that took longest to get right.
