veteran business book

RESTAURANT GROCER

restaurantgrocer.com
MAPBOX API • DATATABLES • JAVASCRIPT • BOOTSTRAP
COVID-19 Response
THE PROBLEM
During the COVID pandemic, grocery stores started selling out of common grocery stapes, such as milk, eggs, toilet paper, and butter. At the same time, restaurants were temporarily closed or open for curbside only. I noticed a lot of restaurants making social media posts about selling their grocery items. There was not one place to view all of the items and restaurants. Additionally, time was of the essence. Since daily news and inventories were constantly changing, I knew this had to be a quick project.

Create a mobile responsive site that allows users to easily search for grocery items from local restaurants.
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Sample facebook post listing grocery items
THE APPROACH
  1. Determine Tech Stack
    I knew this had to be quick, so I spent some time determining what technologies I would use. I decided to integrate the Mapbox API for the mapping feature, crowdsource the restaurant information from the community, and use the Datatables plugin to create dynamic and easily searchable tables.
  2. Details
    I also made sure to include the business details and links to the original social media posts. This would allow for users to contact the restaurant to double check inventories.
  3. Code & Deployment
    This project allowed me to also brush up on my deployment skills.
THE RESULT

After an intense few days of coding and scouring social media, my site was completed. I received positive feedback from the community and my fellow developers. I was happy to provide a resource to my local community. I even received entries through the submission feature. In order to get the project running, I chose to use a google form for community submissions, which was converted to a local json file.

I had over 4,000 visitors from March to May. After reviewing the page analytics, I was glad I optimized for the mobile experience, since almost 75% of my users visited the page from a mobile device.

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Google sheet used to collect community responses
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Map view of all the restaurants