Executive summary
Frontwalker delivered a comprehensive, end-to-end restaurant commerce platform for a leading hospitality technology company serving the United States market. The engagement covered the full spectrum of restaurant operations: from menu and order management through to payment processing, third-party delivery integrations, and automated financial reconciliation and settlement.
The platform consolidates multiple restaurant brands under a single online ordering experience, mirroring the model pioneered by aggregators such as Uber Eats, while simultaneously integrating with DoorDash and Uber Eats to extend each restaurant's reach across major delivery channels.
The challenge
1. Business challenge
- Client needed a unified commerce platform capable of managing operations across multiple restaurant brands from a single system, eliminating fragmented point solutions and manual workflows
- Restaurant operators required real-time menu control with the ability to update items, pricing, availability, and modifiers instantly across all channels - online, in-store, and delivery
- Order management needed to handle high concurrency across dine-in, takeaway, online, and third-party delivery channels simultaneously without operational breakdowns
- Integration with dominant third-party delivery platforms (DoorDash and Uber Eats) was essential for market reach, but required robust, bi-directional data synchronisation between client’s platform and external systems
- Building a multi-restaurant online ordering marketplace demanded a white-label-capable storefront architecture that could surface multiple brands under one consumer experience
2. Technical challenge
- Designing a scalable menu management engine capable of handling complex item hierarchies, modifier groups, time-based availability rules, and multi-location overrides in real time
- Building a resilient order management system that could route, track, and manage orders across in-house POS, online ordering, and third-party delivery channels from a single source of truth
- Payment gateway integration with Worldpay required handling authorisation, capture, refunds, and dispute management while maintaining PCI DSS compliance across all transaction types
- DoorDash and Uber Eats API integrations required continuous menu synchronisation, real-time order injection, status updates, and error-handling for failed deliveries - all within strict SLA windows defined by each platform
- Reconciliation and settlement engine complexity - aggregating transaction data from multiple payment streams, calculating platform fees, delivery commissions, and restaurant payouts with full auditability for Worldpay settlement runs
- Ensuring high system availability and fault tolerance at scale, given that downtime or data inconsistencies directly translate to lost revenue and reputational damage for restaurant partners
What we did
1) Menu Management
- Built a centralised menu management system enabling restaurant operators to create, edit, and publish menus across all channels - online ordering, in-store POS, DoorDash, and Uber Eats - from a single admin interface
- Implemented support for complex modifier groups, nested add-ons, allergen tagging, nutritional metadata, and time-based menu scheduling (e.g. breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus)
- Developed multi-location menu override capabilities allowing individual restaurant branches to localise pricing, availability, and item offerings independently
- Automated menu synchronisation pipelines to push approved changes to all connected channels with minimal latency, ensuring pricing and availability consistency
2) Order Management
- Developed a unified order management system (OMS) serving as the central orchestration layer for all order types: dine-in, takeaway, curbside, online, and third-party delivery
- Implemented real-time order routing logic to direct incoming orders to the correct kitchen display system (KDS) or POS terminal based on order type, location, and fulfilment method
- Built order lifecycle management - from placement through preparation, dispatch, and delivery confirmation - with full status tracking and notifications for customers and restaurant staff
- Designed concurrency-safe order processing to handle peak traffic volumes without data loss or race conditions across simultaneous orders from multiple channels
- Integrated order-level analytics and reporting dashboards for restaurant operators to monitor sales performance, fulfilment times, and channel mix in real time
3) Payment Handling & Payment Gateway
- Integrated Worldpay as the primary payment gateway, supporting credit/debit card payments, digital wallets, and contactless transactions across online and in-store touchpoints
- Implemented secure tokenisation and PCI DSS-compliant payment flows to protect cardholder data at every stage of the transaction lifecycle
- Built refund, void, and partial capture workflows to handle order cancellations, modifications, and dispute resolution with full audit trails
- Developed real-time payment status webhooks to update order management and reconciliation systems instantly upon authorisation, capture, or failure events
4) Multi-Restaurant Online Ordering Platform
- Designed and built a multi-restaurant online ordering marketplace - consolidating multiple restaurant brands under a single consumer-facing platform, enabling customers to browse, order, and pay across brands in one session
- Developed a white-label-capable storefront architecture allowing client to onboard new restaurant partners with customised branding, menus, and fulfilment configurations
- Built consumer-facing features including restaurant discovery, search and filtering, real-time order tracking, saved addresses, order history, and loyalty programme hooks
- Implemented basket management supporting multi-restaurant ordering within a single session, with split-order routing to the correct restaurant for each line item
5) DoorDash & Uber Eats Integration
- Integrated with DoorDash Drive and Uber Eats APIs to make restaurant menus available on both platforms, automatically synchronised from the client’s central menu management system
- Built real-time order injection pipelines - orders placed on DoorDash and Uber Eats flow directly into client’s OMS for unified kitchen management, eliminating the need for separate tablets or manual entry
- Implemented bi-directional status synchronisation: item availability, order acceptance, preparation times, and ready-for-pickup signals are relayed back to DoorDash and Uber Eats in real time
- Developed error handling and retry logic for failed API calls, ensuring order reliability even during third-party platform instability, with automated alerting for persistent failures
- Built a commission and fee tracking layer to capture DoorDash and Uber Eats order values, applicable commissions, and adjustments for downstream reconciliation
6) Engineering & Delivery Model
- Frontwalker delivered the platform end-to-end - from architecture design and API development through to frontend build, third-party integrations, and financial reconciliation - as a unified engineering team
- Adopted an agile delivery model with iterative releases, enabling the client to go to market with core capabilities while continuing to evolve the platform in parallel
- Maintained comprehensive technical documentation, integration guides, and operational runbooks to support the client’s internal teams and onboarded restaurant partners
- Transitioned to an Always On managed engineering model post-launch, providing continuous development, maintenance, and platform support as the client scaled its restaurant network
Business impact/results
Outcomes achieved
- Unified Commerce - One platform across all channels & brands
- Real-Time Sync - Live menu & order data across DoorDash, Uber Eats & own platform
- Automated Settlement - Monthly Worldpay payouts with full reconciliation
- Scalable Growth - Multi-restaurant marketplace ready for rapid partner onboarding
- Delivered a fully integrated, end-to-end restaurant commerce platform - from first customer interaction through to final restaurant payout - under a single coherent system
- Eliminated operational silos by consolidating menu management, order orchestration, payments, and financial reporting into one platform, reducing manual overhead for restaurant operators
- Enabled client’s restaurant partners to extend their reach across DoorDash and Uber Eats without additional operational complexity, with orders flowing directly into their existing kitchen workflows
- Established a multi-restaurant online ordering marketplace that positions the client as a direct competitor to major aggregator platforms while retaining commission control for restaurant partners
- Reduced time-to-market for new restaurant onboarding through a scalable, configurable platform architecture that accommodates new brands, locations, and menu structures with minimal engineering effort
- Delivered a platform foundation designed for scale - capable of supporting the client’s continued growth as it expands its restaurant network across new markets
