Kettle & Crumb Their menu,finally mobile.
How this East London café group replaced a three-phone WhatsApp ordering queue with a proper ordering app in under two weeks.
Every order came throughthree different WhatsApp numbers.
Kettle & Crumb ran three sites off a shared WhatsApp Business number, with staff manually copying orders onto a paper ticket rail during lunch rushes. Peak-hour orders were getting lost, and no site had visibility into what the other two were doing.
A full POS-integrated platform was quoted at £18,000 with a four-month build. Appin500 delivered a focused ordering app covering most of what actually mattered, live before the bigger agency's quote even landed.
We didn't need a POS overhaul. We needed people to stop texting us their lunch order.”
Cut the platform.Keep the menu.Ship the ordering flow.
Map the actual order path
We traced how an order really moved from customer to kitchen, and removed every step that only existed because WhatsApp forced it.
Build the single-screen menu
One scrollable menu, live specials pulled to the top, no category maze to dig through before lunch.
Ship order-ready, not feature-ready
Launched with order-ahead and pickup time slots only. Table booking and loyalty points were deliberately left for a later phase.
Five things it actuallyneeded to do.
Feature 01: Live menu & specials
Today's specials always sit above the standard menu, updated from the kitchen in seconds.
Feature 02: Order-ahead pickup slots
Customers pick a 15-minute pickup window, so orders land exactly when the kitchen expects them.
Feature 03: Apple Pay & Google Wallet
Checkout in two taps, no card details typed on a phone screen at the counter.
Feature 04: Per-site order routing
Each site only ever sees its own queue, no cross-site confusion during a rush.
Feature 05: Order history & reorder
Regulars reorder their usual in one tap instead of rebuilding it from scratch.
Thirteen days.Zero missed lunch orders since.
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