Main benefits and core features
PPB is a professional-grade venue management platform designed to streamline event booking and large-party reservations for restaurants. It boosts revenue and efficiency by connecting 3 key stakeholders : restaurant owners, event hosts and coordinators.
- Restaurant owners can configure their venue’s availability, marketing, staffing, and operational settings, ensuring a smooth booking experience for private events, catering, or large reservations.
- Event hosts can book a venue, choose a room/floor layout, pick their menu preferences, handle guests lists, schedule an event planning and submit their payment details.
- Coordinators can manage the entire booking lifecycle, from initial inquiry to event date through a dedicated process designer. This allows venues to have specific, fine-tuned booking processes for perfect events.
Additional features
On top of that, PPB:
- Allows venue owners/managers to market customizable packages with various features and pricing for their spaces.
- Facilitates custom booking workflows through a diagram-based task manager that supports complex timelines, venue-specific roles, permissions, and alerts
- Enables restaurants to generate and customize PDF attachments, including brochures, contracts, and menus.
Has exportable version control and activity tracking in the process engine so that venues can upgrade and revert saved settings.
Comes with multiple API integrations (Google Calendar, Stripe, Twilio, etc.).
Provides a PCI-compliant solution that allows restaurants to securely process large-party payments through their existing POS system using Evervault.
Provides a marketplace interface to help event hosts search and discover restaurants that can fit their reservation needs.
Stack & configuration
The application is built using Rails 8 with a focus on extensibility for all type of restaurants, web-based accessibility and development velocity. It implements modern practices like:
- Component-based architecture (based on ERB partials and, AlpineJS, Tailwind CSS, organized via Lookbook)
Nested routing and array-based paths for logical resource organization
Responsive design, simple navigation and consistent UX patterns across different sections
Rich text-editors with mentioning/tagging features powered by Quill.JS imported as a standalone React library using Vite
Turbo/Hotwire for enhanced interactivity and real-time feeds
Background jobs handled with GoobJob (currently moving towards Solid Queue)
TTD development backed by RSpec, Capybara, FactoryBot, Github Actions and Timecop
One of the hardest challenges was importing and customizing the bpmn-js open source Preact project to match PPB's core capabilities. This was done by installing BPMN as a vendor library and letting it communicate with the Rails backend through JSON for saving and loading diagrams. Here's a preview of a BPMN diagram modification:
PPB is a greenfield project currently in development. Consequently, technical demos and detailed discussions are not possible at this stage. Stay tuned for more updates as the platform evolves!