PickupPulse

PickupPulse is a mobile + web app that gives customers and restaurants a brutally accurate view of pickup readiness and real wait times for takeout orders—without needing to replace the restaurant’s POS. Restaurants run a lightweight “expedite board” that timestamps each stage (received, cooking, bagged, ready) and optionally uses a cheap tablet camera to confirm bagged orders via QR labels. Customers get a single pickup QR, a live countdown, and “arrive at” guidance to reduce standing around and angry confrontations. The app focuses on the most common takeout failure: the order is “ready” in the platform, but not actually ready, causing crowding, refunds, and staff abuse. It integrates with major delivery marketplaces via email/SMS parsing and manual import for MVP, then expands to direct POS integrations where possible. This is a combination traditional + AI app (AI used for status inference and anomaly detection).