barePack — Sustainability Solution
Reducing plastic waste and promoting reusable packaging through tech
Overview
Sustainability startup, barePack has built a returnable container ecosystem to replace disposables used in food takeaway and delivery. Consumers can choose reusable containers for their food purchases and return them at any of the 150+ drop-off points in Singapore.
Hipster team took over from previous developers, After enahncements and fixes to the current app, We helped to launch the current app in France as well with multi-language and multi-country database and backend.
Client
BAREPACK PTE. LTD.
Period
2020-21
Geography
France, Singapore
Work Done
Services
-
Mobile App Development
Scaling your tech to meet business growth
BarePack’s first bootstrapped app was a good starting point when the company just began its operations. As the user pool and grew, it became increasingly clear that the app had scalability issues. The app slowed down as more users and food outlets came onboard.
Meeting business and users needs
When Hipster undertook the design work for the app, the team focused on barePack’s business and users’ needs. The following improvements was made with our technical expertise:
- Integration with restaurants and delivery providers.
- Map view for users to quickly identify nearby participating partners.
- The payment and promotions process is improved. Previously, staff needs to manually program the discount code if they would like to run a promotion. Now, any staff can easily create a discount code on the backend without any programming.
Data Analytics
The app captures granular transaction data for analytics. These data include the number of containers picked up and dropped off at a specific location and the number of containers a user holds. These information can help stakeholders make informed business decisions backed by data.
As the database grew, we faced challenges in terms of app speed and scalability, We changed from Google Firebase to Google Firestore proactively to tackle these issues, and made the app robust and scalable. The migration was seamlessly done without any downtime.
Flutter App as V2
Instead of running two separate apps (Andriod and IOS), Hipster advised barePack to creating a cross platform mobile app, a Flutter app. Flutter works for both Andriod and iOS, halves development time and cost. Additionally, updates are published on both platforms simultaneously.
