AI Voice Ordering Platform for Independent Restaurants

Built a full-stack AI phone ordering platform from scratch for
independent restaurants in Australia. When a customer calls the
restaurant’s number, an AI assistant named Maya answers, takes
the food order conversationally, and sends it live to a kitchen
tablet dashboard — no staff needed to answer the phone.

What the system does:

• AI agent handles the full order conversation — menu,
  modifiers, customer name, pickup time, order confirmation
• Orders appear in real time on a kitchen tablet (kanban board:
  New → In Kitchen → Ready for Pickup)
• Complex calls transfer live to the owner’s mobile via Twilio
• One AI agent serves unlimited restaurants dynamically — the
  correct menu and config loads per call based on which number
  was dialled
• Restaurant owners manage hours, menu, and settings via a
  web dashboard

Technical highlights:

• Pre-warm cache loads menu data during the ring — eliminating
  startup silence before the agent speaks
• Server-side variable resolution for Retell AI’s tool calling
  (platform limitation workaround)
• Timezone-aware trading hours engine with special day overrides
• Supabase Realtime subscriptions with polling fallback for
  the kitchen tablet
• Role-based auth — admin and kitchen staff roles with
  separate access levels

Stack: Retell AI · GPT-4.1-mini · Twilio · Node.js · Express ·
TypeScript · Supabase · PostgreSQL · Next.js 14 · Tailwind CSS ·
Railway · Vercel