Jekaeat

Problem

Food delivery platforms need reliable order lifecycle management — vendor menus, rider dispatch, wallet top-ups, and vendor payouts — without dropped orders or duplicate charges during peak hours.

Context

Jekaeat is a Nigerian food and agri-commerce platform (founded 2020) connecting restaurants, vendors, and riders — starting in Minna and expanding meal-kit and fresh produce logistics to Lagos and Ibadan. The Express API powered customer, vendor, and rider apps through production scale, including 3,000+ food orders delivered in Minna on a two-bike fleet before a 2024 operational pivot toward hybrid B2B/B2C and decentralized logistics.

Approach

• Modelled orders, vendors, riders, products, wallets, and payouts in MongoDB with Mongoose — keeping domain documents cohesive for fast reads on active orders.
• Used BullMQ workers for payout processing and async side effects; Redis-backed rate limiting and caching for hot paths.
• Integrated Paystack for wallet funding and webhooks with idempotent handlers; Firebase Admin for push on order state changes.
• Added route optimization, referral earnings, ratings, scheduled orders, and Bull Board for queue visibility in production.

Architecture

Outcome

Backend supported 3,000+ completed food orders in Minna — vendor catalogues, rider dispatch, Paystack wallets, vendor payouts, route optimization, and Firebase push — with the platform still live and scaling across Nigerian cities as a hybrid B2C delivery and B2B vendor API product.