Production mobile product

Cooking — Local Homemade Food Marketplace

A production mobile ecosystem connecting customers with nearby local kitchens through Android and iOS applications, supported by a dedicated Android manager app for daily store operations. I contribute across the customer, store, and API layers.

RoleFull-Stack Mobile Engineer

TimelineApril 2026 – Present

PlatformsAndroid, iOS & tablet

FocusProduction mobile product

Product website Customer app · Google Play Customer app · App Store Cooking Manager · Google Play

Public Cooking customer app screen showing nearby kitchens in a searchable marketplace list — Public customer marketplace screen paired with a privacy-safe representation of the store-facing tablet workflow.

Production product

A production mobile marketplace serving customers and the kitchens fulfilling their orders.

Two-sided product

Customer demand and kitchen operations meet in the same live marketplace: discovery and ordering on one side, fulfilment and availability on the other.

Product overview

Cooking connects people looking for prepared homemade meals with nearby local kitchens. The product has to make discovery, menu exploration, ordering, and follow-up feel coherent across mobile platforms.

The other side of the marketplace is operational: kitchens need a dedicated manager experience for orders, menus, product availability, and planning throughout the day.

Both applications depend on the same product state, so customer-facing choices and kitchen-side operations must remain consistent as orders and availability change.

Context

The customer application is published for Android and iOS; Cooking Manager is published for Android and designed around store operations.
My contribution spans sustained product work across the customer application, the manager application, and supporting API behaviour.

Constraints

Cross-platform flows must account for Android- and iOS-specific behaviour without drifting into separate products.
Operational screens must stay legible and responsive on store devices during time-sensitive daily work.
Authentication, cart state, notifications, and releases need resilient failure handling because they sit on critical user journeys.

My contribution

Full-Stack Mobile Engineer

Implemented and improved customer marketplace flows covering kitchen discovery, map and list behaviour, menus, favourites, cart state, authentication, sharing, and order-related UX.
Stabilised favourites and cart interactions, including cache consistency, conflicting selections, and concurrent state updates.
Improved map rendering, marker behaviour, location edge cases, and navigation between marketplace views on Android and iOS.
Strengthened authentication callbacks, email-verification recovery, sign-up validation, and user feedback around failure states.
Worked on Cooking Manager order workflows, notification sound and cancellation behaviour, order-detail legibility, product availability, and tablet-oriented layouts.
Added and maintained Jest coverage and cross-platform Maestro journeys for core customer flows on Android and iOS.
Supported production readiness through build-number updates, EAS configuration fixes, Android build troubleshooting, and pre-release QA follow-ups.
Contributed supporting API fixes for marketplace ordering, catalogue operations, distance ordering, stock validation, and administrative workflows.

Application ecosystem

Cooking operates as two connected product surfaces. The React Native customer application handles discovery, menus, favourites, cart, orders, location, and sharing. Cooking Manager gives kitchens an operational Android experience for orders, menus, availability, and planning. Shared API and data services keep marketplace intent aligned with what kitchens can fulfil, while platform services handle notifications, location, updates, and release delivery.

Cooking — Local Homemade Food Marketplace system architecture

01Customer application

Android and iOS marketplace
Kitchen discovery, search, filters, and maps
Menus, favourites, cart, orders, and sharing
Authentication and account flows

02Cooking Manager

Android store operations
Order queue and order details
Menus, products, and availability
Planning and notification workflows

03Application layer

Expo Router navigation
TanStack Query server state
Jotai client state
Supabase-backed services

04Quality and delivery

Jest and React Native Testing Library
Maestro cross-platform journeys
EAS Build and app-store release profiles
Crash and analytics instrumentation

Engineering challenges

Keep customer state trustworthy across rapid interactions

Context: Favourites, cart selections, availability, and cached server state can change from several user actions and background refreshes.
Choice: Harden cache updates, conflict handling, and state transitions, then cover the risky paths with focused tests.
Tradeoff: More explicit state coordination adds implementation detail, but avoids stale UI and protects ordering intent.

Treat Android and iOS as distinct runtime environments

Context: Maps, calendars, authentication callbacks, layout, and native packages do not always behave identically across platforms.
Choice: Handle platform-specific edge cases inside a shared Expo codebase and validate core journeys on both operating systems.
Tradeoff: Platform-aware branches require continued device testing, while preserving a coherent customer experience and shared product velocity.

Make store notifications operationally useful

Context: New and cancelled orders must be noticeable without creating duplicate or misleading alerts during local order actions.
Choice: Coordinate audible feedback, cancellation state, and suppression rules around the manager order lifecycle.
Tradeoff: Notification logic becomes device-state aware, but better reflects the action the kitchen actually needs to take.

Keep releases reproducible as native dependencies evolve

Context: Expo upgrades, Android build tooling, native modules, and store build numbers can block otherwise ready product work.
Choice: Maintain explicit EAS profiles, resolve native compatibility issues, and treat release configuration as part of the product surface.
Tradeoff: Release maintenance is ongoing engineering work, but it reduces last-mile surprises during QA and distribution.

Production reliability and privacy

Authentication flows include timeout, validation, callback, and verification-recovery handling rather than assuming a single happy path.
Cart and stock checks defend against stale or conflicting selections before an order advances.
Error and loading states are treated as part of the mobile UX across marketplace and operational flows.
Platform configuration separates build profiles and keeps environment-specific values outside public portfolio content.
The public case study intentionally excludes private endpoints, credentials, customer data, order details, and internal repository links.

Testing and quality

Jest and React Native Testing Library cover state, hooks, utilities, and customer-facing component behaviour.
Maestro journeys exercise launch, discovery, filters, store browsing, cart, orders, authentication, favourites, profile, and empty-state paths.
Cross-platform test setup covers both Android and iOS customer journeys.
Pre-release QA work includes targeted fixes for navigation, visual consistency, state recovery, and build readiness.

Production proof

Cooking is publicly available as a live product website and customer marketplace on Google Play and the App Store.
Cooking Manager is publicly listed on Google Play as the store-facing application for orders, menus, and availability.
The work demonstrates continued delivery across customer-facing and operational mobile experiences, supported by API and release work.
Public store listings and product pages provide verifiable production proof without relying on private source links or fabricated metrics.

Customer application

Customers discover nearby kitchens, explore menus, save favourites, build a cart, and follow their orders in the mobile marketplace.

Cooking Manager

Kitchens receive the operational context to manage orders, menus, product availability, and planning in Cooking Manager.

Reflection

What this work demonstrates: Maintaining a coherent marketplace across two applications, two mobile operating systems, live operational state, and evolving native release tooling.

Reflection: Production mobile engineering is as much about state recovery, device behaviour, operational clarity, and release readiness as it is about implementing the visible feature.

Continue expanding regression coverage around the highest-risk customer and store workflows.
Keep simplifying operational interactions as real kitchen workflows evolve.
Maintain platform and release compatibility as Expo, Android, and iOS requirements change.