Bangg: getting the cluster's street food to the door.
Bangg took the vendors residents already bought from, like the bakso man, the bubur cart and the bread seller, and let people order from them with one WhatsApp message. We set up and ran the daily operation in 2023.
The food was good. Finding it was the hard part.
Everybody had a favorite vendor, and every vendor kept their own hours. The bread came in the afternoon. Bubur came some mornings and not others. One seller only showed up if you called him. Nobody knew who was coming when.
Then there was a theft in a nearby cluster, and residents got careful about which carts came through the gate. A courier from the area was easier to let in than a cart.
The big delivery apps did not help much. Once their markup and fees were added, a cheap snack was not cheap anymore, and the driver was often coming from a few kilometers away.
What we set up
A registry with real schedules
We signed up each vendor with what they sell, the days and hours they work, and photos of the stall and the food. A weekly schedule told residents who was coming in the morning.
One WhatsApp number
To order, residents just sent a message. We also sent broadcasts with what was available that day, addressed to each person by name.
An order log with timestamps
Every order was logged: who ordered what, from which vendor, when it was placed and when it arrived. Late departures got flagged, and customers could rate the delivery.
Pay tied to speed and volume
Couriers earned a base pay plus bonuses: the top bonus for deliveries under 12 minutes, and a second bonus for monthly order volume. We also priced out electric scooters with swappable batteries for the couriers.
These were the targets set for the operation, not reported results.
Someone always had to check.
Bangg ran on spreadsheets and chat groups, and it worked because the people worked hard. But every late order, every missing time stamp and every courier bonus depended on someone going through the sheet. That is the part we now automate.
- An AI agent would read the WhatsApp orders and pass each one to the right vendor.
- Trackers on the couriers would show each delivery on a map, with a warning before an order runs late.
- Courier pay and the weekly numbers would come straight out of the delivery log.