Revolutionizing dining experience

wine

Introduction

On the app store there are lots of mobile apps meant to help users learn about wine and teach them how to find a perfect match for the dinner. We at Onix were approached by  Josselin Guibert  and  Julien Sahut, founders of Wine Collection Ltd., with the idea of building a unique service application, where users could make a perfect wine match while dining at a particular restaurant.

Our customers came to us with the general app concept, though having most of the app’s design prepared and some supporting documentation. Josselin Guibert has become the product manager and collaborated with us on all technical aspects of development. Julien Sahut, a sommelier working with restaurants in Europe, has developed the wine <-> food matching proprietary logic.

Wine Picker was created to give the answer to a simple question:
How do you pick wine in a restaurant you are in and match it with your food?

Introduction

Approach

While other mobile apps about wine offer simple wine search, the goal of our app is to help users find and make the best wine choice by using a unique-to-the-market wine selection algorithm. This algorithm performs wine selection from wine list at a specific restaurant based on wine type, rating, price, and food match, value, etc.

To develop this mobile app, we have formed a solid team, where on one side we had our customers with a clear understanding of their business sphere and demand, and on the other there were the Onix team members faced with a nontrivial task of developing a complex and feature-rich mobile app that takes into account user location, wine preferences, etc. and sophisticated back-end processing of enormous amounts of data

Major challenges

The concept evolved in development of intricate app features, where the team was opposed with a number of major challenges:

  • Restaurants and wine list

    Restaurants and wine list

    Although the feature may seem straightforward at first glance, it implies front-end and back-end combined search, locating places, conducting analysis of place details, locating website URL, performing wine list data search on git each website and downloading wine list data to the server for further parsing.

    Users are also able to enrich the wine database right in the app by snapping wine lists with the phone camera as well as sending wine list files via email.

  • Parsing the wine list

    Parsing the wine list

    Processing wine list files of various formats - .pdf, .doc, .docx, images and HTML. Image processing is two-step - first OCR engine is applied, then text is parsed for wine data. After processing the carefully screened set of wine data is further matched with wines in the DB.

  • Pick wine

    Pick wine

    The process of wine selection in a restaurant is performed fully on the front-end, where wine selection is made via a multi-step proprietary algorithm based on specific wine data and user filter options.

  • Full-fledged indirect social media

    Full-fledged indirect social media

    The app contains a built-in independent social component. Users can make posts with wine, media, location and tagged friends, join groups, create their own groups and administrate them, share posts, etc.

For whom this product is

Serving the needs of ordinary users dining out

Serving the needs of ordinary users dining out

The app helps users make the right wine choice in a restaurant of the choice or of future interest according to their budget and individual taste preferences. Users can write wine tasting notes and share them with friends and other wine lovers through the social media component as part of the app.

Serving as promotional tool for places and owners

Serving as promotional tool for places and owners

The built-in social media feature enables making informational posts for entire user base for places and app owners.

User flow of the app

The app’s key features:

  • Food and Wine Matching

    Match perfect wine with selected cuisine and vice versa
  • Wine Tasting Notes

    Express your tasting experience on a wine.
  • Wine Cellar Management

    Link your wine bottles with all your tasting notes
  • Find Restaurants Nearby

    Find best restaurants locally and globally.
  • Public and Private Groups

    Reach a wider audience of wine lowers.
  • Social media

    Invite your friends from Facebook, Google+, email.
  • Share with Friends

    Let your friends know your preferences and new wine discoveries.
  • Share with Friends

    Invite your friends from Facebook, Google+, email.
  • Search of particular wines

    Perform search for specific wine through the app.
  • Reverse search

    If you like a specific wine, we will find the closest restaurants serving it.
  • Reviews, Details and Ratings

    Wine Reviews & Details, Restaurant Ratings and Review, Wine Listing Rating, and much more.
  • Snap winelist

    Take photo of a wine list and get it uploaded for further matching and wine selection in the app.
  • Achievements

    Receive prizes for your wine activities, reach the PRO level, so your notes are taken into account by the app as professional.
Technology stack

Technology stack

For Wine Picker, we have developed native iOS and Android applications on Swift, Objective С and Java along with a sophisticated supporting backend written in Python.

Wine Picker has become an engaging challenge and valuable experience for our team at Onix. It has helped us deepen our knowledge of work with Google Places and improved our skills in development of complex multiprocessing databases.

Result

Result

We have managed to overcome the challenges, complete and release the app with much more than initially planned. As a result Wine Picker has won the acclaim at public events held.

In Google search results for the UK, Wine Picker comes #1 and in search results of the app market for wine apps it is among top-10.