Mobile App Development for Board Game Cafe

# PROJECT PLAYHOUSE — MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT — PHASE 1 MVP

**Project Playhouse is a temporary working name. The actual company and consumer brand name will be disclosed to the selected development team.**

## ABOUT THE PROJECT

We are looking for an experienced **AI-assisted mobile app developer or development team** to build Phase 1 of a new consumer platform.

The business is an established multi-location board-game café/restaurant business with **4 locations currently operating** and plans to add approximately **8 additional locations over the next 12 months**. The business offers food, beverages, reservations, and approximately **1,000 board games** customers can play while dining.

We want an app that combines the restaurant and gaming experience.

**This is NOT intended to be simply a restaurant ordering or reservation app.**

Long-term vision:

### EAT • PLAY • CREATE • WIN

## PHASE 1 — MVP

### 1. CUSTOMER MOBILE APP

Customers should be able to:

* Create an account/login
* Find and select locations
* View location information
* Make reservations by date, time and party size
* View menus
* Order food and beverages
* Pay through the app
* View order status and previous orders
* Browse, search and filter the board-game library
* View game information, players, playing time, difficulty and category
* Save favorite games
* Rate/review games
* Receive push notifications
* Earn/view loyalty or reward points
* Manage their profile

The app must support **multiple locations from Day 1**. Adding locations should be primarily an administrative process.

### 2. RESTAURANT / ADMIN DASHBOARD

Management should be able to manage:

* Locations and tables
* Reservations
* Customers
* Menus and menu items
* Orders
* Game library and games available at each location
* Rewards/loyalty
* Promotions and events
* Basic analytics

Different employee/manager permissions should be supported.

### 3. GAME LIBRARY

The business has approximately 1,000 board games. The system should manage information such as:

* Game name
* Category
* Number of players
* Playing time
* Difficulty
* Age recommendation
* Description
* Location availability
* Ratings
* Popularity

The architecture should allow personalized recommendations later, such as:

> "You have 4 players and 60 minutes. Here are 5 games we think you will enjoy."

### 4. DATA & ANALYTICS

We want a privacy-conscious **first-party data architecture** from the beginning.

With appropriate disclosure, consent and controls, the system should be able to understand customer preferences, visits, reservations, orders, games played, ratings, loyalty activity, events, retention and location trends.

The objective is to improve the customer experience and operations and eventually develop aggregated/de-identified analytics and insights.

**Privacy, security, consent, data ownership, retention and deletion must be considered from the beginning.**

### 5. PAYMENTS / INTEGRATIONS

We are open to recommendations. Potential integrations may include **Square, Toast or other appropriate restaurant/payment systems.**

## TECHNOLOGY

We are considering **Flutter or another high-quality cross-platform framework** for iOS/Android, with **Supabase/PostgreSQL or another scalable backend.**

Priorities:

* Cost efficiency
* Scalability
* Security
* Maintainability
* Speed
* Clean architecture
* Cross-platform capability
* Ability to add future functionality

## AI-ASSISTED DEVELOPMENT

We encourage modern AI development tools to reduce development time and cost.

However, we are **not looking for someone who simply generates code with AI.**

We need developers who understand architecture, database design, security, APIs, testing, scalability, code review and documentation.

Please explain which AI tools you use and how they improve development.

## BUILD FOR THE FUTURE

Phase 1 is focused on the restaurant/customer experience. However, the architecture must allow future expansion without rebuilding the platform.

The long-term vision includes:

* Digital/mobile games
* Game creators and submissions
* Developer accounts
* Leaderboards and tournaments
* Contests and prizes
* Rewards
* Game analytics
* Personalized recommendations
* Creator revenue sharing
* AI-assisted game development

Eventually, creators may use technologies such as **Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, HTML5/JavaScript** and other approved technologies and connect games through APIs/SDKs.

**We are NOT asking the Phase 1 developer to build these features now.** We want the architecture prepared for them.

## WHAT WE WANT IN YOUR BID

Please provide:

1. Phase 1 estimated cost
2. Development timeline
3. Recommended technology stack
4. Examples of similar apps
5. Restaurant/reservation/payment experience
6. Multi-location experience
7. Loyalty/rewards experience
8. AI-assisted development experience
9. Proposed development team and who will write the code
10. Testing/QA and security approach
11. Proposed database architecture
12. What you recommend including/postponing in Phase 1
13. Post-launch support options
14. Hourly rate for future development

## OWNERSHIP

All custom work created specifically for this project must belong to the company upon payment, including source code, database, APIs, UI/UX, documentation, backend and project-specific IP.

All GitHub repositories, cloud accounts and infrastructure must be established under **company ownership**, not the developer's personal accounts.

We require complete source code and documentation at each milestone and must be able to change developers without losing control of the application.

## DEVELOPMENT

We prefer **milestone-based development**.

Potential structure:

1. Architecture/database/UI/UX
2. Accounts/locations
3. Reservations
4. Menu/ordering
5. Payments
6. Game library
7. Rewards
8. Admin dashboard
9. Analytics/notifications
10. Testing/launch

Each milestone should have clear acceptance criteria before payment.

## WHO WE WANT

We want a developer/team that can become a **long-term technology partner**.

Strong mobile, backend/database, API, payment, multi-location, security and AI-assisted development experience is preferred.

Gaming experience is a plus but is **NOT required for Phase 1.**

## CONFIDENTIALITY

The actual company and consumer brand name will not be disclosed publicly at this stage. Selected developers may be required to sign an NDA before receiving additional information.

We are **not necessarily looking for the lowest bid.**

We want the best combination of:

**Technical Ability + Architecture + Communication + Speed + Cost + Long-Term Capability**

We are open to starting with a smaller paid technical/architecture assignment before committing to the full MVP.

### IMPORTANT

Please begin your proposal with:

**"PLAYHOUSE"**

and briefly explain why you are a strong fit.

**Project Playhouse — Eat. Play. Create. Win.**