Food truck & catering · London, Ontario
El Chilaquil. A food truck that runs off one dashboard.
A family-run Mexican street-food truck that also caters weddings, corporate lunches and parties across Southwestern Ontario. We rebuilt their website, gave them a 24-page business dashboard and put an AI agent in their team chat that watches the inbox, briefs them every morning and drafts the replies.
New catering enquiryposted in ~15 min · date checked
6:30am brief senttoday's jobs + who's waiting
- BusinessFamily-run food truck + catering
- What we builtWebsite, dashboard, AI agent
- Enquiry alertsWithin ~15 minutes, 7am to 10pm
The problem
Where the time was going.
Before, the business ran on the owners' phones. Catering enquiries landed in email with nothing tracking them. A later sweep found six website enquiries that had never been answered, including a large multi-night October event.
Bookings, the calendar, Square sales and the books each lived in a different app and didn't agree. Receipts sat in pockets, bank lines waited in QuickBooks with no category, and nobody could see real food costs. Catering dates and times were read off long email threads and were misread more than once.
The website was a single page with very large images and no way to book the truck.
We stopped losing enquiries in the inbox. Every new request is in front of us within minutes, with the calendar already checked.
What we built
The system.
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01
A website that books the truck
A fast multi-page site (Home, Menu, Catering, About, Find Us) with a clear path from "what do they serve" to "book the truck".
- Menu with category filters: any dish in two taps on a phone
- Catering enquiry form that sends every request in a structured format the automations can read
- Live "Find Us" schedule the owners, or the AI agent, update from a phone
- Installable, works offline, images cut from 947 MB to 47 MB so it loads on mobile data
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Live demoThe home page fills in from Square, QuickBooks and Google. Sample data.Animated mock-up of the business dashboard with sample data: orders, kitchen tickets, prep time and guests booked, orders by hour, and upcoming events with their status. Live demoA receipt snapped on a phone, read, sorted and synced. Sample data.Animated mock-up of receipt capture: a receipt is photographed on a phone, read, sorted into a category and synced to QuickBooks. 02
One dashboard for the whole business
A private 24-page dashboard connected to Square, QuickBooks and Google, so sales, catering, costs and marketing sit in one place.
- Catering pipeline from enquiry to completed event, with confirmed dates and times read automatically from 88 catering email threads
- Kitchen display screen and tablet cash register, with every order timed
- Food cost per dish worked out from real receipt lines
- Expenses synced from QuickBooks every morning, plus receipt capture from a phone
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Live demoA website enquiry, posted with the calendar already checked. Sample enquiry.Animated mock-up of a team-chat alert for a new catering enquiry with sample details: the agent checks the requested date and the days around it (free, free, booked), then offers to draft a reply, which is saved to Gmail drafts. Live demoThe 6:30am brief, answered with a short code. Sample brief.Animated mock-up of the 6:30am brief with sample items: today's jobs, enquiries waiting on a reply and open items. The owner replies B2 and the agent answers that the draft is ready in Gmail. 03
An AI agent in the team chat
An agent that works in the team's Discord channel. It checks the inbox, keeps the owners briefed and does the paperwork on request, and anything that sends email or changes data waits for a person to approve it.
- New enquiries posted within about 15 minutes, with the requested date already checked against the calendar
- A 6:30am brief: today's jobs, who is waiting on a reply, what's due, answerable with a short code
- Client replies and invoices drafted in the owners' voice and left in Gmail drafts for review
- Bookkeeping catch-up: about 140 bank lines categorised and a full-year mileage log rebuilt for the tax return
Built with
- HTML/CSS/JS + PWA
- Firebase
- Python + SQLite on Google Cloud
- Square API
- QuickBooks Online API
- Google Workspace
- Google Analytics 4 + Search Console
- Meta Graph API
- Claude on OpenClaw
- Discord approvals
- 196 automated tests
Running every day
Automations in numbers.
Real figures from their systems. Dashboard screenshots use sample data, never their real numbers.
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Kitchen
A kitchen screen that times every order
A custom kitchen display connected to Square, live on every service day. It replaced Square's paid kitchen screen, and truck, cash-register and pre-paid event orders all land on it.
- 1,394tickets timed over 34 service days
- 4.7 minmedian ticket
- 92%of tickets under 10 minutes
- 444more orders on the tablet register
Doing this another waySquare's own kitchen screen costs CA$20 a month per screen, or CA$60 a month for unlimited screens on its Plus plan.
106.7 hours of kitchen time tracked; tickets over 20 minutes (forgotten bumps) are left out.
Live demoOrders land, age green to amber to red, and get tapped away. Sample data, sped up.Animated mock-up of the kitchen display with sample orders: tickets arrive, their timers count up, the headers turn from green to amber to red, and staff tap a ticket to bump it. 
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Food cost
Food cost from real receipts
Cost per dish built from actual receipt lines instead of guesses, so the owners can see which items earn their place on the menu.
- 12items costed, first round
- 7items costed, second round
- 23ingredient categories
Doing this another wayFood-cost software lists at about $350 a month per location (MarginEdge) or $249 to 299 a month (MarketMan).
QuickBooks data syncs every morning, but this analysis is refreshed periodically. It is not live per-ingredient tracking.
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Bookkeeping
QuickBooks that keeps itself current
A daily sync from QuickBooks into the dashboard with automatic categories, plus receipts snapped from a phone, so the books stay current instead of catching up at year end.
- 501daily syncs
- 795expense lines mirrored
- 320receipts captured from a phone
Doing this another wayA bookkeeper plus a receipt-capture app typically runs about CA$330 to 860 a month (typical, not verified).
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Outreach
Catering outreach that writes itself
An agent that researches local businesses and venues and sends one personal email per lead, about 11 a day, then tracks the replies.
- 1,720targets researched
- 656personal emails sent
- 87real replies (13%)
- ~15%of their catering business came from the outreach emails
Doing this another wayOutreach email tools such as Instantly start at US$47 a month, before anyone researches the leads.
Figures from an earlier copy of the outreach database, so today's numbers are slightly higher. Opens aren't tracked.
Live demoEach email is written for one business, then the replies are tracked. Sample emails, real totals.Animated mock-up of the outreach agent writing and sending personal emails to sample businesses, with the real totals: 1,720 targets, 656 emails sent and 87 replies.
Day to day
An AI operator on the team.
What the agent did in its first two weeks. It works in the team's Discord channel; items marked approximate are estimates.
Email and clients
- About 15 client reply drafts (approximate) in the owners' voice, for weddings, schools, corporate events, birthdays and festivals, one in Spanish. Saved as drafts; the team presses send
- Numbered invoices built from the job details and saved as drafts
- 55 website enquiries flagged as lead alerts, each checked against the calendar first
- A morning brief every day, plus a 9pm mail summary with the noise filtered out
Bookkeeping
- About 140 bank and card lines cleared in one day, both review queues taken to zero
- Deposits matched to bookings
- A 144-day, 10,877 km mileage log rebuilt from receipts and the calendar
- Quarterly sales tax prepared and the deadline tracked
Documents and design
- Catering and wedding menu redesigned as a 5-page PDF, now attached to every quote
- 5 one-page menu concepts
- 3-page printable truck checklists
- About 100 duplicate videos cleared out of the shared Drive (moved to the trash, restorable)
Website and dashboard
- Events posted straight to the live website schedule, no deploy needed
- About 25 dashboard changes merged and auto-deployed, including approval cards, a send timer with a cancel window and mail priority tiers
Media and research
- 2 short promo reels cut from the clip library
- Go or no-go and pricing research for events
Guardrails
- Nothing goes out without a person tapping approve
- Every email has a 10-minute cancel window
- Anything deleted goes to the trash first
Ready, not switched on yet: sending email on its own; posting to social media; running outreach batches; deploying the public site.
What changed
The results.
- Mostcatering bookings come in through the website enquiry formThe new form is now where the majority of their catering work starts
- ~15 minfrom a new enquiry to the team7am to 10pm, down from whenever someone next checked email
- 4.7 minmedian kitchen prep timeAcross 1,292 timed tickets; 92% ready in under 10 minutes
- 1,394kitchen tickets timedOver 34 service days, plus 444 orders on the tablet register
- 50catering events completed and trackedAbout 2,700 guests served
- ~15%of their catering business came from outreach emailsFrom 656 personal emails and 87 replies
- 795expense lines synced from QuickBooks501 daily syncs, plus 320 receipts captured from a phone
- 55enquiries flagged automaticallyEach with the calendar already checked
- ~140uncategorised bank lines clearedIn one session, plus a 144-day mileage log rebuilt for the tax return
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