Case Study · Food & Drink

Canteen Mate

Cashless canteen ordering and meal management for schools

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Overview

Canteen Mate (FoodCity) digitises the school canteen — letting parents top up wallets, pre-order meals and track exactly what their children spend, while the canteen runs a fast, queue-free NFC checkout. DataHex delivered the parent app, the wallet system and the canteen-side flow end to end.

Client: FoodCity / School canteen operator
Industry: Food & Drink · EdTech
Platforms: Android · iOS
Timeline: 14 weeks

The challenge

Cash at the school canteen meant long queues, lost money and zero visibility for parents over what their kids ate or spent. The operator needed a cashless system that was fast at the counter, transparent for parents and simple for canteen staff to run during a packed lunch break.

Our approach

We built a digital wallet with secure top-ups, tied each student to an NFC tag for instant tap-to-pay, and gave parents real-time spend tracking and meal pre-ordering. The canteen-side flow was optimised for speed so a single tap completes an order, while server-side reporting gives operators a live view of sales and inventory.

What we built