Why I built this
I had a takeaway. An app closed it.
Graffiti, in Waterford. Kebabs, pizza, burgers, hand-cut chips. A proper takeaway - and by every measure I had, it was working. Orders coming in. The machine printing all night.
That was the trap. The number on the machine was high, so I told myself I was grand. You don’t stop mid-service to do the sums. You keep cooking.
It’s only at month-end, staring at the actual bank account, that the number gets real. The platform was taking thirty percent. After commissions, ingredients, packaging, labour - there was nothing left. Some months, less than nothing.
And the part that still stings: those customers were never mine. I couldn’t email them. Couldn’t run a midweek offer. Couldn’t say “come back, I’ve added something new.” The relationship I thought I was building belonged to the app. I was just the kitchen.
I closed Graffiti. Not because the food wasn’t good - because the maths were built to keep me dependent on a platform that would always take more than I could give.
Then I spent the guts of a year - over a thousand hours - teaching myself to build the thing I wish I’d had. That’s Tine.Irish.
- Max