Delivery Rider's Daily Check

Riders tap their own name to mark themselves in for the day, and the kitchen prints each one a page of stops to tick off with a pen.

Who this is for

Shabana Qureshi runs Dumpukht Express, a cloud kitchen on the ground floor of her building in Wanowrie, Pune. On a weekday she sends out about 130 lunch tiffins. Eleven riders are on her list, seven or eight actually turn up, and she never knows which seven until 10.50 am, when they are standing at the shutter with their helmets still on and she is holding a phone in one hand and a ladle in the other, calling out names.

How the job is done today

The orders sit in a WhatsApp group. Shabana forwards the day's list at 10.30 and the riders screenshot it, then zoom in at a red light trying to read a flat number. She keeps a diary page where she writes each rider's name and a rough count of tiffins against it, in pen, often while walking. Attendance is whatever she remembers on Sunday when she pays. By 1 pm someone always rings to ask who took the Salunke Vihar orders, and twice a month a tiffin comes back because nobody could tell whether it had gone out at all. One rider quit and she found out three days later.

The screens, in order

1. I am here — A rider opens a short link at the kitchen, taps his own name from the list, and is marked in for the day without any password.
2. Who turned up — Shabana sees, in one glance, which riders are standing outside and which ones have not shown.
3. Today's orders — She puts in the day's tiffins with building, flat, phone and whether money is to be collected.
4. Split the run — She drags stops onto the riders who came in, keeping each one to a single locality.
5. Print the pages — One page comes out per rider, his name on top, his stops in riding order, an empty box beside each line.
6. Pages back in — At the end of the run she opens each rider's page on her laptop and marks off what came back ticked, so the day is closed.
7. Last thirty days — A simple sheet showing who came on which day, for when it is time to pay on Sunday.

What it keeps track of

• Riders — name, phone number, which days he came in, whether he is in today
• Orders — customer name, building and flat, phone number, what is in the tiffin, cash to collect or already paid, which day
• Runs — which rider, which stops, in what order, when the page was printed, which stops came back ticked

The one decision that matters

Does the rider tick each stop on his phone as he goes, or on paper with a pen while the kitchen enters it later? The phone looks tidier and closes the day by itself. Choose paper. A rider handing over a tiffin has both hands full, his phone is in a pouch under a rain cover, and by 1 pm the battery is at eleven percent. Half these riders will be gone in a month and will not learn an app. Paper is faster than anything on a screen and works with the phone dead. The page he carries is the record of the day, and Shabana spends two minutes typing it back in when he returns.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out any live map of where the riders are. It looks reassuring and changes nothing, because Shabana cannot cook and watch dots at the same time, and it drains the rider's battery and data all afternoon. Leave out messages to customers too. The kitchen's problem is not the customer, it is not knowing who took which tiffins. Solve that first and see whether anything else is still missing.

How you would know it worked

By 1.40 pm all seven pages are back on the nail beside the shutter, every line ticked, and Shabana has not rung a single rider to ask who took the Salunke Vihar tiffins. On Sunday she pays from the attendance sheet without arguing with anyone.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a cloud kitchen in Wanowrie and about a dozen riders come and go, so I need a simple website with no passwords where a rider opens a link on his phone at the kitchen, taps his name from a list and is marked in for the day. I want to put in the day's orders with the building name, flat number, customer phone and whether it is cash or already paid, then split those orders between whoever turned up, and print one clean A4 page per rider with his name at the top, his stops in the order he should ride them, and an empty box beside each line for him to tick with a pen. When he comes back I want to open his page on my laptop and mark which stops came back ticked, and I want a plain sheet showing who came on which day for the last thirty days so I can pay correctly on Sunday.