Kavya's Event Form

When someone wants to book, I send them a form for the date, guest count, food type and address, and I see it the moment they finish and confirm the price.

Who this is for

Kavya Rao cooks for house functions in Hubballi: naming ceremonies, house-warmings, the occasional hundred-plate reception. Two cooks, one helper, and her brother-in-law who drives the tempo. It is 9.40 in the morning and she is at the vegetable market with one hand inside a sack of beans when a lady from Vidyanagar rings to book the 14th. Kavya has no pen, no paper, and no free hand.

How the job is done today

She repeats the date back twice, says she will call at night, and by night there are four more calls sitting on top of that one. Some people send details on WhatsApp instead, spread across six messages and two voice notes, so the guest count is in one message and the address is in another and the veg-or-not never got said at all. Her notebook has the confirmed jobs, mostly. Twice this year she has reached an address only to learn it was the old house, and once she cooked for eighty when the family had quietly grown it to a hundred and ten.

The screens, in order

1. The form the customer opens — Asks the customer one thing at a time, in large dark letters, until Kavya has the date, the head count, the food type and the address.
2. Sent — Shows the customer everything they just typed so they can spot a wrong date or a missing landmark before Kavya ever sees it.
3. Kavya's requests — Puts every request that has come in on one list, newest first, so she can go through them at night in ten minutes.
4. One request — Lets her read the whole job in one look and write the rate per plate and the total she has decided.
5. The price page she sends back — Gives the customer the date, the count, the food and the price on one page they can show the rest of the family.

What it keeps track of

• Booking request — who asked, their phone number, which date, how many people, veg or non-veg or both, the full address with a landmark, anything extra they wrote, when it came in
• Price confirmation — which request, rate per plate, total, whether Kavya has sent it, whether the family said yes
• Kavya's own note — which request, what she remembered afterwards, who in the family to call

The one decision that matters

One question per screen, or the whole form on one scrolling page. A single page looks faster and a younger customer would finish it in forty seconds. But most of the people booking Kavya are aunties standing in a doorway at noon, holding a phone five years old, screen scratched, brightness already at full and still losing to the sun. On one long page they lose their place, they thumb past the food question, and she gets a request with the address missing, which is worse than no request at all. Go with one question per screen, very large dark text on white, a big next button low enough for a thumb. The extra taps cost her nothing. A half-filled form costs her a phone call.

What to leave out of the first version

No advance payment, no calendar, no menu builder. Money for a function gets settled face to face or by UPI to her number, and adding a payment step in the first version would make people close the form and ring her instead, which is exactly what she is trying to stop. The menu she decides on the phone anyway, after she hears what the function is. All the first version has to do is stop her from losing four facts.

How you would know it worked

A Sunday passes where Kavya does not have to ring a single customer back to ask how many people are coming, and the tempo reaches the right gate on the first try.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I am a caterer in Hubballi and I want a small website with a form I can send people on WhatsApp when they ask me to cook for a function. It should ask them their name and phone number, which date, how many people, veg or non-veg or both, and the full address with a landmark, one question at a time in very big dark letters, because most of my customers have old phones and are reading it standing outside in the sun. After they send it they should see everything they typed so they can check it themselves. On my side I want a simple list of all the requests with the newest on top, and when I open one I should be able to type the rate per plate and the total and mark it confirmed, and get a link I can send back to them showing the date, the count and the price.