To support Umamii’s vision of building a two-sided marketplace that will power the next phase of growth, we needed to build a business portal.
Umamii’s mobile app is a great discovery platform for diners to find restaurants, but we also needed to support restaurant partners engaging with their diners on the platform. Diners had the app but restaurants had no voice or control. We needed to close this loop to make Umamii a true two-sided marketplace.
To make this happen, and on a tight timeline, we mapped out two clear phases to bring the portal to life.
Phase 1: Foundation
In this foundational phase, the goal was to turn the relationship with restaurant partners from a passive listing directory into an active management platform. To achieve this, we focused on building the core capabilities that restaurant partners need to manage their presence on Umamii.
The self-service tool allows partners to quickly claim their restaurant, update their profile details (hours, menu, photos, etc.), respond to reviews, and see how diners are interacting with their brand with a clean analytics dashboard.
- Restaurant Claiming Flow: We built various entry points straight from the mobile app (search results, restaurant profile pages), and targeted invite emails.
- Claim Verification: We support both automated domain matching and manual document upload verification using utility bills or business licenses.
- Review Management: Admins can view and reply to reviews on behalf of their restaurant. We made sure replies feel personal, formatted as “first_name from restaurant_name”.
- Basic Analytics: A clean dashboard displays vital metrics like total likes, total reviews, total calls, and total website clicks.
It’s live now, so if you’re a restaurant partner reading this, claim your profile today at business.umamii.ai.
Technical Decisions
Speed was a priority for this project, but not at the expense of quality. We needed to move fast without breaking the very listings diners rely on. We made strict architectural and feature prioritization decisions to ensure we delivered a stable and user-friendly product.
We opted to use React (Next.js) and Vite for the frontend, Supabase for the backend, and integrated the existing authentication system for a seamless UX that reduces onboarding friction.
Opening up the platform to restaurant partners means we needed to build a way to ensure data integrity and prevent data conflicts. This was our biggest challenge and we solved it by implementing a data preservation layer that ensures data changes are tracked and can be reverted if needed. It also prevents partner-verified profile edits from being overwritten by our automated data ingestion pipelines.
Internal Team Support
Included in phase 1 was solving manual work for our internal teams by giving them the ability to process restaurant claims, create and edit chef profiles, automate communications, and more. The business portal acts as an operations tool giving internal teams much better and faster global access to the database.
Phase 2: Monetization & AI
Looking ahead, phase 2 will introduce advanced features that drive even more engagement, while opening up new revenue streams through the advertising hub.
We’re adding monetization features that restaurant partners and operators need to promote their restaurants. Some features include:
- Sponsored Search: Enabling restaurants to compete for top-shelf visibility when diners search for their cuisine or area.
- Sponsored Map Pins: High-intent map views get sponsored pins allowing restaurants to stand out in crowded areas.
- Offers & Events: Allowing restaurants to run promotional offers and events throughout the Umamii app, in non-spammy ways.
We’re wrapping it all in an Advertiser Hub where restaurant partners create campaigns, track impressions/clicks, and handle billing. Premium tiers unlock benchmarking (how you stack up vs. similar spots nearby).
Plus we’re bringing generative AI directly into the portal to make boutique restaurants punch above their weight:
- AI Menu Scanner: Snap a photo of your menu, LLM extracts and structures it automatically.
- “Optimize with AI”: Generate sharper, more compelling descriptions tailored to your audience.
- Audience Persona Insights: See who your real visitors are (“Late-Night Snackers”, “Family Brunch Crew”) based on aggregated diner behavior.
- AI-suggested review replies: Quick, on-brand drafts so replying never feels like a chore.
These “nice-to-haves” are what will power our partnership with restaurants and shift Umamii into a must-have digital marketing partner for every restaurant on the platform.
The Growth Loop
We’re shipping a business portal to complete Umamii’s two-sided marketplace vision, and early numbers look solid.
Restaurant partners invest time claiming, updating, replying to reviews, and that commitment makes them stickier partners. Higher quality listings means better recommendations for diners. Better diner experiences drives more traffic back to restaurants. The more value we provide to partners, the better the data becomes for diners, creating a self-sustaining growth loop for the entire ecosystem.
We launched the Umamii Business Portal to turn a discovery app into a true two-sided marketplace. Phase 1 focused on data integrity and self-service utility for owners. Phase 2 introduces AI-powered optimization and an advertising hub to drive scalable revenue growth.
