Building the Umamii Business portal was critical for supporting the two-sided marketplace vision that will power the next phase of growth. The mobile app is a great discovery platform for diners to find restaurants, but we also needed to support restaurant owners to engage with the platform and their diners.
To make this happen, and on a tight timeline, we mapped out two clear phases to bring the portal to life: a foundational phase that turns our relationship with restaurant partners from a passive listing directory into an active management platform, and a second phase focused on monetization and AI-powered features.
Phase 1: Foundation
In this foundational phase, we focused on building the core capabilities that restaurant owners need to manage their presence on Umamii.
The self-service tool allows owners can 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 owner 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 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 owners 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 owner-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 standard monetization features owners 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 ofers and events throughout the Umamii app, in non-spammy ways.
We’re wrapping it all in an Advertiser Hub where owners 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 turn Umamii into a must-have tool for any restaurant owner.
The Growth Loop
We’re shipping a business portal to complete Umamii’s two-sided marketplace vision, and early numbers look solid.
Owners 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 growth loop is starting to take shape.
Building the Umamii business portal to power our two-sided marketplace and streamline our internal operations. V1 secures our data, proves ROI to owners, and streamlines our internal operations. V2 will introduce AI optimization features and self-serve advertising options to drive our revenue growth engine.
