TAPP Case Study

TAPP is eliminating the hassle of payment in bars and restaurants, allowing friends to enjoy their time together without worrying about dividing up the bill. It also allows bars and restaurants to serve groups and gather insights about their customers.

TAPP connects a Raspberry Pi-powered device to the point of sale of each participating bar or restaurant. Customers download the TAPP app, add their payment information, and check in at their favorite spot. The app connects to the point of sale, allowing customers to check their bill real-time and also making it possible to automatically divide the bill between a group of friends. When a user is ready to move on, he or she can check out and pay their part of the bill through the app.

The TAPP team knew they would need a way to connect with and update their point of sale devices. They started by putting together a DIY solution, which worked well enough but clearly wasn’t scalable. The team also found themselves deploying less frequently for fear of bricking customer devices. Bouke Nederstigt, Software Architect at TAPP, came across balena while researching potential management solutions, and was intrigued by the possibility of using Docker containers to push code to their devices. The team decided to give balena a try.

After a few months using balena, TAPP is “at the point where we are starting to see the real benefits,” says Bouke. As their fleet grows, balena is enabling TAPP to “maintain the velocity of pushing new features and keeping quality high,” while also managing all of their devices in one place.

“The net result is that it’s much easier to push an update,” says Frans van Hoogstraten, Founder and CTO. “We just changed a big thing in our backend and we needed to quickly update our devices. That was done in a matter of 20 minutes or so.” So far, “every step that you take [to improve the product] shows up tenfold in how much less work we have to do.”

“It’s given me peace of mind,” says Frans. “Deploying four months ago was always an exciting but scary time. I don’t hesitate to deploy anymore because I know I won’t brick the system.”

“We’re very happy that you’re here.”