Food Order Management API

I’m building a web-based ordering solution for food vendors at concerts, festivals, and other cultural events. The goal is to mirror the seamless flow of Uber Eats—guests place an order from their seat, track its status in real time, and receive a notification when it’s ready for pickup or delivery inside the venue.

Scope
The project centres on a clean, well-documented RESTful web API. It will integrate solely with my existing web application (no mobile app for now). Core endpoints should cover order creation, status updates, and a live order-tracking feed. Think carts, checkout, ETA calculations, and vendor dashboards, all exposed through JSON.

Key needs
• Secure authentication (JWT or similar)
• Real-time order status updates via WebSockets or Server-Sent Events
• Clear separation between customer, vendor, and admin roles
• Basic reporting endpoints so staff can see order volumes per event
• Postman or Swagger/OpenAPI docs so my frontend team can plug in immediately
• Unit tests for critical logic

Acceptance criteria
1. All endpoints return correct HTTP codes and JSON schema.
2. An example React fetch demonstrates order placement and live status polling/stream.
3. Deployment instructions for a containerised environment (Docker preferred).

Feel free to choose the stack you’re most productive with—Node/Express, FastAPI, Laravel, or another mainstream framework—as long as the final code is clean, modular, and easy for another developer to extend.

I’m ready to start as soon as the design is clear and can respond quickly to questions about event workflows or data models.