MERN Restaurant Table-Booking App

I want to roll out a small yet polished web application that lets diners book a table directly from our website. It must be built on the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node) so it slots neatly into the rest of our tech.

Core flow
• A guest lands on the site, sees a calendar-style interface, and instantly knows whether a time slot is free. No account creation—just pick a time, enter contact details, and confirm.
• As soon as a reservation is placed, availability updates in real time for every user onscreen.
• In the back office I log in as admin, scan pending bookings, adjust party sizes, block out tables on the fly, or cancel when needed.

Key features I need you to wire up
• Real-time availability logic (socket.io or similar is fine)
• Guest-only booking form (no auth flow) with basic validation
• Admin-only dashboard for full reservation management, protected by simple JWT auth
• MongoDB schema that cleanly maps tables, time slots, and guest info
• Clear separation between client and server code plus concise README so I can deploy on a standard Ubuntu VPS

I’m happy to share the existing brand colours, logo and table layout diagram once we start. Let me know roughly how long you’ll need and a quick outline of your preferred tech choices or libraries beyond the core MERN stack.