A Multi-Vendor Grocery Platform Built for Real Life in Brussels
One cart. Many local shops. One live delivery.
See how Devzey delivered a complete ordering, payment and delivery system that lets people in Brussels shop from many local stores in one place, while giving the business full control from the first order to the final delivery.
Project Snapshot
The Platform at a Glance
Meet the Client
Brussels is a city of neighbourhoods. Walk ten minutes in almost any direction and the street changes: a bakery that opens before sunrise, a greengrocer who knows which pears are ready today, a cheese counter with a queue on Saturday mornings. These independent shops are a big part of what makes the city feel like home.
SEDEO began with a simple and powerful idea: make it easy for people in Brussels to order from several of these shops through one smooth digital experience. One place to browse. One basket. One payment. One delivery.
Behind that simple idea sat a much harder reality. The platform had to handle product discovery, orders from multiple vendors, payments, stock control and live delivery, all without creating chaos behind the scenes. For families, busy professionals and local shop owners, this was not just about convenience. It was about trust, reliability and time saved every single day.
Who the Platform Had to Serve
The Challenge
Multi-vendor grocery platforms look simple from the outside. They are not.
Picture a Thursday evening in Ixelles. (An illustrative scenario, but one every multi-vendor platform has to survive.) Sophie gets home late and her dinner guests arrive at eight. She needs sourdough from the bakery, vegetables from the greengrocer and a good piece of cheese. In her app, it feels like one simple order.
Behind the screen, it is three orders happening at once. Each shop has its own stock, its own preparation time and its own way of working. The bakery is down to its last few loaves. The cheese shop can pack in five minutes. The greengrocer needs twenty. Then a rider has to collect everything and bring it to Sophie's door, while Sophie watches the map and expects accurate updates at every step.
Here is how that evening goes wrong without the right system underneath:
Without a properly designed system, this quickly leads to stock problems, late updates, confused vendors and unhappy customers.
SEDEO did not just need an app. It needed a reliable operational backbone that could handle real life in a busy city.
Behind the Scenes: Choosing the Right Foundation
Before writing any code, the SEDEO team did something smart. They invited several software houses to present their approach, and compared the thinking side by side. Two technical decisions became central to the discussion.
Decision 1: The Backend Technology
One team recommended Python. We recommended Node.js.
Python is a capable language and a great fit for many kinds of projects. The real question was which one suited this particular workload. SEDEO is a platform where hundreds of small things happen at the same time:
- Customers browsing products across several shops
- Orders being placed and payments being confirmed
- Stock being reserved so two people never buy the last item
- Riders sharing their live location
- Statuses updating across several apps at once
- Chat messages and push notifications moving between riders and the platform
Node.js is built for exactly this kind of real-time, high-concurrency work. A useful way to picture it: a good waiter does not stand at one table until the meal is finished. They keep every table moving. That is how Node.js treats a busy platform, handling many small events at once instead of making each one wait its turn.
The client agreed.
Decision 2: The Structure
Another team suggested starting with a full monorepo, a single large codebase with shared tooling that holds every app and service together. It is a popular approach with real strengths for large teams over time.
We advised against it for an MVP on a fixed timeline. Extra tooling would slow the first working version without adding immediate business value. Instead, we kept the code clean and modular, so the system could grow later without being locked into an early decision.
The Decisions at a Glance
These choices were not about using the most impressive technology. They were about choosing what fit the stage of the business and the reality of the project.
The Strategy Behind the Results
We focused on how an order actually moves through the business. Instead of building separate tools that each tell a slightly different story, every part of the platform was designed around one shared source of truth.
Unified Order Management
One central system handles multi-vendor orders, reserves stock in real time and manages the full journey from placement to delivery. When Sophie builds her basket, the platform treats it as one order for her and as separate, clearly defined jobs for each shop.
Real-Time Visibility
Live order updates and live rider tracking mean customers, vendors and the operations team always see the same accurate information. Nobody has to call anybody to ask "where is it?"
Role-Specific Experiences
Every person who touches an order gets an interface designed for how they actually work. A shop owner packing orders, a rider on a scooter and an operations manager watching the whole city have very different days, so they get very different tools.
A Strong Technical Foundation
Secure payments, full support for French, English and Dutch, regular database backups and an architecture built to scale as more users join.
What We Built
Customer Dashboard
Where Sophie's evening starts.
- One place, many shops. Browse products from multiple local vendors side by side.
- One order across shops. Place a single order that spans different shops.
- Live delivery tracking. Follow the delivery on Google Maps.
- Quick sign-in. Continue with Google, Facebook or Apple.
- Pay your way. Google Pay, Apple Pay, Bancontact or card.
- In your language. The full experience works in French, English and Dutch.
- Your details, ready to go. Manage your profile and saved addresses.
Rider Apps (iOS and Android)
A rider's day starts with a notification, not a phone call.
- Accept deliveries with a tap.
- Share live location so customers, vendors and operations can all follow along.
- Clear navigation with Google Maps.
- Real-time chat for quick questions during a delivery.
- Support tickets managed from inside the app.
- Push notifications so no new delivery is missed.
Vendor Panel
The shop owner keeps their shop. The platform handles the rest.
- Real-time orders portal. New orders appear as they happen.
- Full branding control. Each shop keeps its own identity instead of disappearing into a generic marketplace.
- Clear order statuses. Preparation and handover stay organised, so riders and shops are never guessing.
Admin Panel
The whole city on one screen.
- Analytics dashboard to understand how the business is performing.
- Live rider tracking across all active deliveries.
- Full visibility over orders, vendors, riders and customers.
- Support oversight to see what needs attention.
Turning Complexity Into Clarity
We connected the entire process into one coherent system. A customer discovers local shops, orders from several of them at once, tracks the delivery live and receives their groceries. The business sees and controls every step.
The path is simple and reliable:
Discover → Order → Prepare → Track → Deliver
One Order, Three Shops, One Delivery
Back in Ixelles, here is what happens behind the scenes when Sophie taps "Pay".
Sophie never sees any of this complexity. She sees her sourdough, her vegetables and her cheese arriving on the map, one rider, one knock on the door. Dinner is on time.
Built to Grow
This is a scalable system designed to grow with its users. Everyone works from the same live information, so stock numbers and order statuses stay accurate no matter how busy the platform gets.
Security as a Core Requirement
Security was treated as a core requirement from the start. Payments run through trusted providers. Customers can sign in with Google, Facebook or Apple. Each role only sees and does what it is allowed to.
Who sees and does what
Yes = can do it · View = can see it only
The Outcome
SEDEO now has a complete, production-ready multi-vendor grocery platform built for the Belgian market.
The platform gives SEDEO a solid foundation to grow with confidence.
Before and After
What We Took Away
- Fit the technology to the stage of the business. The best choice was the one that suited a fixed-timeline MVP, not the one that sounded most impressive.
- One source of truth beats many tools. When every role sees the same live data, most operational problems never get the chance to start.
- Design for the person using it. A shop owner, a rider and an operations manager should not share one interface.
- Leave room to grow. Clean, modular code keeps tomorrow's options open without slowing down today's launch.
Ready to build a multi-vendor platform or complex e-commerce system?
Devzey helps businesses turn ambitious ideas into clean, reliable products that work in the real world. Tell us about your idea and we will help you find the right foundation for it.
