Documentation — TableFlow Restaurant Management Platform

Overview

TableFlow is a full-stack restaurant management platform built on Laravel 12 and PHP 8.2. It covers everything from the kitchen pass to the customer's table, with an optional AI layer powered by the Anthropic Claude API, and a versioned REST API ready for a companion Flutter mobile app.

Three interfaces ship in one codebase:

Admin & Staff Panel — the full back-of-house dashboard (Blade + Bootstrap 5)
Guest QR Ordering Page — a mobile-friendly public menu with an AI chat widget, linked from each table's printed QR code
REST API (/api/v1) — Sanctum-authenticated endpoints for the future Flutter app

Feature List

Module	What it covers
Menu & Catalog	Categories, items, size variants, add-ons, availability toggles
Orders	Dine-in, takeaway, delivery — full pending → completed lifecycle
Kitchen Display	Live kanban board grouped by order status
Tables & QR	Table management with auto-generated QR ordering links
Reservations	Guest bookings with table assignment and status flow
Customers	Profiles, loyalty points, total spend, visit history
Inventory	Stock items, in/out movements, reorder alerts
Staff	Role-based accounts, attendance check-in/out
Coupons	Fixed or percentage discounts with usage limits and expiry
Reviews	Star ratings with AI sentiment tagging
Reports	Sales dashboards, date-range filters, Excel export
Invoices	One-click PDF invoice generation per order

AI Features

All AI features are powered by a single service that wraps the Anthropic Claude Messages API. Each feature checks its own toggle before making a request, so disabling one never affects the others.

Feature	Where it appears	What it does
Menu Description Writer	Admin → Menu Items	Generates appetizing marketing copy from a dish name and category
Upsell Recommendation Engine	Order creation, checkout	Suggests complementary items based on what's already in the order
Ordering Assistant (Chatbot)	QR ordering page, Flutter app	Conversational help picking dishes and answering menu questions
Sales Forecasting	Admin Dashboard	Plain-language forecast and recommendations from recent sales data
Demand Prediction	Admin → Reports → AI Demand Insights	Predicts which items trend up/down over the next 7 days
Review Sentiment Analysis	Admin → Reviews	Auto-tags each review positive/negative/neutral with a one-line summary

Master Toggle

Admin → Settings → AI Features has one master switch and six individual feature switches. Turning the master switch off disables every AI feature instantly — across the admin panel, the guest ordering page, and the API — regardless of the individual toggle states. This is useful for pausing AI spend entirely without touching any code.

AI-gated API endpoints return HTTP 422 with {"success": false, "message": "..."} when disabled. Handle this gracefully in client apps by hiding the related UI rather than treating it as a hard error.

User Roles

Role	Typical access
`admin`	Everything, including Settings and AI configuration
`manager`	Operations, staff management, reports (no system settings)
`chef`	Kitchen Display System and order status updates
`waiter`	Order taking, table status, reservations
`cashier`	Payments, invoices, order status
`delivery`	Delivery order status updates

Role checks are enforced with a role middleware on route groups — e.g. Staff Management and Settings are restricted to admin/manager only.

Project Structure

app/
  Http/Controllers/
    Admin/    → Web dashboard controllers (staff-facing)
    Api/      → REST API controllers (Flutter app-facing)
    Public/   → QR ordering page + chatbot widget
  Models/     → Eloquent models, one per table
  Services/
    AIService.php  → All Claude API calls, one method per feature
database/
  migrations/ → All table definitions
  seeders/    → Admin user, settings, AI toggles, sample data
resources/views/
  layouts/app.blade.php  → Admin panel shell
  admin/      → All admin panel pages
  public/     → Guest QR ordering page
routes/
  web.php     → Admin panel + guest QR routes
  api.php     → Flutter app REST API (versioned /v1)

Database Schema Summary

Key tables and how they relate:

categories → menu_items → menu_item_variants, addons
restaurant_tables → orders, reservations
orders → order_items, order_status_histories, invoices
customers → orders, reservations, reviews
inventory_items → stock_movements
users (staff) → staff_attendances
settings — key/value store for general config + AI master switch
ai_feature_toggles — one row per AI feature, each independently enable-able

API Reference

Base URL: https://yourdomain.com/api/v1

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	`/auth/register`	Register a customer
POST	`/auth/login`	Login → returns Sanctum token
GET	`/menu/categories`	List active categories
GET	`/menu/items`	List available menu items
POST	`/chatbot/reply`	AI ordering assistant reply
GET	`/orders` 🔒	List my orders
POST	`/orders` 🔒	Place an order
GET	`/reservations` 🔒	My reservations
POST	`/reservations` 🔒	Create a reservation
POST	`/reviews` 🔒	Submit a review (auto-analyzed for sentiment)

🔒 = requires Authorization: Bearer <token>

# Example: place an order
POST /api/v1/orders
Authorization: Bearer 1|abcxyz...
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "type": "delivery",
  "items": [{ "menu_item_id": 4, "quantity": 2 }]
}

# Response
{ "success": true, "data": { "order_number": "ORD-260707-X1", ... } }

Branding & Colors

Restaurant name, phone, address, currency symbol, and tax rate are all editable from Admin → Settings → General — no code changes needed.

The admin panel's color palette is defined as CSS variables at the top of resources/views/layouts/app.blade.php:

:root {
  --brand: #ff5a1f;
  --brand-dark: #e14a12;
  --sidebar-bg: #16181d;
}

Change these three values to re-theme the entire dashboard consistently.

New to the project? Start with the Setup Guide → for step-by-step installation.