Delivery apps are three apps, not one

The trap in building a delivery app is thinking it is one app. It is three: a customer app, a driver app, and a backoffice. If you treat them as one you will miss half the features in v1.

The good news is that all three can share the same backend and the same mobile codebase with different screens gated by role. I built this pattern once. It cut the work almost in half.

What you actually need to build

Customer side:

• Browse and order: Product list, cart, checkout, push when order status changes.
• Live tracking: Map view with driver location and an ETA estimate. Realtime over Supabase.

Driver side:

• Order queue: List of pickups assigned to the driver, with accept or decline.
• Navigation handoff: Tap an address, open Apple Maps or Google Maps. Do not build in-app turn-by-turn in v1.
• Status updates: Picked up, on the way, delivered. Each updates the customer map.

Backoffice:

• A basic web view (not mobile) that lists orders and driver status and lets you force-reassign. This is a one-night job if you reuse your Supabase schema.

The stack I use

• React Native + Expo.
• Supabase Realtime for driver location and order status.
• react-native-maps for the map view.
• NestJS for assignment logic and any server-side rules.
• Push via Expo Notifications.
• Claude Code + 11 AI agents to scaffold the three role-based screen sets.

Real build time

This is the biggest category on the list. Expect roughly 6 weekends solo for a v1 with the customer and driver flows, assuming you already have the boilerplate.

• Schema (orders, drivers, locations): ~6 hours.
• Customer browse + checkout: ~10 hours.
• Driver queue + status updates: ~8 hours.
• Realtime map view for customers: ~12 hours.
• Backoffice web view: ~6 hours.
• Push + copy + App Store submission: ~10 hours.

About 52 hours total. The map view is where people underestimate their time.

Where people get stuck

• Location updates that drain the battery: Do not stream location every second. Use significant-change updates and interpolate on the customer side. Your reviews will thank you.
• Assignment races: Two drivers accept the same order at the same time. Do the assignment in a Postgres function with SELECT ... FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED.
• Driver offline handling: Define a timeout. After N minutes of silence, mark the driver offline and free the order.

Skip the setup

Shippen ships with a pre-wired Supabase Realtime config, a map view template, and role-based screen scaffolds. The 11 AI agents build the screens from a prompt. You stop fighting the plumbing and focus on the routing rules.

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