On a sun-drenched June 1st, the moment finally arrived: hospitality venues were allowed to reopen their doors. But how can you enjoy your favorite terrace safely, in a controlled and responsible way during these times? Terrasjeboeken.nl came up with the solution: a platform where anyone can book a table, indoors or outdoors, at a time of their choosing. This ensures you have a great and safe spot.
The beginning
Marcel Roorda, Managing Director at the Enschede-based IT company Doop: “Oldenzaal entrepreneur Jurgen Wissink and his daughter Laury came up with the idea at their kitchen table. To see if the concept would resonate with the hospitality industry, they reached out to restaurateur Danny Kuijpers and pitched the idea to him. He was immediately enthusiastic, and they came to me together to ask if I could build the platform.”
Partnership with Fundaments
“While developing the marketing plan, we started talking to Heineken. They were so enthusiastic about our platform that they included it in the 1.5-meter brochure sent to all their hospitality clients (over 20,000). To get off to a strong start, we scaled up our infrastructure to handle the expected traffic. To process all traffic quickly and efficiently (making bookings and payments), we needed a High Availability (HA) database. We have the expertise in-house, but not the capacity due to time constraints. That is why we chose Firewall as a Service (including DDoS scrubbing) and Database Clustering from Fundaments. Furthermore, we already host other projects with Fundaments at Doop, and they provide us with the necessary expertise in firewalling, load balancing, and setting up and managing an HA MariaDB cluster. The big challenge was that the firewall and load balancer had to be operational within 3 days, and the database within 7 days. Fundaments succeeded brilliantly, and as a result, we now have an incredibly impressive platform.”
How does Terrasjeboeken.nl work?
“The platform brings hospitality venues and consumers together. Venues can join us for free, and consumers then choose a terrace of their preference. After providing the number of people, the group composition (one household or friends), and the time slot, the consumer pays €1. The consumer then receives a QR code that serves as an entry ticket and is scanned at the terrace. For every scanned QR code, we donate €0.50 to the respective hospitality venue. I am proud to say that over 200 venues have already joined.”
