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Bankuet2025

Product & Engineering Lead • 3 months

Bankuet: Building a new website to scale food bank support

Led the transition of Bankuet's donor experience to a Next.js app on Vercel, integrating Beacon CRM, reducing checkout steps from 5 to 3 and enabling flexible giving.

Bankuet - Find a food bank to support
Product StrategyProduct ManagementRoadmappingUser Story MappingInformation ArchitectureAI-Assisted Development
Next.jsVercelTypeScriptSupabase (PostgreSQL)Supabase Edge FunctionsSupabase API & MCPBeacon CRM APISquarespace APINotion APIMapbox APIMailchimpCalendlyTypeformGoogle AnalyticsVercel AnalyticsVercel Speed InsightsAugmentOpen AI codexGitHub CIFigma

Summary

Bankuet is a tech-for-good startup on a mission to get food banks what they need, when they need it. Over a 3-month period I led the transition of Bankuet.co.uk from Squarespace to a custom Next.js app (TypeScript) integrated with Beacon CRM via Supabase and deployed on Vercel. I acted as both Product and Engineering Lead, collaborating closely with our UX Lead in Figma to iterate and refine designs.

Problem

Bankuet’s legacy Squarespace site created three major issues:

  • Donor credibility and conversion – A rigid, clunky flow forced preset donation amounts and undermined trust.
  • Operational inefficiency – Onboarding food banks and fundraising campaigns required significant manual effort.
  • Integration barriers – The platform could not connect smoothly with services core to Bankuet’s operations, including Beacon CRM.

Hypothesis

Redesigning the website would directly address these challenges:

  • A stronger brand presence and streamlined donor journey would increase conversion.
  • Automating administrative processes would free the small team to focus on strategic growth.
  • Deeper integrations would enable a more ambitious product roadmap.

Solution

We built a custom Next.js application to resolve these pain points:

  • Donations – Embedded Beacon CRM forms for seamless, trustworthy giving.
  • Food bank visibility – Supabase Edge Functions update Supabase tables, powering an embedded Mapbox component and dynamic routes to individual food bank pages.
  • Content management – Integrated Notion (via API) as a lightweight CMS for blogs.
  • Additional services – Embedded Calendly for scheduling and Typeform for customer support.
  • Analytics and monitoring – Combined Vercel Analytics/Speed Insights (privacy-first, no cookie consent) with Google Analytics (deeper reporting, consent-based).

Outcomes

The updated Bankuet.co.uk launched in October 2025. Since launch we have measured the following outcomes:

  • Cut technical onboarding time for food banks from 45 minutes to 10 minutes (a reduction of 78%)
  • Cut fundraising campaign on-boarding time from 1 day to instant
  • Additional metrics are being monitored and will be included in future updates.