Online Grocery Store with Delivery Slots

Grocery is the hardest e-commerce category — products are perishable, baskets are large, and customers care deeply about when the order arrives. Generic e-commerce templates handle products and carts but not slot-based fulfillment, perishable stock or delivery-capacity planning. This project makes the delivery slot central: slots are capacity-controlled database entities with cut-off times, so the store never accepts more orders than it can deliver in a window. Around that sit a familiar storefront (categories, search, offers, unit pricing), a cart with bill computation, a customer order-tracking timeline, and a store dashboard showing inventory with expiry awareness, slot-wise packing queues and sales reports.

1. The customer browses categories, adds items to the cart and proceeds to slot selection.
2. Only slots with remaining capacity and before cut-off are offered; the customer picks one.
3. Placing the order atomically decrements slot capacity and product stock, and creates the order.
4. The store dashboard shows a packing queue grouped by slot; staff mark orders packed, then out for delivery.
5. Each transition updates the customer's tracking timeline; delivery completion closes the order.
6. Low-stock and near-expiry products surface as alerts for clearance action.

Tech stack:

• React 18 single-page storefront
• Django 5 + Django REST Framework API
• PostgreSQL relational database
• Atomic slot-capacity decrement
• Order state machine (placed/packed/shipped/delivered)
• Notification hooks (SMS/email gateway)
• Token authentication

• [Delivery slot engine] Slots with per-slot capacity caps and cut-off times, decremented atomically — full slots simply disappear from selection.
• [Grocery storefront] Categories, search, product cards with MRP versus offer price and unit pricing (per kg, litre, pack).
• [Fast cart] Quantity steppers with live bill computation — item total, delivery fee, handling fee.
• [Order tracking timeline] Placed to packed to out-for-delivery to delivered, with status notifications to the customer.
• [Packing queue] Store staff see orders grouped by slot, in packing priority order.
• [Inventory with expiry awareness] Stock alerts plus near-expiry flags so the store can run clearance offers on perishables.
• [Payment modes] UPI and cash-on-delivery with address management.

• Complete source code (React storefront, DRF API, models, seed catalog)
• Slot-engine and order-state-machine documentation
• Setup guide (local run, database setup, deployment notes)
• Project report PDF (background, slot-capacity design, fulfillment flow, testing notes)
• PPT presentation for final review
• Viva Q&A preparation document (REST design, atomicity, state machines, e-commerce domain)

• Delivery itself is handled by the store's own riders — no third-party logistics integration.
• Notifications need an SMS/email gateway account; hooks are included.
• The demo ships with a sample catalog; real products, prices and slots must be configured.
• Route optimization for riders is out of scope (listed under future scope).
• Subscription/recurring orders are not part of this build.
• Very high order volumes would need queue-based processing beyond the student build.