Case Study: Building Stolio — a Reservation Platform for Restaurants
Most agencies show you mockups. We can show you a product that real restaurants run their evenings on. [Stolio](https://stolio.cz) is a reservation platform we designed, built, and operate ourselves — and it is the best proof of what NormaTech can deliver end-to-end: product design, full-stack development, payments, third-party integrations, and long-term operations.
The problem
Czech restaurants juggle phone calls, walk-ins, and online requests — often with a paper diary as the single source of truth. Double-bookings happen, no-shows cost money, and the owner has no data about occupancy. International reservation platforms exist, but they are expensive for smaller venues and rarely localized properly for the Czech market.
What we built
Stolio is a complete B2B SaaS platform:
- Real-time table availability — guests book online and see only slots that actually exist; the system knows every table, its size, and its schedule.
- Visual floor plan management — staff manage the room on a drag-and-drop layout of their actual space, not an abstract list.
- Smart table assignment — the system sizes tables to party counts automatically and can auto-assign incoming reservations to the best available table.
- Embeddable booking widget — restaurants place a customizable booking form on their own website and social profiles, matching their brand colors.
- Google Reserve integration — guests can book directly from Google Search and Maps, which is where most restaurant discovery happens.
- QR menus — diners scan a code at the table and browse the menu on their phone; the restaurant updates it centrally.
- POS integration (Syrve) — reservations and restaurant operations connect to the point-of-sale system via the Syrve Cloud API.
- Subscription billing via Stripe — self-service plans, trials, and automated payment-reminder emails, so the platform runs as a real SaaS business, not a managed service.
- Multi-language support — fully localized for the Czech market, with English alongside.
The technical foundation
Stolio runs on a modern cloud stack: a React/TypeScript frontend, PostgreSQL with row-level security, serverless edge functions for integrations and email automation, and Stripe for billing. The same architecture we recommend to clients — because we trust it with our own product.
What this proves for your project
Building a demo is easy. Operating a platform that restaurants depend on every evening requires the full range of capabilities:
- Product thinking — deciding what not to build matters more than adding features.
- Integration depth — Google Reserve, Stripe, POS systems, and email infrastructure all speaking to each other reliably.
- Operations discipline — monitoring, backups, and payment-failure handling that run without anyone watching.
When we quote a custom application or an integration project for your business, this is the experience behind the estimate — not a portfolio of screenshots.
Have a product idea or an internal system that needs building? [Talk to us](https://normatech.cz/en/contact) — we will tell you honestly what it takes, because we have built it for ourselves.