Wise Boys is a well-loved, award-winning 100% plant-based burger joint in Auckland, New Zealand, with stores in Grey Lynn and Commercial Bay (and a food truck) that has drawn press coverage and even celebrity visits. I worked with them as their lead engineer on an end-to-end, full-stack engagement: migrating their website off legacy hosting onto a modern React architecture, re-securing their domain and infrastructure on AWS, automating their content, and designing a native customer loyalty app to turn their digital menu into an owned customer ecosystem.

• Full rebuild and migration of wiseboys.nz to Next.js (App Router, SSR) with a custom Tailwind design system matching their brand.
• Re-hosted on AWS Amplify with CI/CD auto-deploys, and moved DNS to Cloudflare for global CDN, DDoS protection, WAF, and fresh SSL.
• Automated the previously-manual Instagram feed with a live Behold.so integration, plus Mailchimp newsletter signups and Resend-powered franchise enquiry emails.
• Integrated the Tabin online-ordering platform and a Google Maps store locator across two locations.
• Designed a Phase 2 native loyalty app (iOS + Android) on a serverless AWS architecture with built-in fraud prevention.

• Live Sitewiseboys.nz
• RoleLead Engineer (end-to-end full-stack & infrastructure)
• ClientWise Boys, Auckland, New Zealand
• PlatformWeb (live) + native mobile app (in design)
• StackNext.js, React, Tailwind CSS, AWS Amplify, Cloudflare, Vitest, Behold.so, Mailchimp, Resend, Tabin, Google Maps
• RepositoryPrivate client repository

Branding

Wise Boys Logo

The Website

Wise Boys Page

Wise Boys Page

Tabin Online Ordering Integration

Phase 1 — Website & Infrastructure

The core of Phase 1 was moving Wise Boys off their legacy hosting and onto a fast, low-maintenance modern stack. I rebuilt the site in Next.js 16 (App Router) with server-side rendering and a custom Tailwind design system built around their brand tokens, then deployed it to AWS Amplify in the Sydney region (ap-southeast-2) with automatic deploys on every push to the main branch.

I moved the wiseboys.nz domain to Cloudflare, which now fronts the site with a global CDN, enterprise-grade DDoS mitigation, a Web Application Firewall, and freshly issued SSL certificates with automatic HTTP → HTTPS redirects. Repointing DNS to the new AWS servers cleanly severed the old developer's hosting so their legacy billing could be shut down.

• Live Instagram feed — automated via Behold.so. Because Cloudflare's WAF challenges server-to-server calls, I fetch the feed directly client-side, so new posts appear with no manual updates and no code changes.
• Newsletter — Mailchimp Marketing API integration behind a server API route for email signups.
• Franchise enquiries — routed as transactional emails through Resend.
• Online ordering — the Tabin ordering platform embedded so payments and fulfilment stay with Tabin.
• Store locator — Google Maps embed covering both the Grey Lynn and Commercial Bay locations.
• Quality & security — Vitest + React Testing Library with property-based tests (fast-check); all secrets kept in Amplify environment variables, never in source.

Phase 2 — Customer Loyalty App

Building on that foundation, I architected a native customer loyalty app for iOS and Android (React Native / Expo) with a spend-based, tiered rewards program. The backend is a fully serverless AWS design: AWS Cognito handles SMS-OTP authentication, DynamoDB stores users, transactions, points and rewards, and Lambda functions behind API Gateway run the loyalty engine, rewards service, and admin API. An event-driven messaging layer (SQS queues + EventBridge) processes points and reward events, while SNS push notifications and SES email receipts keep customers in the loop. CloudFront and AWS WAF sit at the edge, and CloudWatch handles monitoring and alarms.

• Points are only awarded after Tabin POS confirms payment (via webhook handler), and refunds automatically reverse the points.
• Fraud prevention baked in from day one: one-phone-one-account with device fingerprinting, an immutable "birthday lock," and a strict 15-minute countdown on activated rewards to stop screenshot sharing.
• A staff-facing validation screen redeems reward codes with a live countdown and single-use enforcement.