Street food · Riyadh, Saudi Arabia · Site selection

Parked where the crowd will be, just before it comes

Faisal owns a coffee truck in Riyadh. Every evening, he parks where he hopes the crowds will be.

Listen to the story:

The challenge

He picks his spots by habit and by hunch. Some nights the park is empty and he pours twenty cups. Other nights he arrives at ten, and the crowd went home at nine. In summer, the heat keeps everyone inside until late.

How the flow works

With xMap Flows, Faisal built Spotter. Spotter is an AI employee: a flow of 7 blocks.

  1. Every afternoon at three,

    Every afternoon at 3 (Schedule)

  2. across north Riyadh,

    North Riyadh (Area of interest)

  3. Spotter finds the parks, walkways and malls,

    Parks, walkways and malls (Nearby places)

  4. learns each one’s busiest day and hour,

    Busiest day and hour (Mobility Footfall)

  5. checks tonight’s heat,

    Tonight’s heat (Weather forecast)

  6. keeps the three best spots for tonight,

    The best three tonight (Sort and limit)

  7. and sends them to his phone.

    Where to park (WhatsApp Business)

What it solves

The result

At three on Thursday, Spotter tells him the walkway in Al Malqa is busiest on Thursdays at nine, with twice the crowd of his usual spot, and tonight will be cooler. Faisal parks at eight, and sells out by eleven.

Faisal stopped chasing crowds. Now he gets there just before them.

2xthe crowd at his old spot
9 pmthe busiest hour on Thursdays
3spots picked each afternoon

An illustrative scenario: the figures are modelled to show what the flow produces, not a customer's results.

The flow, block by block

  1. 1

    Every afternoon at 3

    Schedule

    Starts the flow on a timetable.

  2. 2

    North Riyadh

    Area of interest

    Sets where the flow looks: countries, cities or specific places, or areas you draw on a map.

  3. 3

    Parks, walkways and malls

    Nearby places

    Places around a point from xMap’s own places database (300M+ places, refreshed every month): pick the types of place (more than 5,000, such as Restaurant, Cafe, Pharmacy, Hospital or Gas station, or a whole group of them) and how far to look.

  4. 4

    Busiest day and hour

    Mobility Footfall

    How busy the area around each place is, from xMap’s own mobility data: footfall per day, the busiest hour and day of the week, how the day splits into morning, midday, evening and late night, the trend on the week before, and where visitors come from and how they travel (trips).

  5. 5

    Tonight’s heat

    Weather forecast

    The weather forecast (Open-Meteo, from national weather services) for up to 16 days: temperature, rain, wind and UV.

  6. 6

    The best three tonight

    Sort and limit

    Puts the items in order, and can keep only the first ones: the 10 best rated, the 20 nearest, the highest fit scores.

  7. 7

    Where to park

    WhatsApp Business · WhatsApp

    Send text, media and template messages from your WhatsApp Business number.

Templates to build it

Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.

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