💡 Interactive Customer-Facing Market Booth Map

[github-actions[bot]]

Summary

Provide customers with an interactive map showing vendor stall locations within a market, enabling "find my vendor" navigation that completes the confidence-to-arrival journey. Market managers define booth layouts as part of their existing booth assignment workflow, and customers see a live map with vendor names, product categories, and check-in status overlaid.

Market Signal

Three competitors — Marketspread ("interactive, kiosk-style market maps designed for attendee navigation"), Seen Markets (interactive booth map designers), and ShowUp (real-time stall occupancy maps) — have independently invested in booth map features for market managers. None provide a mobile customer-facing equivalent. This competitive consensus validates demand while the customer-facing gap represents an open product opportunity. Source: marketspread.com, seenmarkets.com, joinshowup.io (Aug 2026).

User Signal

The PRD's Journey 1 (Rachel) describes the complete confidence path: search → confirm vendor is there → go to market. But the journey breaks at arrival — Rachel confirmed her vendor checked in but must now physically locate stall #27 among 38 vendors. The existing Geofence idea (#385) triggers an at-market experience but does not address wayfinding. Market Day Pre-Trip Dashboard (#371) stops at the parking lot. No existing idea or feature covers the last-meter discovery problem.

Technical Opportunity

The architecture already defines market profiles with vendor rosters (market_vendors junction table) and check-in status (check_ins table). Adding a spatial layout dimension (stall coordinates relative to market bounds) extends the existing data model without new domain concepts. Firebase Realtime already propagates vendor status — overlaying status on a map view is a rendering concern, not a new data pipeline. The React Native map ecosystem (react-native-maps) is mature in Expo SDK 55.

Assessment

Dimension	Score	Rationale
Feasibility	med	Requires new booth layout data model and manager data entry workflow; rendering is straightforward with react-native-maps
Impact	high	Completes the "confirm and go" journey at the critical arrival moment; differentiates from all competitors
Urgency	med	Post-MVP but addresses a gap that becomes apparent as soon as customers use the app at larger markets

Adversarial Review

Strongest objection: Many farmers markets are small enough (10-15 vendors) that a map adds no value. Managers already struggle with coordination — adding booth layout data entry creates additional friction.

Rebuttal: The PRD targets markets with 30-40 vendors (Maria manages 38). At this scale, wayfinding is a real pain point. Booth layout data entry aligns with the manager's existing assignment workflow — they already decide who goes where. The feature can be opt-in per market based on size. Accuracy risk is mitigated by pairing the map with check-in status: vendors who have not checked in are not shown on the map, preventing stale location data.

Suggested Next Step

Create a quick spec for the market booth layout data model (stall coordinates, zones) and a customer-facing map component using react-native-maps with vendor status overlay. Include the manager booth layout editor screen as part of Epic 2 (Market Administration).