This custom-built CRM system was designed specifically for B2B lead generation in the catering industry, automating the entire pipeline from lead discovery through enrichment, outreach, and conversion tracking. Unlike off-the-shelf CRM solutions that require manual data entry, this system actively finds potential leads by scraping Google Maps for catering businesses, automatically enriching each lead with contact information from their websites and social media profiles, and enabling automated email campaigns through Brevo API integration. The platform includes a comprehensive content management module with social media analytics across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, content scheduling capabilities, and a Facebook Group engagement workflow. Built with Nuxt.js and NestJS, it follows an Apple-inspired design system with careful attention to typography, spacing, and interaction patterns that make managing thousands of leads feel effortless.
!The Challenge
Building a marketplace requires a supply side — and in the catering marketplace business, that means onboarding caterers. The traditional approach involves manually searching Google Maps for catering businesses in target cities, visiting each website to find contact information, recording everything in a spreadsheet, and then sending individual outreach emails. This process is extraordinarily time-consuming: researching and enriching a single lead can take 5-10 minutes, meaning a team member might process 50-80 leads per day at best. The client needed to scale lead discovery and outreach across entire metropolitan areas in the United States — markets with hundreds or thousands of catering businesses each. Manual research at this scale would require a dedicated team working for months. Beyond just finding leads, they needed a system to track the entire outreach lifecycle: which leads had been contacted, who responded, who showed interest, and who ultimately onboarded to the platform. Existing CRM solutions like HubSpot or Salesforce could handle the pipeline management aspect, but none of them offered built-in lead discovery and enrichment from Google Maps data. The client would still need separate scraping tools, data enrichment services, and manual integration work to connect everything. They needed a single, purpose-built system that handled the entire workflow — from finding a catering business on Google Maps to tracking their journey through onboarding.
Our Approach
We built a two-phase scraping system: Phase 1 uses Google Maps API to discover catering businesses in target areas, collecting business names, addresses, phone numbers, ratings, and website URLs. Phase 2 visits each business website using Playwright to extract email addresses, social media links, and additional business details that aren't available through Google Maps alone.
The lead pipeline was designed with clear status stages — New, Contacted, Interested, Negotiating, Onboarded, and Rejected — with automated transitions and activity logging at each stage. The admin dashboard provides visual pipeline metrics showing conversion rates between stages.
Email outreach was integrated with Brevo (Sendinblue) API, enabling template-based email campaigns that can be sent to segmented lead lists. Each email is tracked for opens and clicks, with the data feeding back into the lead's CRM profile for informed follow-up decisions.
A social media analytics module was built to track the company's content performance across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, consolidating engagement metrics, follower growth, and content reach into a single dashboard. This helps the marketing team understand which content drives the most caterer sign-ups.
The entire UI follows an Apple-inspired design system with carefully defined CSS custom properties for colors, typography, spacing, and component patterns. This ensures visual consistency across the many data-dense views that a CRM requires — lead tables, pipeline boards, analytics charts, and campaign builders.
The Solution
Automated Lead Discovery & Enrichment
The Google Maps scraper operates in two phases. Phase 1 queries Google Maps for catering-related businesses in a specified geographic area, collecting structured data including business name, address, phone, rating, review count, and website URL. Phase 2 takes each discovered website and uses Playwright (headless browser automation) to navigate the site, extract email addresses using pattern matching, find social media links (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn), and pull additional business details. A Facebook fallback enrichment path attempts to find email addresses from Facebook business pages when the website doesn't list one. The system tracks previously scraped URLs to avoid duplicates and maintains enrichment accuracy above 85%.
Pipeline Management & Tracking
Each lead progresses through defined pipeline stages with full activity logging — every email sent, status change, note added, and interaction is recorded with timestamps. The pipeline view shows leads in a Kanban-style board with drag-and-drop stage transitions, or in a filterable table view for bulk operations. Lead profiles consolidate all known information: Google Maps data, enriched contact details, social media links, communication history, and pipeline stage. Bulk actions allow mass status updates, tag assignments, and campaign enrollment for efficient lead management at scale.
Email Campaign Automation
The Brevo API integration enables creation and sending of template-based email campaigns directly from the CRM. Campaign builder supports audience segmentation by pipeline stage, location, business size, or custom tags. Email templates are stored in the system with variable substitution for personalization — business name, owner name, and location are automatically inserted. Send tracking captures delivery, open, and click events via Brevo webhooks, updating each lead's profile with engagement data. This feedback loop allows the sales team to prioritize leads who have engaged with outreach emails.
Content & Social Analytics
The content management module connects to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube APIs to pull engagement metrics for published content. The analytics dashboard shows performance trends — reach, impressions, engagement rate, follower growth — across all platforms in a unified view. A content scheduling interface allows planning and queuing social media posts with preview capabilities. The Facebook Group integration provides a workflow for generating AI-powered discussion posts (via Claude API) and publishing them to targeted Facebook Groups where potential caterer leads are active, extending organic reach beyond owned channels.
Results & Impact
Technology Stack
Nuxt.js
Frontend framework with SSR and Apple-inspired design
NestJS
Backend API with modular service architecture
PostgreSQL
Lead data, pipeline state, and analytics storage
Playwright
Headless browser for website scraping and enrichment
Google Maps API
Business discovery by location and category
Brevo API
Email campaign sending and tracking
Claude API
AI-generated content for social media and outreach
Instagram/FB/YouTube APIs
Social media analytics and content metrics