Restaurant Intelligence

Fast-casual restaurants face split workflows: ordering, kitchen timing, vendor tracking, staff alerts, and system-wide visibility. Most POS systems handle orders but fail to coordinate real-time station logic, expo flows, and cook-time accuracy. The client needed a system built for efficiency from the kitchen up — not from the cashier down.

Leading a team of 7, our senior CTO engineered the system design, features, visual workflow, data storage, tech platform and deployment of a full-stack, nodejs-driven restaurant management platform built for real-time coordination. The system included:

• Web-based tabletop ordering interface on Samsung tablets with power monitoring
• Guest-to-kitchen stations and expo routing
• Cook-time-aware dispatching algorithm driven by structured menu data
• Expo station with Kanban-style interface to manage prep, cook, ready, and refire stages
• Staff alert system from the table
• Remote admin tools for updating cook times, pricing, vendor performance, variance tracking, cash flow and electrical costs
• Realtime adjustment of cook-time sync across stations
• Variance reports and performance analytics down to vendor reliability

• Deployed fully to a live, high-volume fast-casual concept restaurant
• Orders flowed station-to-station with optimal timing, improving speed and plate accuracy
• Expo staff reported reduced stress and improved visual management of cooking queues
• Restaurant team had centralized insight into costs, prep variances, and vendor trends
• Guests enjoyed full ordering autonomy with fallback waitstaff alerting for support