systems designer and manager
- Job function (e.g., overall role, assigned tasks)
- Prior to my internship at Sunset, they did everything on pen and paper. Checks were handed to the cooks on paper. Receipts were written by hand. The employee schedule was made on a note book. Inventory orders were written on paper and ordered over the phone. There was no organization and the restaurant was run very inefficiently. I was hired as a summer intern to gather all parts of the restaurant and centralize them on one system. I met with the owner and manager and asked them what they wanted. After meeting and speaking with them I chose to utilize Touch Bistro (POS = point of sale). Sunset Pier is one of the busiest restaurants at the Jersey Shore, however they have very few resources. Touch Bistro allowed them to have access to live data without doing any of the work to get it.
2. Examples of projects (e.g., list the projects you worked on and what you accomplished)
Below are a list of projects I worked on and implemented for Sunset Pier
- Payment System – Through Touch Bistro, customers can now make payments with debit, credit, and cash. Prior to this year, Sunset Pier was an all cash restaurant. Checks can now be splits easily. Waiters and waitresses no longer have to memorize the price of the menu and calculate everything by hand.
- Online ordering (Juice Bar and Kitchen) – Online ordering before TouchBistro was done over the phone. Errors were made more often then not. Now customers can access the menu and payment system through Sunset Pier\’s website. They can pay online with debit/credit or pay in person. Utilizing Touch Bistro\’s capabilities allows customers to insert modifiers to their order and alert the kitchen of any allergies present. After a customer orders online, the order is sent to the cash register and then directed to the juice bar to print or to the kitchen.
- Floor Plan and Table Management – A floor plan of Sunset Pier was made on the computer. This allows hostesses to more easily know tables that are occupied. Tables will not clear on the server till checks are paid for. Touch Bistro allowed hostesses to know what course a table is on and how long they have been for. This made it very easy to set tables aside for reservations. This made it possible to have a more accurate wait time for customers.
- Staff Management – Sunset Pier\’s staff can now clock in and clock out electronically. Hours are added up automatically making payroll much easier. Waiters\’ and waitress\’ sales can now be tracked and managed. Tables are now more evenly distributed to allow all waiting staff the opportunity to make close to equal money. The biggest advantage to this was that waiters and waitresses can now accurately track tips and manage the register. Calculating money going in versus money going out of the register involved no guessing game.
- Reporting and Inventory Management – Everytime an order is placed and paid for the system updates automatically. Real time reporting on stock levels is important to limit food waste and allow management to know what to order and when to order it. Real time access to food cost and sales allowed Sunset Pier to reassess their menu with data/results to back it.
- Website/Social Media – This summer I sprint the majority of my first week redesigning Sunset Pier\’s website to improve the overall user experience. I sat down with the owner and his frequent customers to learn who will use the website and how they use it. I designed the website with that in mind. After that, I updated their social media (Facebook and Instagram) and linked them to the website.
3. What you learned and how it relates to your major (e.g., describe what you learned from this experience in the context of specific courses)
- Working with Sunset Pier taught me a lot. I learned the importance of having systems in place to make a business run smoother and more efficiently. More importantly I learned how much behind the scenes goes into running a business. Sunset Pier being a restaurant, I did not expect there to be that much I could implement. After sitting down with the owner and manager I quickly learned that the limits are endless. Touch Bistro costed Sunset Pier money but it allowed employees to focus their time on other areas and it relieved the everyday stresses of running a busy restaurant.
- Sunset Pier had a website but it was not was not very appealing or user friendly. I utilized what I learned in MIS3535 with Prof. Martin. In 3535 we were broken into groups and built a website for a start up company. This start up company was a doggy daycare. Our groups built a website from scratch and used the Agile Sprint Methodologies. I also used what I learned in MIS2402 when it came to formatting and designing code to make the website operational. Finally, I utilized what I learned in MIS2502 to help process and organize data. This was very important when it came to giving the owner data he wanted in real time and orderly (tables sat, people served, averaged price of meal, average table price, inventory used/sold, etc.).
- This summer I strongly relied on my prior knowledge of Agile Sprint Methodologies. I developed a time with the owner in the beginning of the summer. Some of the above projects took me a day while others took me a week. I would design in my head, do research, build the application to fit Sunset Pier, test on my own, and then launch it live. Most often, I would run into problems when launching live. It was very tough finding time to teach the restaurant staff how to utilize the new technologies. After a project was launched, I would not immediately move onto the next project. I was working primarily by myself so I would monitor the staff and do on the job training when they had issues.
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