Talented Restaurant Management App

This was one of the crazy rides for us, that continued for a few years, with a product life span of almost 6 years. I had the chance to work with a few people in New York, and at some point, I was introduced to Jeff Katz, then the general manager of Del Posto, one of New York's iconic restaurants (also featured in Season 3, episode 1 of the HBO Series Billions).

Don't get me wrong - the application was, at the end, something that was unbeatable years after we produced it. I will never forget when someone approached Jeff to offer them restaurant management software, and when they saw our app, they realised it had features they never thought of.

The system consisted of two modules: a management module with a complex architecture and an employee hybrid mobile app. It covered full restaurant management, extending even towards automatic electronic onboarding and quiz sections. Looking through expert eyes today, I might go with an optimised approach, but it's been more than a decade since then. Technologies and capabilities back then were pretty limited.

The development took quite some time - a few years, adding more and more functionalities, thanks to Jeff's expert eye on the system and, most importantly, on the business processes of such a platform. I remember we were constantly battling and re-factoring the codebase and database, as new relations and conditions popped up - take into account an example of the different ways tips are being distributed in California and New York. Shift, management, tasks, tips and whatnot - the app covered it all over the years. 

And to add to this, to give you a better idea, the average shift at this restaurant was around 200 people. All these are orchestrated daily with the Talented app. 

Unfortunately, Del Posto closed its doors in 2020. Our system remained operational until the very end of those, serving three other restaurants in the same chain, owned back then by Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group. 

I decided to post this project as this was a real test to the team and me, I was working with by this time (Anani, Martin and Peter - cheers guys). I personally was responsible for the mobile application, created back then in PhoneGap and Angular 1.45. This was the first step I took to go later on to Vue/Nuxt instead of React and to keep being badass in this framework till today, after Angular took the dark side and turned into a corporate Frankenstein.