Mama Restaurant Group

Led development of restaurant based software

Technologies Used:

Project Description:

At Mama Restaurant Group, I led the development of our software with the end goal being to package it up as a SaaS template for other restaurant groups. This ambitious goal required building scalable, packageable solutions from the ground up. We utilized a P/MEVN stack, with Netlify for frontend and Heroku for backend deployment. A key integration was Plasmic CMS, enabling restaurant managers to easily update information, including menu items. Our previous solution was WordPress for a CMS, which ended up being cluttered and difficult to navigate. I also developed a process to pull menu data from the Square API, manipulate it, and batch upload to our CMS, streamlining operations and providing one source of truth for all of our restaurants.

Pain Point:

Our original software, while functional for internal use, lacked the scalability and modularity required for a SaaS product. This limitation posed a significant challenge to our goal of expanding our software offering to other restaurant groups.

Solution:

To address this, we undertook a comprehensive restructuring of our codebase. We broke down the software into modular, templated components, each designed with flexibility in mind. This approach allowed us to create dynamic sections that could easily pull data from our CMS and adapt to custom designs for each client. The result was a highly adaptable system that could be tailored to diverse restaurant group needs without sacrificing consistency or functionality.

Key Takeaway:

This project was a transformative experience in my development career. Diving deep into system architecture and design principles fundamentally changed my approach to software development. It taught me to think beyond individual features and consider the broader implications of scalability, modularity, and long-term maintainability. This shift in perspective has profoundly influenced how I tackle complex development challenges, making me a more strategic and forward-thinking developer.