User:Andygraybeal

From AdempiereWiki

Conceptually running a restaurant and small manufacturing business with open source software.

Is it possible to run small restaurant and manufacturing business with open source software? I don't know, but I hope so and this page will be documenting my adventure to find out.

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Introduction

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Our Restaurant

The restaurant I work at has a full-service dining room, a quick-service kitchen, and a bar that couples as a night club after 10pm and occasionally a matinee show at dinner time. The restaurant opens at 8am on weekdays for breakfast; and 9am on weekends. Breakfast lasts until 2.30pm on weekdays and 3.00pm on weekends. The quick-service kitchen lunch hour is from 11am-5pm. Happy hour is 5-8pm every night. Dinner starts at 5pm and ends at 10pm on weekdays and 11pm on weekends. The quick-service kitchen stays open till 11 on weekdays and 12 on weekends. The bar stays open till 2:30am every night. Our restaurant doesn't take reservations.

It's a 20 year old restaurant and set in it's ways; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it could use some polishing here and there. A lot of our procedures are paper based, though we do have a fancy POS system purchased in 2004. Ticket printers and walking back and forth from each kitchen is our method of communication while on shift.

We also bottle salsa and salad dressing for wholesale and retail purchase at a state certified bottling (thermal processing) and packing plant just down the road.

The restaurant is unique in that it is a co-operative and a portion of the people who work there collectively hold stock in the business, which makes it a form of a worker-owned co-operative. Our menu tries it's best to feature local food from the many farmers in our area, some of it is organic, but all of the food from our farmers is pesticide free; we cater to vegans, vegetarians and omnivores. There are no microwaves in our kitchens. We make and cook every meal to order. We also prepare most of the food in-house; some of the food is prepared at the packing plant on a large scale by our co-workers and kept in coolers and freezers to keep us with local ingredients through the winter. I'd like to think that there is a small sense of activism with little regard to the large corporate chains and food distrobution systems in place in the United States.

I've worked there for a little more than 3 years now.

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Pigeonholed Software

Our restaurant runs a proprietary point-of-sale system. It was purchased in 2004 and was designed to run on Windows98 (the terminals and the server both run on Windows98). It has become frustrating to work with and I don't think it adequately fills it's role in our restaurant.

It appears to run only on Windows98 and was made with Visual Basic, Microsoft Access databases, and a OEM (just the backend) version of Crystal Reports
1. Which to me means that the interface is going to be sluggish, the reliability low, and it's impossible to scale.
It doesn't give us a good way to make our own reports. It looks like we'd have to purchase Crystal Reports and learn how to use that with the POS, but there's no documentation to do this, and I don't think the vendor intended on it's users creating or modifying existing reports. The company assumes the reports that have been pre-made will fit everyone's needs.
The vendor provided no clear backup plan. I'm assuming just backup the Microsoft Access files (.mdb) everynight; and hopefully the backup software won't hurt anything in the DB's.
The problems of running Windows98 crop up like randomlike tcp/ip and NIC problems and the degradation of performance over years of usage.
1. After three years we decided to re-install Windows98 on just the terminals to alleviate some of the hardship we were experiencing and alot of things have cleared up; we're just putting off another inevitable re-install in three years or less.
There is no way to modify the coding of the software, not that I could ever do that.
The interface is laborious when you want to modify menu items (which we do every quarter of the year).
1. There is no cut and paste, macros, references or variables. Hardly scaleable.
2. I don't think they intended on the end user editing the .mdb files to get this to work, there's no documentation on this.
The vendors support system is poor. They are hard to get a hold of and it is very expensive.
1. A story: The system was installed with the ip address 198.162.0.x, it ran fine because it was never connected to another network. The funny part is years later when the vendor upgraded the system to have another terminal, the tech couldn't get it to talk to the rest of the machines because it was set to talk on 192.168.0.x. The tech's answer to the problem was that the new machine couldn't talk on a 10baseT (10Mb) network because it had a 100BaseT (100Mb) network card in it. It was bullshit; I couldn't believe he said this. The machine had a 10/100 card in it (which is very clear in the Intel software settings, not knowing anything about the hardware) and talks perfectly fine on a 10Mb network, he didn't take the time to figure out the problem with the IP addresses. It resulted in the company trying to replace all of our current computers and networking hardware to those that would run on a 100BaseT network. Unbelievable. This was my first introduction to the point-of-sale system. The manager called me over and asked me to look at it because he knew I had some experience working with computers. After a few minutes I noticed the non-standard IP address of our server and then wondered what the address of the new machine was.. the problem was fixed. My manager called the support back and gave'em hell and decided to find another support vendor.

From what I understand the only open source option is Novell Linux Point-of-Service (based on Novell's SUSE), which I don't understand the licensing. I know it isn't free software. They haven't quoted me a price nor do I think we could ever afford it even if they did. I also got the vibe that the system was to be sold to someone who would modify it to fit a restauranteers needs, I think they left it really open-ended, and the modifications looked like they could get complex; maybe the Novell representatives themselves would make the modifications. --- On second thought maybe this is just a for retail, although they are using it in McDonalds in Germany.

A retail POS is simpler then a restaurant POS.

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Enter Adempiere

I found Adempiere while looking for open source finance, accounting, payroll and workforce scheduling software. It doesn't currently work with restaurant point-of-sale type of system, but the very open programmers think it might be coaxed into doing so. Over the year, I've been bugging the great folks in #adempiere @ irc.freenode.net and I have been watching some threads on SourceForge.

Restaurant Verticle This is my first post on Adempiere's sf.net forum. To summarize, after talking with crooney on IRC he had envisioned using Libero as the engine for "manufacturing" food on a kitchen's line. Both pathak-alok and red1 responded with positive feedback letting me know I should come up with some specs. They both think Libero and Posterita can be honed for restaurant work.

Five Star Hotel This is another promising thread on Adempiere's sf.net forum. It talks about implementing Adempiere at a Five Star Hotel in India.

trifon showed me his Adempiere userpage yesterday and he is the reason I started this userpage.

22:32, 31 January 2008 (EST)

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Timing, Flow Control and Communication

Timing is very important in a restaurant. Keeping time of events gives us a better idea of how long a patron has been waiting, it helps the cooks synchronize when to drop and pull food, it helps the expedites know when to get sides together, it helps the wait-staff know when their food will be ready for our patrons, and it may be able to help us determine bottlenecks in our restaurant's overall design and maybe even more things that I'm unaware of. Timing, flow control and communication are essentially the heart and soul of a restaurant.

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Our Current System of Timing, Flow Control and Communication

Currently we have 4 terminals and 1 server. All of them run Windows98SE. Each terminal has a touch screen. The POS software appears to be written in VisualBasic and runs on top of Microsoft Access DB's with a headless version of Crystal Reports as seemingly the only connection to the outside world (export to: _fill_in_the_blank). There are two POS terminals positioned in our bar and two in our wait station. Each terminal has it's own reciept printer. Both bar terminals and one wait station terminal have a cash drawer. There is one credit card machine in the bar and in the wait station. The bar and the wait station each have a phone. Each kitchen has a ticket printer. The main kitchen receives all of the tickets and the quick-service kitchen mostly receives the tickets they need, a few extra tickets get sent for posterity (read: lack of configuration options in the software). We sync the kitchens by syncing our wall clocks and walking back and forth through a very high traffic area to talk about when to drop or pull an item; walking back and forth becomes impossible when both kitchens are too busy to think about what happens at what time. Both kitchens can generally fly pretty well this way if the cooks are familiar enough with one-another, but it all too often runs into trouble. The main kitchen has a buffer provided by the host, the host keeps in contact with the main kitchen cooks about how many orders they can handle at once. The quick-service kitchen doesn't have that luxury; at very busy times, the quick-service kitchen becomes the slowest kitchen because of this. Our current setup doesn't scale well at very busy times and I can think of a way around this, but as far as I can tell it only exists in very expensive software and from what I can tell from that software, it isn't even what I imagine it really could be. Expensive software solutions have a bump-bar terminal for their kitchens, in my mind this won't cut it as an interface for the cooks, we'd need something more complex; like using a stylus and touch screen monitor.

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Staff Roles - Role's Tasks - Tasks mapped to Adempiere

President
Treasurer
Secretary
Finance Coord 1
Finance Coord 2
FoH Coord
Food Coord 1
Food Coord 2
Food Coord 3
Marketing Coord
Bar Coord
Music Event Booking Coord
Art Event Booking Coord
Systems Coord
Host 1
Host 2
Servers
Expos
Runners
Preps
Bakers
Bartenders
Bar Backs
Sound
Primary Kitchen Cooks
Secondary Kitchen Cooks
Dishwashers

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General software and software/hardware combo's that would be needed to run a restaurant

Security:
1. Data security and integrity
  1. Authentication
  2. Authorization
  3. Backup / Restore
  4. Archival
  5. On-site and off-site fire proof storage
2. Physical security
  1. Motion Detector
  2. Locks
  3. Regular lock/key changes
  4. Video cameras
  5. If an intruder, call 911 and call and email owners.
HVACR and Fire Suppression:
1. Software to record and analyze data from sensors and make needed adjustments with valves, motors etc., even make emergency phone calls if needed.
2. Software will graph history of operation
3. Sensors:
  1. Oven temperatures
  2. Griddle temperature
  3. Fryer temperatures
  4. Steam table temperatures
  5. Refridgerator temperatures
  6. Freezer temperatures
  7. Room temperatures
  8. Hood temperatures
  9. Hood air flow
  10. Room air flow
  11. Room air pressure (zones)
  12. Outside temperature
  13. Outside pressure
  14. Open/Closed switches on doors
    1. It would be great if every peice of kitchen equipment and the ventalation system had the ability to connect to a TCP/IP network.
Telephony:
1. Phone
2. Fax
3. VMail
4. Directory
5. Presence
Network:
1. Firewall:
  1. Internet
  2. DMZ
  3. Zone for patrons (WIFI)
  4. Zone for employees (WIFI and wired)
  5. Zone for sensitive information (WIFI and wired)
2. WIFI for patrons:
  1. Enough access points for good quality WIFI throughout the patron areas
3. WIFI for employees (Those of us with laptops that want to work onsite on the internal fileservers and printers)
4. WIFI for POS (for the handhelds)
5. Server Services
  1. VPN
  2. Authentication and Authorization
  3. File Server
  4. Email
    1. WebMail
  5. DB
  6. NTP
Marketing:
1. Vector editing
2. Raster editing
3. Desktop publishing
  1. Database content storage for different types of menus
4. Website
  1. Content Management
Point-Of-Sale
1. Types of POS Terminals:
  1. Cash drawer for cash and credit card; receipt printer
  2. Handheld for wait-staff in dining room; belt receipt printer
  3. Self-serve kiosk for patrons with a to-go and quick service menu; will have credit card machine; receipt printer
  4. Web for wholesale and retail
2. Features
  1. Gift cards
  2. Food credit
  3. Directly tied to inventory
Inventory
Training and Knowledge Base
1. Wiki with Videos, text, etc
Project Management
Workforce Scheduling
1. Able to handle at least 100 employees with lots of different shifts per day
2. Web-enabled so employees can trade or ask for more or less shifts with other employees.
Calendar
1. I imagine the calendar could show all sorts of time dependant information.
  1. Show who has what meeting on what day, vacation, etc
  2. It could be the front-end to a reporting software: how much in tips did we make a given day, how much in sales, how much waste, what inventory did we go through, etc
  3. View all your shifts within a given week
  4. With the calendar I also imagine you could enter your hours worked for a given shift for payroll
Risk Management
1. ??

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ERPy POS Functions

Host, Wait and Expo station terminals
1. Floor Layout
  1. useful for wait staff, host and expo to drag tables here or there or have a set of preset floor plans
2. CRM
  1. Phone/CallerID brings up customer information
  2. Customer information
    1. Address and Phone number
    2. Togo Orders and Dine-In
      1. Most popular item
      2. Most recent items
      3. Last item
3. Inventory
  1. when food is prepped it's converted from a bulk item to a prepped item
  2. when food is ordered the POS subtracts the food from inventory as the cook makes it
  3. easy data entry in by all users
  4. able to handle imports from a handheld
  5. Recipes for all items sectioned into prepped items and made items (prepped for the preps work and made for the cooks work)
Wait Station Handhelds
Manager Handheld for inventory
Flow-Control
1. Host will enter patrons name, party size, when patrons arrive, is there open seating or not, if not record how long patrons waited before the were seated
2. Host records when and where the patron is seated
3. Wait Staff ask for food allergies and eating preferences (veggie, vegan, omnivore, etc) then they take drink orders, time is recorded
4. Wait Staff ask for food orders, time is recorded
5. Cooks are notified of what has been ordered, time is recorded
6. Cooks let the system know when items of order have been dropped, time is recorded
7. Cooks let the system know when they items have been pulled and are ready in the wait staff window, time is recorded
8. Wait staff is notified that their food is up, time is recorded
9. Wait staff take food to patron, time is recorded
10. Wait staff may take multiple orders from here on out, time is recorded for each
11. Wait staff gives the patron the bill, time is recorded
12. Patron leaves the table to pay the bill, time is recorded
Kitchen Terminals
1. Kitchen-Sync
  1. A line cook makes food similiar to the way an item might be manufacturered; we may have from 1-6 line cooks
  2. Items are made per order; a customer chooses from a basic menu of what they want and modify it from there.
  3. When an order has been placed it needs to be placed into the context of the other orders around it
  4. Both kitchens need to be aware of each others orders to know when to drop or pull items
  5. The only way I can imagine doing this is the computer knows the make and cook times of each item
  6. And the cooks signal when they make an item, when they drop an item and when the pull an item.
  7. Any of the cooks can have a problem ie. it was made wrong or some other mistake happened; the cooks need to be able to indicate errors like this, so the computer can reprioritize and re-time items
  8. The computer should be able to notify the cooks when to drop and pull items
  9. It should notify the expo's when to get sides together
  10. It should give a countdown time for the wait-staff so they is informed of how much longer an order will take.
  11. It should go into negative time when the item is overdue; maybe discount the meal for the kitchens lack of efficiency after a certain period of time
  12. The computer should indictate the cooks statistics, average order turn-around for the day, recent order turn-around, etc
  13. I can imagine that the cooks will log in and based on their averages and their own preferences the computer will know not to give the fastest turn-around times to a new cook.
Website
1. Cooks Nightly (or Morning or Lunch) Special
  1. Picture of special and brief description
  2. Shows how many specials have been sold, and how many orders are left
2. Bartenders drink special
  1. Picture of drink special and brief description
3. Patrons can order merchandise and bottled goods online

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General Research

Server OS:
1. CentOS
  1. CentOS has a 7 year life-cycle
  2. Awesome documentation and support.
2. LTSP
  1. Should I run a Terminal Server for the POS system?
  2. Should I run a Terminal Server for the regular desktop machines?
Workstation OS:
1. Fluxbuntu/Kubuntu/Ubuntu
2. OpenSuse
  1. OpenSuse has a 2 year life-cycle
3. AntiX/MEPIS
4. CentOS
  1. CentOS has a 7 year life-cycle
Enterprise Resource Planning:
1. Adempiere
2. OpenBravo
Customer Relationship Management:
Point-of-Sale:
1. Posterita
2. TinaPOS
Voice over Internet Protocol / Telephony:
1. Asterisk
Data Backups/Restore/Archival:
1. Amanda
Content Management / Document Management:
1. Bitweaver
2. OpenCMS
Firewall:
1. OpenBSD with PF
  1. OpenBSD 101
  2. I downloaded the install42.iso (full cd); I don't know if this is correct or not, but it's working so far.
  3. Hardware
    1. Intel Mainboard
    2. Intel p3 800mHz
    3. 3GB Seagate Medalist 3102
    4. 128MB of RAM
    5. 3 installed Realtek NICS (and the 1 integrated into the Mainboard
  4. Configuration
    1. a 80m /
    2. b 128m /tmp
    3. d 128m /swap
    4. e 256m /var
    5. g (rest of drive) /usr
    6. symlink /home to /home/usr
      1. mkdir /usr/home
      2. ln -s /usr/home
    7. So far I've selected everything to install because I'm testing it. The book I'm reading, Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF 2nd Edition, explains to not install of the compiling tools or source on the machine for security reasons.
    8. Took me a while to figure it out, but I needed to download ports.tar.gz because it wasn't on my cd-rom.
2. IPCop
3. pfSense
  1. Setting up OpenVPN with pfSense
4. m0n0wall
  1. m0n0wall manual
Captive Portal
1. wicap
2. Chillispot
Virtual Private Network:
1. IPCop
2. OpenVPN
Network and Service monitor
1. Nagios
Authentication / Authorization:
1. OpenLDAP
Heating, Ventalation, Air Conditioning and Refridgeration:
1. Mango
Email / EMail List:
1. Postfix
Project Management:
1. Open Workbench
2. dotproject
Workforce Management:
Time Management:
Desktop Publishing:
1. Scribus
Vector Graphics:
1. Inkscape
Raster Graphics:
1. Gimp
Business Intelligence / Reporting:
1. JasperReports
2. Ruport
3. Pentaho
Word Processing:
1. OpenOffice
2. AbiWord
Spreadsheet:
1. OpenOffice
Collaborative Software:
1. OpenCMS
2. OpenGroupWare

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Upgrade Path

How to get from Peachtree to Adempiere
How to get from current POS to Adempiere
How to move from Microsoft Access DB's (.mdb's) to postgresql or mysql

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Hardware

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Misc

Maybe this is unintelligible but is there some way to send only an x-session to a monitor? Something like a Virtual KVM. I imagine something like this would be very handy in a touchscreen setup, I'm thinking we could do-without an actual computer and just have a touchscreen monitor if all i needed was the xsession, and a vkvm setup with it.
Should the POS terminals have CompactFlash drives and not bother with normal harddrives?
No drive at all if they are running on Terminal Services
Soekris <-- embedded systems, neat!; santa cruz, ca :)

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Website

Guidelines / Tools / Learning
1. How to Build a website that is very nice
2. Accessibility
  1. Web Accessibility
  2. W3C Content Accessibility Guidelines
  3. W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
  4. Captcha's are not accessible, Question/Answer is
3. Interoperability
  1. Beware of Javascript
  2. Works with IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Pine web clients, and on PDAs and phones (variety of screen resolutions and browsers)
4. Valid X/HTML
  1. W3C X/HTML Validator
5. Email address Obfuscation
  1. Obfuscate email addresses
6. Search Engine Optimization
  1. Search Engine Optimization
7. robots.txt
  1. Robots Txt website
8. Semantic Web
  1. RDF
  2. FOAF
9. Firefox Web Developer Toolbar Addon
Content
1. Restaurant
2. Cantina
3. Bodega
4. Food Packing, Preservation and Thermal Processing
5. Links to Blogs from community members
6. Blogs from workers
7. Catering
  1. Catering options
  2. Catering Menu (PDF and HTML)
8. Vegetable and Fungus of the day
9. Daily Food Specials
  1. A list of the farms the ingredients came from
  2. Early Bird
  3. Breakfast
  4. Brunch
  5. Lunch
  6. Dinner
  7. Late Night
10. Daily Drink Specials
11. Booking and Myspace
12. Entertainment and Myspace
  1. Calender of shows
  2. Weekly entertainment
  3. Nightly Shows
  4. Matinee Shows
  5. DB w/ Bands and their website(s) and logos what day they played and photos of the shows
13. Artwork
  1. Calendar of Art Openings or Closings
  2. Online Gallery and history of shows
14. History
  1. Casa Que Pasa
  2. Building History
    1. Pre-Casa*/info from Historical Society
    2. Renovations
15. Who we work with
  1. OpenStreetMap or Google Maps detailing where their location is
  2. DB w/ Producers and their website
16. Affiliations and Props
  1. AIRA
  2. OEFFA
  3. Slow Food
  4. Frognet's WIFI lilypad network
17. Annual Events
  1. Description and History of the Event with Casa if applicable
  2. Pictures of the event
  3. Website link if applicable
  4. Mustache Party
  5. Gong Show
  6. All Male Revue
  7. Kid's Christmas
  8. O'Betty's Hot Dog Eating Contest
  9. Guacamole Making Contest
  10. Boogie on the Bricks
  11. Film Festival
  12. Mom's Weekend
  13. Dad's Weekend
  14. Sibs Weekend
  15. Parents Weekend
  16. Valentines
  17. Brew Week
  18. Sustainability Festival
  19. PawPaw Festival
18. Menu's
  1. HTML and PDFs
19. Awards
20. Press
21. Store
  1. Picture, Cost/Quantity, Description of each item, weight/size for shipping costs
  2. Food
    1. Salsas
    2. Salad Dressing
    3. Bread
    4. Soysage
    5. Flour Tortillas
    6. Biscuits
    7. Marinated Tofu
    8. Granola
    9. Tortilla Chips
    10. Crackers
    11. Croutons
    12. Honey
    13. Maple Syrup
    14. Tea
  3. Clothing
    1. Shirts
    2. Baseball Cap
  4. Merchandise
    1. Tote Bags
    2. Mugs
    3. PassionWorks Magnets
  5. Gift Items
    1. Gift Boxes
    2. Gift Certificates
22. Co-op
  1. Sister Co-op in West Virginia
  2. Ohio Co-op Laws that we have influenced
  3. Co-op Month
  4. Governance Structure
    1. Mission Statement, Bylaws, Articles of Incorporation, Essentially the handbook (HTML)
    2. Board of Directors
    3. Coordinators
    4. Committees
    5. Teams
  5. Ex-Casa Workers who have become successful business owners
23. Location and directions
  1. OpenStreetMap or GoogleMaps
24. Hours of operation
  1. Backend should be hooked into our calendar and flagged when we schedule to close.
  2. Maybe some image of a clock with our hours shown on the clock; controllable vectors
25. Farmers Market
26. Sitemap
27. Search

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Services

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Virtual Private Server hosts

OpenHosting $20/mo VPS for starters
1. Set firewall to block ALL; and allow ports 22(ssh), 80(http), 443(ssl), 10000(webmin) and 20000(usermin)
2. Remove uneeded modules from webmin
3. yum update
4. Upgraded webmin from 1.3something to 1.400
5. Installed usermin 1.333
6. Disable root SSH logon
7. MailServer Config
  1. Remove sendmail
  2. Install and Configure PostFix SMTP
  3. Install and Configure Cyrus-SASL TLS / Auth for SMTP
  4. Install and Configure Dovecot pop3/imap
  5. Install and Configure SpamAssassin Spam blocker
  6. Install and Configure OpenSSL Secure Sockets
  7. Install and Configure CACerts Secure Certification
  8. Install and Configure OpenLDAP Directory
  9. Install and Configure SquirrelMail Webmail Client
  10. Install and Configure GnuPG Encryption
  11. Install and Configure Mailman list server
  12. Install and Configure ClamAV antivirus