Paper Authors and Title
Shane Crotty (Munster Technological University), Alison O’Shea, Jing Hua Ye, “PrepPro: Web-based Hospitality Management Application”
Abstract
As a chef progresses from “Commis” (trainee) chef to the upper levels of their career, they encounter more responsibility with regards to health and safety controls, ordering, stocktaking etc. Senior-level chefs often spend a sizable amount of their time away from cooking operations, and manually perform many repetitive and time-consuming tasks daily; many of these tasks are either legally mandatory or functionally essential. A literature review was undertaken to evaluate the needs and requirements of food service operations. To supplement this study, an innovative full stack web-based administrative kitchen toolkit to expedite many of these tasks was developed. This system is database-centric and employs a model-view-controller architecture. It will be hosted on the AWS cloud platform as a “single page” React application. It uses a custom-defined state management system; to conditionally render applicable content to the user and serve as a means of navigation, offering a user-friendly layout and providing an “all-in-one” solution with regards to functionality. This system was evaluated through an experimental trial with 14 kitchen administrators; their satisfaction levels were measured and analysed through a questionnaire. The qualitative and quantitative analysis indicate that on average over 75% participants were familiar with applications providing administrative functionality. Of those familiar, all expressed positive sentiment towards such applications. Most respondents were satisfied with the performance of the system and that it contributes some significant and substantial benefits to the hospitality industry. The evaluation also indicates that the single page layout of the system is user friendly and viable.