肉肉传媒

MARIETTA, Ga. | Mar 21, 2019

Seeking a way to take its antiquated order management system into the 21st Century, Gabriel鈥檚 Restaurant and Bakery sought help from 肉肉传媒鈥檚  to cook up an automated solution.

The Marietta eatery had been struggling to keep pace with its cake orders, which account for nearly half its business, and was stuck handwriting pertinent information in a notebook known among employees as the 鈥渃ake book.鈥� Baking nearly 12,000 cakes a year, Chief Operating Officer Susan Hutcheson said the old method led to human error and wasn鈥檛 a skill that could be easily transferred to new employees.

This past summer, she sent a letter to KSU asking for help and was immediately contacted by Reza Parizi, an assistant professor of , to develop the problem into a senior capstone project.

鈥淭he University is right here in our backyard and we are very much a community-first company, so this seemed like a natural fit,鈥� Hutcheson said. 鈥淚t was an incredibly positive experience and my staff was always excited about where the project could take us, but most of all, we enjoyed working with the students.鈥�

For nearly three months, she and her employees worked alongside 肉肉传媒 State students Kim

 Hertz, Nathanael Curtis, Thomas Glover, Danielle Brooks and Victoria Williams to design and build an order management program that could be accessed on an internet browser. In addition to organizing client information in a more efficient manner, the digital 鈥渃ake book鈥� allows users to track the progress of individual orders, print labels and take requests for specialty cakes, such as those for weddings and other special events. The system is currently used only among the baking staff but has potential to be expanded to accept orders directly from customers.

Hertz, who earned an undergraduate degree in December and is now pursuing a graduate degree in software engineering, said she leapt at the opportunity to help the bakery. Typical capstone projects connect KSU students with industry-leading companies, but Hertz was attracted to the uniqueness of a small business without a technology background.

鈥淭he whole idea of eliciting requirements from a client is paramount in software engineering, so we thought this would be a great exercise,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t took us a while to demonstrate to the client how we will take everything they were doing on pen and paper and build it into an automated process. In the end, it taught us to ask the right questions as software engineers to ensure the client is satisfied.鈥�

Curtis, who maintains the ordering system for Gabriel鈥檚 while completing his undergraduate degree, said applying his studies on a real-world problem was one of the many takeaways from his involvement on the project. The students met with Hutcheson鈥檚 team every other week to receive feedback on their progress and to make improvements for the final product. They presented their work at CCSE鈥檚 Fall 2018 , winning third place among undergraduate capstone projects.

鈥淎 professor can run you through hypothetical situations, but that can never replace the experience of interacting directly with the customer,鈥� Curtis said. 鈥淭his is actually something that will be in use for years to come, so it has to work right.鈥�

As a thank you to the students, Gabriel鈥檚 baked the team a strawberry cake that mimicked the look of a woodgrain desk. On top of the cake sat an edible version of Curtis鈥� laptop with a KSU logo on the screen. Next to the laptop was a Gabriel鈥檚 coffee cup, a pencil and a loose leaf of notebook paper decorated with a note that read, 鈥淭hank you for all your hard work!鈥�

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Written by Travis Highfield
Photography by Rob Witzel