Project Overview

Executive Summary

• CulinaryCommand is a web-based kitchen operations platform built for multi-location restaurants. It centralizes prep task management, inventory tracking, recipe management, and purchase ordering into a single system. With an AI-powered scheduling assistant that automatically generates optimized prep plans for the day. Managers get a real time view of kitchen operations across locations. Employees can get a clear, prioritized task queue and an AI-generated weekly report surfaces operational insights, anomalies, and recommendations drawn from kitchen data.

Problem & Value

• Currently, restaurant managers—including in Matayas’s dad’s restaurants—struggle to efficiently track prep work and inventory across multiple locations. This leads to wasted time, miscommunication, and inefficiencies. CulinaryCommand solves this problem by centralizing prep lists, inventory, and assignments into one secure, easy-to-use platform.

Key Features & Benefits

• SmartTask AI Scheduler: Managers select recipes and a service date; the AI (powered by Google Gemini) analyzes prep lead times and employee availability to generate an optimized task schedule. Plans can be previewed, regenerated, or rolled back.
• Task Board & Employee Queues: A kanban-style task board lets managers track work across Pending, In Progress, and Completed states. Employees see a prioritized daily task list with one-click completion.
• Recipe Management: Full recipe CRUD with ingredients, steps, yield, cost, sub-recipes, and SmartTask integration (service window and prep lead time per recipe).
• Inventory Tracking: Ingredient catalog with par levels, reorder thresholds, and stock transaction history (restock, usage, spoilage). Low-stock alerts surface on the dashboard automatically.
• Purchase Orders: Create and track vendor orders through a Draft → Submitted → Received workflow with line-item pricing and an audit trail.
• AI Weekly Reports: Gemini generated reports summarize task completion rates, prep trends, usage anomalies, and actionable recommendations with a confidence score.
• Multi-Location Support: All data, tasks, inventory, recipes, orders is scoped by location. Managers see only their assigned locations; company admins can view across all.
• Role-Based Access: Three roles (Admin, Manager, Employee) with tailored dashboards and permission boundaries enforced via AWS Cognito groups.

Technical Approach

• Frontend: Blazor (ASP.NET Core 9, C#) with Razor components; Plotly.Blazor for charts
• Backend: ASP.NET Core 9 (C#) REST API with service layers (Inventory, Recipe, PurchaseOrder, Task, etc.)
• Database: MySQL 8.0.36 via Entity Framework Core 9 with Pomelo MySQL provider
• Authentication: AWS Cognito (OIDC) with cookie-based sessions; Cognito groups for role-based access control
• AI / Integrations: Google Gemini for AI reporting and SmartTask scheduling; AWS Lambda (dotnet 10) for the SmartTask service; Resend for transactional email; AWS SSM for data protection keys
• Infrastructure: AWS Lightsail for main app hosting; Terraform for infrastructure as code (state stored in S3)
• Testing: Playwright for end-to-end tests; xUnit for unit tests