Hiking Hawaii Cafe

I helped rebuild the restaurant’s operating system from near zero: POS, scheduling, staff training, internal software, Google Admin, hiring, onboarding, marketing site work, networking, printers, inventory, vendors, and day-to-day operations.

Problem
A new owner had taken over a restaurant with no reliable systems, documentation, or operating cadence.
Role
Operator across POS, scheduling, staff training, reporting, Google Admin, onboarding, hiring support, vendors, and hardware.
Changed
POS and online ordering went live, scheduling moved into 7Shifts, staff materials were created, and daily reporting became repeatable.
Proof
SkyTab configuration, daily business review emails, printer and network setup, handbooks, compliance research, inventory catalogs, reorder sheets, and menu cost-of-goods work.

Context

The owner had just taken over the restaurant with no previous restaurant experience and almost nothing useful left over from the previous owner. The operational state was effectively none.

Restaurants depend on a chain of small systems working together. Scheduling, POS, printers, internet, modifiers, inventory, vendors, and staff-facing instructions all have to support the real service workflow.

Role

I had an operator role and ended up owning the POS transition, staff training, internal software, Google Admin, onboarding, security, hiring support, scheduling software, and practical systems work across the restaurant.

Point Of Sale

The restaurant switched from Toast to SkyTab POS, now called Shift4 Dine. The owner had already ordered the equipment, but it had been sitting unused and unconfigured for months.

I set up the POS system and worked with staff to configure modifiers around how food and drink items were actually ordered and prepared. After the POS was set up, I also got online ordering working.

Daily Business Review

I built a daily business review email that pulled data from SkyTab and turned it into an owner-readable operating report.

The report combined hourly sales, time clock shifts, daily activity, item sales, estimated daily profit and loss, menu item performance, and charts showing recent trends. It gave the owner a repeatable way to understand what happened each day without manually digging through the POS.

I also used the report to surface anomalies and menu signals: sales changes, item-level performance, food cost context, labor cost estimates, and which items were worth promoting, reworking, or removing.

Network, Printers, And Cabling

I set up the internal and external network, fixed printer and POS configuration, and routed cables through walls for the POS and printers.

The setup supported one printer by the POS and one printer in the kitchen, so front-of-house and back-of-house work could move through the right physical stations.

Scheduling

I brought the restaurant onto 7Shifts to fix scheduling, availability, and shift-switch communication.

Before 7Shifts, scheduling worked like a game of text telephone. Nobody reliably knew who was working or when. A dedicated scheduling system made the work visible and easier to coordinate.

Staff-Facing Materials

I created printouts for food and drink items so employees had a reference when they forgot how something was made, configured, or communicated.

Training, Handbooks, And Compliance

I became Food Safety certified so I could properly onboard and train new staff.

I created manager and employee handbooks to set expectations around culture, conflict resolution, customer service standards, financial management, inventory and supply chain management, scheduling and labor management, marketing and communications, emergency response procedures, hiring, onboarding and training, technology and systems, and task breakdowns.

To support that work, I read through city, state, and federal requirements that affected the business, including Hawaii food safety rules, wage and hour law, prepaid health care, employment practices, child labor, OSHA and HIOSH standards, fire code, Honolulu ordinances, refunds and exchanges, gift certificates, securities rules, and CAN-SPAM.

Operations And Vendors

I handled inventory and vendor coordination, set up inventory catalog systems and reorder sheets, went to restaurant conventions, and sourced new vendors to improve the options available to the business.

I also read The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook by Douglas Robert Brown and created a menu cost-of-goods system so the restaurant could better understand the cost behind menu items.

I also talked with local business owners of larger restaurants to learn how more mature restaurant operations were managed.

What This Shows