Chef Jaz

Preview of a completed dish
Current dishes

Inspiration

We know that chefs lead a very stressful life, with long hours. They're dealing with constant turnover, talking with customers, promoting their restaurant, creating dishes, and training. We wanted to make that easier, so they can de-stress and become more efficient.

What it does

It's a designed app idea that allows a chef to create recipe instructions with the intent of having a separate interface for the cooks to use and follow those recipes. E.g., A chef will create a recipe, record a video during a calmer time, and cooks will be able to watch the video or read the instructions on a tablet at their station, skipping around as needed to make sure that what they're creating matches what the chef imagined.

Further versions would include additional teaching (e.g., knife skills), scheduling solutions (e.g., a way to keep track of who called out on that day), versions for wait staff so they can talk about ingredients or share the chef's more floral description of a dish, and possibly even a customer-facing app that allows people to fully explore the food and the restaurant's story.

How we built it

We used Figma to create a wireframe, high-fidelity mockup of the planned Android app. We also created the beginnings of an Android app, but it's not far enough along to add to the presentation.

Challenges we ran into

The Android app did not come along as quickly as we might have hoped. Additional difficulties involved knowing all the steps of what would be most valuable to the chefs and restaurants, and just that it's a limited time so we only were able to make a single flow.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It's a neat idea that we think will be helpful. Our design looks pretty neat, and we were also happy with what we were learning about making an Android app, even if it's underdeveloped.

What we learned

We learned more about the design process, working as a team to flesh out the idea, a bit about android programming, and about the hackathon process.

What's next for Chef Jaz

A more developed android tablet app, additional flows in the design, additional features after the minimal viable product is created, and lots of marketing and discussions with chefs to further refine the app into something that they find most useful.