How much of your business admin work is still running on outdated software?
Been thinking about this a lot lately — so much of what we talk about here is optimizing technique, workflow, mise en place, timing. But for anyone running an actual food business (restaurant, catering, culinary school admin), there's a whole other layer of "kitchen efficiency" that never gets discussed: the software running your back office.
A lot of small food businesses I've talked to are still on inventory, scheduling, or POS systems built decades ago on legacy platforms (VB6 being a common one) that nobody maintains anymore. It works, technically, until it doesn't — and then you're stuck because the original developer retired or the tools to even open the codebase don't exist on modern machines.
Curious if anyone here who runs their own place has dealt with this. We ended up reading through this piece on VB6 modernization (https://www.abtosoftware.com/blog/vb6-modernization) when trying to figure out whether to patch our old system or rebuild — might be useful if you're facing the same decision. Would love to hear how others approached it, especially anyone who moved from a legacy system to something cloud-based without disrupting daily service.
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This resonates too well with reality. The mentality of 'if it ain't broke, don't touch it' is especially prevalent among the food industry as they can ill afford downtime during preparation and service. A legacy system is much like a kitchen tool repaired a hundred times over - it only takes one rushed Friday night for the old database to quit working altogether.
Once we transitioned to the modern cloud-based system, both databases were run simultaneously for two weeks to ensure information synchronization before the legacy software was decommissioned. It was a stressful but rewarding two weeks, and I personally don't think our business would have been able to function properly without the transition. Official Website
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Been thinking about this a lot lately — so much of what we talk about here is optimizing technique, workflow, mise en place, timing. But for anyone running an actual food business (restaurant, catering, culinary school admin), there's a whole other layer of "kitchen efficiency" that never gets discussed: the software running your back office.
A lot of small food businesses I've talked to are still on inventory, scheduling, or POS systems built decades ago on legacy platforms (VB6 being a common one) that nobody maintains anymore. It works, technically, until it doesn't — and then you're stuck because the original developer retired or the tools to even open the codebase don't exist on modern machines.
Curious if anyone here who runs their own place has dealt with this. We ended up reading through this piece on VB6 modernization (https://www.abtosoftware.com/blog/vb6-modernization getting over it) when trying to figure out whether to patch our old system or rebuild — might be useful if you're facing the same decision. Would love to hear how others approached it, especially anyone who moved from a legacy system to something cloud-based without disrupting daily service.
Thanks for the information!
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