Where does Our story begin?

Do I go back to when I was born?

Mmm...no...too far back.

Do I start when I met Alex?

No. The story would be too long.

What about when I started working in a restaurant?

Yes. Perfect.

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Once upon a time, a young man arrived at a restaurant seeking to be part of their team. A few days after he was hired, the General Manager of the restaurant suddenly quit. This would be the start of a pattern that would repeat itself over and over again. As time passed, the young man noticed this broken side of the restaurant industry, coworkers would leave almost every week, managers would leave every year. He wondered what was the cause, the underlying problem. After closely observing the restaurant dynamics and talking to coworkers, he concluded that fifty percent of the time, employees left to pursue new endeavors and opportunities, which is totally expected and natural, but what is interesting is the other half.

Fifty percent of the time, employees left emotionally, out of frustration with the job, with the team, and with management. The young man wondered what was failing, what was the cause of such a massive exodus, and if there was a solution to it.

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He then was promoted to assistant manager, which allowed him to see things from a new perspective. The frustration he had felt was not exclusive to staff members, the manager position was even more challenging and stressful, but it was the perfect angle from where to dissect the real problems with the restaurant:

Employees would not show up to work, nor they would communicate their absence. New employees would take a long time to be properly trained because they wouldn't have access to training files and materials. There was a general disconnection with the company culture and mission. Workers would be unmotivated because they were never recognized nor complimented when they did a great job. There weren't systems in place that ensured that restaurant cleanliness and excellence of service were performed every single day like clockwork. Utensils were always broken or defective, and a restaurant can only be as good as the state of its utensils. Everybody was going different ways instead of going in a single direction. There was a generalized division and alienation from the job because nobody felt like it belonged to something greater than themselves, nobody felt part of a team.
The young man realized that all these underlying issues were a consequence of a bigger problem:
There is an overall lack of communication and organization in restaurants.

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Yes, that was it. With excellent communication and organization none of those issues would exist:

Employees would feel like they belong to a team and would be happier in a job they actually loved.

Yes, that was the sad truth. Nobody loved their job. Nobody cared about it enough to make it thrive and elevate it to new heights. And that was the catalyst to what happened one night. Only three employees showed up to a shift that was supposed to be covered by six! It was the busiest night ever, orders kept coming in and the tickets kept accumulating. The line to order was longer than the dining room, which was full of grudging and unsatisfied customers whose orders we were unable to fulfill in less than thirty minutes. Many of them left really mad with me, the manager on duty. I had to constantly apologize. Of course they were frustrated, I would have been too, I wish they would have understood our situation, I wish I could have told them that we tried as hard as we could.

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Eventually, the nightmare ended, the last unsatisfied customer left the restaurant, and with the little energy we had left in our crumbling hands and feet we cleaned up after ourselves. My aching body was the carrier of a mind that was devastated. When I was trusted with the Assistant Manager role, I honestly thought that I could fix the problems by creating an environment of trust and collaboration, but there I was, defeated, like a beaten-down fighter who is just realizing the ring is too tough for his naive aspirations. My coworkers didn't say a word for the rest of the night. When they left, I said goodbye as if it was the last time I was going to see them, because I was feeling like leaving and not looking back. But I focused on the pain in my legs, and I thought to myself that such pain was not exclusive to me, nor it was the only kind of pain a restaurant worker can feel. I thought of my colleagues and the pain I would be inflicting on them if I was to leave immediately. Among my colleagues there were mothers, fathers, people with more than one job, with their own problems, fighting their own battles, administering their own hidden pains. I had no right to bring more challenges to their lives, I wanted the exact opposite for them, seeing them thriving in their jobs and having a fulfilling career would have made me so happy. I presented my two weeks notice that night. I was the latest member of a list of people that were not able to withstand the job. When I left, I wondered if one day I could help avoid this kind of situation. I wondered if one day I could help build something that could make workers want to go to work, that could make customers want to return, and make everyone not want to leave their job or change industries. I wondered how many people out there would love to have something like that.

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A couple of years passed by and one day I'm on a call with my best friend Alex, who is a wonderful entrepreneur and software engineer, and he tells me that he is building a Point of Sale system for restaurants and that he would love it if I was his business partner...and I accept. So we start developing this Point of Sale system for a few months, but then I start remembering the problems I had experienced as a restaurant professional, I start remembering the frustration I felt because there was not an environment that encouraged better communication and organization in the restaurant workplace. I start seeing things I was not able to see back then, I realize that the environment of trust and collaboration I wanted to build didn't have to be exclusively physical, maybe that environment needed to be recreated first on a digital level so it could exist on a physical level.

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So I think about that for a couple of days, then I meet back with my partner and I discuss making a pivot:

"Yes, the reason for this meeting is to reevaluate the path we are following. I know we have worked very hard on this point of sale system, but I want to propose a pivot. When I used to work in restaurants, I sensed a great problem, a lack of communication and organization..."

I tell him everything, and he loves it. He is immediately on board.

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"So how should we call it?" he asks.

"Well, I was thinking, restaurants use Cutting Boards as a platform to perform the physical work, how about they also use a Cuttin' Board as a platform to perform the digital work, what about ... Cuttinboard?"

And that's how Cuttinboard came to be.

The birth of a dream, a dream of a future in which working in a restaurant is a sustainable and fulfilling career for everyone.

That's the end of our story and the beginning of yours.

What kind of restaurant is yours going to be?