The Lost Prince

Beginning MIT

Eric spent the last two months of his summer break whipping the restaurant into place, Dimitry amazed that he was able to plan specials each week that routinely brought in over $75,000 a night, nearly a quarter of if profit because the ingredients while good, were cheap. He had even used his skills in coding to write a new controller software that connected the ordering system to the inventory, making the work for tracking inventory almost automatic as he strictly enforced nothing left the kitchen unless it was accounted for in the system.

At his one month review was when they had launched it, after Eric had ordered and deployed a kiosk system to each table, allowing them to order drinks, appetizers, desserts, even main courses without having to wait for their waiter or waitress which decreased the time needed for turnover as well as they could even pay their bill right there. All of it accessible in real time for monitoring to ensure no one could claim they had already paid when they hadn't.

More than once Eric had detained customers for trying to walk out, none of them realizing that he could pull up their ticket and even note what time the hostess sat them as the system gave each employee a tablet that they could put the order in right there at the table. Each station pumping the orders out as they came in, cutting down on the workload of everyone. So the night before his first class Dimitry brought him into the house for another review about the work.

"How do you intend to balance work and school? They are both essentially full time jobs with a lot of importance." he asked genuinely concerned.

"Dimitry, I can manage, I assure you. I ran your brothers front of house all through high school maintaining a 4.0 as well as gaining enough college credits that I only have the actual program work to complete now." Eric told him assured of his own skills and abilities as making this much every night wasn't new to him. Damien had averaged $85,000 a night with a cheaper menu and less employees.

"I will most definitely keep you on, especially as you have already saved me 20 hours a week this month and everything is running as smoothly as ever." Dimitry said as Eric pulled out his laptop.

"Excellent, that means I can show you my idea to improve the efficiency of the kitchen." he said showing him how they could break it down to what each station needed to make and when according to the cooking times of each item.

Dimitry for his credit was amazed when Eric showed him the animation of a complex dish being made, each station informed of what was needed at the exact moment they needed to do it to be finished all at the same time. "I want to try this on the staff first before we implement it for the actual service. We may need to tweak a thing here or there." he answered as he saw it would only cost a few thousand in tech to actually implement it. "You weren't going to share this if I fired you, were you?" he asked seriously.

Eric smiled as he looked at Dimitry. "Dimitry, do long as I work for or with you, I will do my level best to do what I can to improve life for both of us. The moment that ends, so does our cooperation between each other. That is how I have always and will always work." he began explaining his philosophy.

When he finished several minutes later Dimitry looked at him with a curious expression as Hellen walked out and sat with them before she saw the design and animation. "Would this really make the kitchen run better?" she asked looking it over.

Dimitry looked at her with a smile. "If we can design it just right, it could improve efficiency by 40 percent or more." he said as Eric took a sip of his coffee. "Eric, I would like to make a deal with you, if you will consider it at least. My restaurant needs reliable tech that doesn't cost a fortune in licensing fees every year, that alone is $30,000 a month for our restaurant. If you can design a system that costs less, I will willingly pay you for it."

Eric smiled as he looked at Dimitry. "That is what we are working towards. Front of house has already cancelled 4 of those systems and replaced them when we launched the kiosks last month. I cancelled the contracts and returned their equipment when we did which should save us $12,000 this month. Give me 6 months, and we should be able to replace the other 5. The nicest part of this system, is it can all be maintained in house and won't require as much service beyond updates to match when our hardware has driver updates. The best part is the more I learn in school, the more usable and interactive we will be able to make it. For now though we have everything we need to automate the tasks we already have, and should be able to add payroll in a few weeks. I am still working out some of the kinks as financial coding isn't my strong suit at this point." he explained as Hellen and Dimitry looked at him stunned.

"You already cut costs this month by $12,000 AND increased operations and profits by 40 percent? Where the hell did you learn this so young?" he demanded to know as Eric laughed.

"Dimitry, I graduated High School with an Associates degree, meaning all my college general education credits had been completed. I have also completed a lot of certifications for programming, coding and several other computer science certifications before I have even started going to school for it." Eric told him honestly as he had indeed been ready for a job as an IT specialist when he graduated if he didn't get into college.

Hellen smiled as she looked at Dimitry. "Perhaps instead of trying to do it all Trey, maybe Eric would be interested in a partnership that benefits him and us." she said as Dimitry looked at her with a smile and a nod.

"I have to agree, despite the fact I never thought I would go into business with a high school graduate." Dimitry said with a small chuckle as he shook his head in disbelief. "It seems I have need of an IT specialist of my own to maintain my customers systems. I have $12,000 a month I can pay in licensing fees, as well as a 20 percent stake in the restaurant. Know anyone who might be interested?" he asked Eric who was stunned at the offer.

"I didn't do this for the money Dimitry, but if you are serious, there is a small change I think I have a counter offer. As business partners, a 20 percent stake in your company for the cost of designing the new system, the IT company keeps the rights to the software. In exchange for your investment, I will give you 40 percent ownership of the IT company. The restaurant licenses the system for the $12,000 month, locked on for life pricing. That way we can package and market it in a way that we can offer it to other restaurants and make a proper business venture out of it. Your restaurant offering demonstrations for it in use." Eric countered as Hellen clamped her mouth over her hand.

Dimitry considered it for a minute as he looked at Eric, his mind full of questions. "How much would a standard system like the one we have cost?"

Eric pulled up the costs of the system so far and added a few other things as if he were being paid for it before he slid it over to Dimitry. "Hardware alone has cost $15,000 so far and we are set to spend another $8,000 to bring the kitchen in as well. So your looking at $30,000 in hardware if we add a markup to it which is standard practice in most industries. The control programming is the expensive part as what I have developed so far would normally have cost $400,000 already and I probably have two or three months worth of work to get all of those systems replaced with out custom software. All in development will cost probably somewhere right around $2.8 million worth of equity. We could probably sell licensing fees for $18,000 month and make a profit once we have everything up and running properly." Eric said breaking it down for him as Hellen was stunned by how quick he was able to do the math to show where everything would be.

Dimitry knew a unified restaurant management system that could be bought for less than $50,000 and cost less than $20,000 a month was a steal. His 9 systems had cost nearly twice that amount to install and maintain the connectivity too. "This could become extremely popular if it works as well as we hope it will. Could you maintain it alone with your current workload?" he asked serious.

"God no, that is why we would be starting an IT Company to handle it once we start servicing other clients. The costs would be what we use to employ the techs, coders and administrators we would need." he said as Hellen smiled as her own expertise was in tech.

"I could run it, if we are already going to be partners in this. With $18,000 a month we could pay myself as well as a coder and tech if we need them to start." she said running the numbers.

Eric nodded as he agreed. "Until we expand to service more than the one restaurant, the only other salary will be yours." he told her as she shook her head.

"No, you will have a salary as well, as you will be our primary coder. If we are going to do this, we need to do it properly with attorneys making contracts, salaries the whole works. Especially where we are taking stakes in each other's companies, but I think we need to increase his stake in the restaurant to 35 percent. It would only be equitable if we make a functional product that can be marketed." she said as Dimitry agreed.

"We will have an attorney draft the contracts as soon as possible, Hellen can work on it while we go to work." Dimitry said with a smile as they planned.

The first week of classes had flown by, his work not suffering one bit as they perfected the kitchen system each day during service as they began testing and using the system. The effect on efficiency dramatic when they switched it into operational mode on Wednesday. The entire kitchen working in harmony far better than when the chef barked orders as each station knew exactly when they needed to work on their portion of each dish as the system expedited everything. Sales showed the first improvements when they wrapped for the night, as they could get a fourth seating in the same amount of time it had taken them to get three before. By Friday, they had their first night of making over $100,000 in a single day.