Overview
Zavala’s Barbecue ran its entire operation across a fragile stack of Excel spreadsheets covering inventory, food cost, prep, scheduling, catering, and venue contracts. Joe Zavala, an Alliances Director at evolv Consulting and the restaurant’s owner, built a full production platform from scratch using Claude — with no prior coding background and executive support from evolv CTO Trent Foley — replacing every spreadsheet across the business.
action plan
Build a unified, mobile-friendly kitchen operations platform that consolidates every operational function — inventory and par management, live food cost tracking, prep, staff scheduling, catering CRM, and venue invoicing — into a single system the whole team can access from a phone, replacing manual spreadsheets with real-time data, automated alerts, and workflows that run across the restaurant, major arena venue contracts, external catering, and distribution without human intervention.
Steps
1
Architected and shipped the full application using Claude Code, reaching production within days of starting in late March 2026 and iterating to 67+ documented features by April 2026
2
Built role-based access across 12 screens for 12 team members spanning restaurant, venue, catering, and distribution operations
3
Automated routine workflows including daily prep briefings, end-of-day sales and food cost summaries, a weekly digest, and a catering inquiry-to-invoice pipeline
Results
28 Hours Saved Per Week
operational admin time dropped from ~30 hours on spreadsheets to ~2 hours in the app
Food Cost Cut Nearly in Half
from 50% down to a best week of 26%, with a normal operating target of 33–35%
Production in Days, Not Months
live within days of starting, now past version 44 with 67+ documented features shipped by April 2026
Conclusion
“I had never written a line of code. With Claude I built the system that runs my entire barbecue operation, from inventory and food cost to catering and the venues we cook for. The old way ate up about 30 hours a week in spreadsheets. Now it is 2, and I have insights I never had before. My food cost used to sit at 50 percent. My best week with the app, it hit 26.” — Joe Zavala, Owner, Zavala’s Barbecue