alex.mullr.net/blog

Today I finish three weeks of employment, the first proper work I’ve ever done. It’s been in a small restaurant startup in south west London, a place called The Kitchen. Owned, managed and run by Natalie Richmond and chef Thierry Laborde, the concept is something quite new and different. Here comes my ad copy:

You order a couple of meals on their site, book a date and time and come along to Parsons Green. Everything’s all set up for you (we’re talking ingredients, utensils, instructions) and you prepare it with a couple of chefs on hand to help. They package up the food for you, and you take it home to cook. Love the idea. It’s relatively cheap (£20 a week for evening meals?) and much faster than doing the shopping yourself.

The software used on the site is something called EATS, which in itself hasn’t been bad. The UI on the backend is more complicated than it needs to be, but this is a trend that can be seen more and more with new content management systems. I hope I’ll find time to write something more on the design and branding work they’ve had done there, as some gorgeous stuff has been created by a small company in central London.

Bulleted thoughts:

• Networking a printer on a Windows network is harder than it looks. Especially when you have a BT BusinessHub to contend with - yuck.
• Programming a cash register is so much harder than programming a computer.
• Fax machines are still used?!
• Outlook is disgusting, and Access is actually scarily bearable.
• Dell is fantastic. They delivered a machine five days before they said they would, and four days after I ordered it.

In any case: cheers, Natalie & Mark, Thierry & Claudio, Katie & Zuzana, Jhon & Nico and Clare. And Sophia for getting me there in the first place. As well as all the customers I’ve had to talk to over the last 20 days, of course - they have been great too. It’s done great things for my confidence, and I’m going to miss it.