Building restaurant software at Bitsoft
Software developer · architecture, debugging, coordination · Bucharest
Seventeen years of shipping for the web, the last seven on point-of-sale: a self-ordering kiosk that runs in four countries, the kitchen display, a delivery dispatch app and a new front end for the back office. I stay close to the decisions, from the architecture down to the last log line.
01About
I started writing websites in 2009 and moved through booking engines, custom CMS platforms and hotel portals. One of those projects won Best Hotel Website at the 2018 eTravel Awards. Since 2019 I have been at Bitsoft, building software for quick-service restaurants.
I’m pragmatic, analytical and focused on results. I care about the quality and performance of what I build, and just as much about what it changes for users, clients and the people who run it every day. I stay directly involved in technical and implementation decisions: I’d rather understand the mechanism than just hand the work off.
Most of my time goes into the self-ordering kiosk, with the kitchen display, the delivery dispatch app and the back-office front end around it. I like the parts nobody sees: one codebase configured per client instead of forked, tests that walk the whole order on every brand variant, and releases boring enough to ship on a Friday.
02What I do
Web applications, back ends, integrations and APIs, mostly in PHP and JavaScript, with the databases behind them. I design for the long run and treat performance as something to measure, not guess.
For example
Finding the cause of problems that cross several systems: reading logs, forming hypotheses and testing them, and weighing the impact of a change before it ships. The fix has to hold, not hide the symptom.
For example
Prioritising development, estimating effort and working with technical teams, and making the trade-off between time, complexity and commercial benefit explicit.
For example
03Selected work
A multi-tenant kiosk app for quick-service restaurants. Customers browse the menu, customise products, pay by card and get a fiscal receipt, while the order goes straight to the POS and the kitchen.
The kiosk is one stop on an order’s way through the restaurant. I work on the other apps it passes through, too.
MCP servers that give coding agents read access to the POS database, so support tickets can be investigated with real data.
My house makes its own decisions. It heats room by room, runs the air conditioning on solar surplus, waters the garden unless rain is coming, closes each shutter when the sun hits that window and keeps going on battery when the power drops. Behind it are 190 devices, more than 3,000 entities and six integrations I wrote in Python.
A typical day (illustrative)
Each zone has a role: comfort, sleep and eco presets, eco while a window is open or nobody is in the room, scheduled preheat, an away mode and anti-freeze protection.
The inverter’s surplus decides which AC may heat or cool. When the sun fades the units stop one at a time, and a missing inverter reading counts as no sun.
Programs per zone, with pump and valve control. A run is skipped when rain is forecast or already falling, and after a restart every valve is closed first.
Each shutter knows where the sun is against its own window: azimuth, elevation, a monthly correction and the day’s forecast high. Frost nights close them; a move by hand pauses the rules until evening.
A weather-station integration (Wunderground or Tempest, read through a small PHP server) supplies the rain forecast that irrigation and the other rules use.
UPS and grid-voltage alerts, recovery after a power cut, arrive and leave routines, NFC tags, camera person detection and four wall panels with summer and winter layouts.
Also: lights that take their colours from the album cover that’s playing, an IR-controlled LED strip that works as a real light, and automation for the Denon AV receiver.
Hotel portals, booking engines, restaurant ordering and SEO. Some of these sites have been redesigned since.
Albena Resort Resort portal, booking engine 
Pizza Hut Delivery Online ordering, delivery 
Mera Hotels Hotel group portal 
Sergiana Group Catalog, restaurants, locator 
Poiana Brașov Destination website 
Europa Royale Hotel website 
Capital Plaza Hotel website 
InterContinental Events website 
Linea Closer to the Moon Restaurant website 
Scandia Sibiu Hotel website 
Cheile Grădiștei Resort website 
Studio One Aparthotel website 04How I decide
In complex situations I look for the real cause first, then for the simplest solution that solves it reliably. Complexity isn’t an advantage in itself, and I don’t add mechanisms whose benefit is small.
A stable, fast-enough solution usually beats a perfect one that costs twice as much. Complexity has to earn its place.
Logs, measurements and tests before opinions. When two options look equal on paper, I measure them.
Find what is really broken, then make the smallest change that fixes it reliably. Hiding the symptom doesn’t count.
Incremental steps, validated before production, each with a way back. Every migration in my house came with a one-command restore.
Performance matters, weighed against build cost, maintenance and what the business needs right now.
Clear explanations without corporate filler, so the people who own a system understand it and can decide for themselves.
Reproduce it, collect logs, metrics and timestamps, and write down what is known and what is only assumed.
List the possible causes, the most likely and cheapest to check first.
Run the smallest experiment that can rule a cause in or out.
Change the root cause with the simplest fix that holds, reversible and validated before production.
Compare before and after, and add a test so it can’t come back quietly.
05Technology and AI
New technology and automation keep my attention, and I treat AI as a technical and intellectual partner, not a fast way to generate content. The point is to be more productive without giving up quality or control: what it writes gets the same review, tests and scepticism as anyone else’s code.
Open to innovation, careful about adopting generated output uncritically.
06Experience
2019 – now
Restaurant software for international quick-service brands: the self-ordering kiosk, the kitchen display system, a delivery dispatch app, a rebuilt back-office front end, the online ordering site and a Flutter reporting app. Payment, fiscal and POS integrations, test automation, releases and support.
2017 – 2019
Booking engines, a custom CMS, API integrations and SEO for hotels and resorts. Delivered 25+ products, including the winner of Best Hotel Website at the 2018 eTravel Awards.
2011 – 2017
Websites and web applications for local clients, mainly Romanian hotel chains, from build to long-term maintenance.
2009 – 2011
First production websites, built and maintained end to end.
07Skills
Also: SEO, WordPress · Romanian (native), English (C1)
08Off the clock
Outside work it’s the same curiosity with different hardware: electronics, audio and video systems, home automation and my own digital infrastructure. I like to experiment, configure and improve complex systems, and I give personal projects the same rigour as paid ones.
I care about energy efficiency, smart-home technology, good multimedia and technology that fits into everyday life without getting in the way. When something interests me I go deep, compare the alternatives and look for a solution that lasts.
I value autonomy, the freedom to experiment, things done well and being in control of the systems I use.
09Contact
Kiosks, web apps, mobile apps or the integrations between them. Tell me what you’re building and I’ll answer within a couple of days.
Bucharest, Romania