I Took 5 Systems and Created a Whole Software Program Out of Them

Over a decade of trial and error running shops on duct-taped systems, and how they became DeskPanther.

By Jade Valore, founder of DeskPanther. Started on a truck, grew it into a 4-location coffee company, still behind the counter. 🐾

I didn't wake up one day and decide I wanted to build software. Actually, after running coffee shops for over a decade, the LAST thing I wanted was another software program. I already had enough of them. I had an app for scheduling, another app for communication, text messages going off, emails coming in, forms I created myself, a website I built just for ordering, laminated sheets in the stores, and a whole bunch of things I was somehow supposed to mentally remember.

The funny part is, most of these systems actually worked. DeskPanther happened because I finally realized I had spent over a decade building my own operating system without actually calling it one.

1. Scheduling + Communication

Over the years we've used apps like Sling for scheduling and Slack for communication. Then you have manager chats, lead chats, store chats, announcements, and of course regular texting. So now an employee needs a scheduling app, a communication app, their text messages, and whatever other system you're using just to work at a coffee shop. And the owner has all of it too.

Eventually I realized that not everything needs to be a conversation. If something is broken, I don't need a text saying, "Hey Jade, just letting you know the fridge is making a weird noise." Because now I have questions. Which fridge? What's it doing? When did it start? Is it still working? Can you send me a picture? Actually, send me a video. Then six hours later that conversation is buried underneath everything else on my phone and I'm supposed to remember it happened.

Same thing with something being out of stock. "Hey we're out of large cups." Okay, cool. Now that information is living in a text message. WHY? So I created forms. One for repairs and one for out-of-stock items. My team fills out the form, gives me the information I actually need, and I connected those forms to my email and phone number depending on how important the notification was. Boom. Two problems handled. Nobody needs to text me.

2. Ordering

This one has been YEARS of trial and error. When you have multiple stores, how do you make sure every store consistently gets what it needs without physically going to every location and counting everything yourself? Obviously my leads can count, but I don't necessarily want a shift lead deciding how much product to order. I want them to tell me what we HAVE. Then the system should know what we NEED.

Years ago I looked at inventory and ordering programs like BlueCart. It inspired part of what I eventually built, but it was WAY too complicated for what I needed. I didn't need some gigantic inventory ecosystem. I needed someone at the store to count 4 sleeves of cups and for my system to know the par is 10. That's it.

So I built my own website. Literally. For years my stores have had a website I created specifically for our ordering system. My teams also had the whole laminated-sheet situation with par levels and everything they needed to count. Was it beautiful? Not particularly. Did it work? YES. More importantly, it let me hand the counting off to my team without handing over the actual ordering decisions.

Employee counts. Owner sets the par. The order builds from the difference.

Nobody needs a scanner. Nobody needs a barcode. Nobody needs to learn some insane inventory program. Please just tell me how many we have.

I get way more into why I'm so weird about this in Why I Do My Weekly Orders This Way (Not the Way the Apps Want) and Why I Never Used Google Sheets and Still Won't. Apparently after over a decade I have very strong feelings about counting cups.

3. Text Messages Kill the Vibe

Once I started moving repairs and out-of-stock reports OUT of text messages, I realized how much better my life was. Text messages kill the vibe. Seriously. Yeah, they're "free." iMessage works. WhatsApp works. Group chats work. But at what point is it too much?

You're in the middle of dinner and your phone goes off. You look because obviously you're going to look. It's someone telling you something about work that isn't actually urgent, but now you're mentally back at work. Or you read something while you're doing something else and think, "I'll remember that." HAHAHAHA. No you won't. At least I won't.

Information needs somewhere to GO.

That's when I became obsessed with that idea. A repair isn't a conversation. It's a repair. An out-of-stock item isn't a conversation. It's an out-of-stock item. Once it's submitted where it belongs, I can look at it when I'm actually ready to deal with it.

My new practice became email. I know, very cutting edge. But email has one massive advantage: I check it when I want to check it. My phone doesn't need to become a live feed of every tiny operational thing happening across my stores.

4. Time Clock Fixes, Breaks + the Boring Stuff

Then I started looking at all the other random operational things we were still handling through messages. Time clock fixes were a big one. Someone forgot to clock out. Someone clocked into the wrong location. Someone needs a correction. Why are we texting about this?

If there's a correction that needs to be made, submit it. Now I have the information I need, there's a record of the request, and I can handle it when I'm actually working on payroll. Same with meal and rest break issues. Depending on where you operate, there can be different rules around timekeeping, meal periods, rest breaks, recordkeeping, and payroll. I don't want something that could matter later living inside a random text message, so those became forms too.

DeskPanther doesn't decide what is legally compliant or what an employer should do with that information. It gives my team a consistent place to submit it so I can review it and handle it according to our policies and whatever requirements apply.

5. Then I Realized I Was the Software

This is the part that took me way too long to realize. I had built systems for everything. Sling handled scheduling. Slack handled communication. My ordering website handled inventory and ordering. My forms handled repairs and out-of-stock items. Other forms handled time clock corrections and break documentation. Email became the place everything could land without constantly interrupting my day.

The systems worked. The problem was I was the thing connecting all of them. I knew which form did what. I knew which website to check. I knew where the counts were. I knew what needed to happen after something was submitted. I knew where to find a repair someone reported three days ago. I knew how all of it worked because I had spent over a decade building these systems inside my own businesses.

That's when DeskPanther finally clicked. I didn't need to invent a software program.

I had already built one. It just wasn't in one place.

Then My Team Used It

Before I ever thought about giving DeskPanther to other businesses, I made it for my own stores first. My actual employees had to use it during actual shifts because I can sit behind a computer all day thinking something makes sense, but if the person behind the bar hates using it, what's the point?

Then my team told me they LOVED the app.

That was the moment where I went, okayyyyy. Maybe we're onto something here.

I knew why DeskPanther helped me because I built it around problems that had been driving me crazy for years. What I hadn't completely realized was how much these same messy systems affected my team. They were asking each other if someone already reported something. They were wondering if someone told a manager. They were trying to remember what another person said earlier in the shift. They were doing the same mental gymnastics I was doing, just from the employee side.

DeskPanther gave everyone one place to put it. If something was low stocked, it was there. If something broke, it was there. If someone submitted something, we didn't need three people asking each other whether it had already been done.

And if it was helping MY team create more consistency, I knew it could help other teams create that same consistency too.

So I Finally Built DeskPanther

All of these systems have been living in my head for over a decade. Some started on paper. Some became websites. Some became forms. Some came from software I liked but needed to make WAY simpler. Some happened because I was just really freaking tired of getting text messages.

But they were all solving the same problem: How do I let my team run the store without requiring me to personally be involved in every tiny thing happening inside of it?

DeskPanther started as the answer for my own stores. Then my employees used it, they loved it, and it made their jobs easier too. That's when I knew I wanted to give it to other owners and their teams.

I'm not trying to build software that does every possible thing a business could ever need. I don't want that software either. I'm building the stuff I actually needed, the stuff I already built for myself, the stuff my employees actually use, and the stuff that helped us create consistency across multiple stores without everything ending up in a group chat, text message, random spreadsheet, or someone's brain.

DeskPanther is basically over a decade of me saying, "There has to be an easier way to do this."

Turns out, there was. I just had to put it all in one place.

A quick note: This article describes my personal experience running my own businesses and the systems I've developed along the way. It is not legal, HR, employment, payroll, tax, or compliance advice. Laws and requirements vary by location and business. DeskPanther is an operations tool and does not determine legal compliance. Business owners should consult their own qualified professionals regarding the requirements that apply to their business.