Sign inStart free
The story

I didn’t set out to build software. I set out to run a restaurant.

I’m Stanley. I opened a restaurant in Miami and ran it hands-on — 25+ people on staff. Every screen in standley exists because something on that floor demanded it.

Opening day

The picture, and the list nobody hands you

When you’re about to open a restaurant, you see one picture: the doors open, the room fills, and people are enjoying the thing you built. I had that picture too. It’s a good picture — hold onto it.

What nobody hands you is the list of everything that starts the morning after. Not the cooking, not the service — the operating. I found that list one item at a time, usually the hard way. Here it is.

No. 1

The storage room

You keep inventory so you’re not shopping every single day. But inventory needs tracking, or you overbuy what you already have and run out of what you don’t. I was counting cases on a notepad between lunch and dinner.
→ now it’s Supplies & inventory in standley
No. 2

The schedule

The POS wanted more money to do scheduling, so it’s pen and paper or a spreadsheet — sent through the group chat. Then someone swaps a shift, someone asks for a weekend off, someone books a vacation, and it all lives in that chat until the day you forget you ever agreed to it.
→ now it’s Scheduling & covers in standley
No. 3

“We’re low on limes”

Your team tells you what they need to keep operating — every day. The bartender, the servers, the cooks: food, cleaning supplies, to-go boxes. All of it arrived in the same chat, in between everything else.
→ now it’s Supply requests in standley
No. 4

The AC and the door handle

Your employees are your eyes everywhere. The AC isn’t cooling, the front door handle is loose — they’ll tell you, in the chat, and by the time you scroll back to it, it’s buried under forty other messages.
→ now it’s Maintenance in standley
No. 5

Saying it again

Every position has its own tasks, and I was assigning them out loud, every single day — then finding out things were skipped, half-done, or done wrong. Repeating yourself is not a system.
→ now it’s Checklists with photo proof in standley
No. 6

The catering invoice

The first catering orders were the good kind of problem. But invoicing them meant either paying the POS more for the privilege, or sending something that looked like I’d made it in five minutes — because I had.
→ now it’s Catering invoices in standley
No. 7

The thousand dollars

At the beginning, what you owe vendors is easy — one or two invoices at a time. Then it isn’t. When you owe a vendor six invoices and you hand them $1,000, nobody in the room can say which invoices that money just covered. It’s not that you’re being irresponsible. It’s that you’re putting out fire after fire, and the paperwork is the fire that can wait — until it can’t.
→ now it’s Payables — payments apply to the oldest invoice first, automatically in standley
No. 8

On the record

When someone keeps breaking a rule, you repeat yourself. Then you repeat yourself again — out loud, in the chat — and every repetition costs you a little respect. And policies? As a first-time owner, I’d never even thought about policies.
→ now it’s Policies & signed records in standley
No. 9

The hours

Tracking hours worked meant another POS subscription, or doing it by hand and hoping. Payroll shouldn’t be an act of faith.
→ now it’s NFC time clock, labor & hours in standley
No. 10

The momentum

When you open, people come to try you. That window doesn’t come twice — the attention you get at launch is the cheapest marketing you’ll ever have. And these days people decide in seconds, online, whether you’re their next meal. Your rating is your front door.

Here’s what I learned on the floor: the review moment can be yours. If a table has a problem, you fix it right there. Then, when the table is happy, your server hands them a card with their own name on it, and one tap opens the review box. The review that follows is the one your floor actually earned. That was the first piece of standley — and the month we turned it on, more than 300 reviews came in.

→ now it’s Reviews & the cards in standley

That’s why it’s called standley.

The stand is the standing ovation a great team earns — in a dining room, that ovation is the review, public and in the guest’s own words. The ·ley is the end of my name. I put my name on it because I lived every one of these problems — and every number on this site is real.

It was built from the owner’s chair, but it isn’t only for owners who do everything themselves. If you have a manager, their day gets lighter — they handle the day-to-day in the app while you see everything.

standley helps run the floor and helps grow the restaurant. The people on your floor do the rest.

Start free for 7 days See pricing
Product
Get more Google reviewsScheduling & coversNFC time clockChecklistsLabor & hoursClock-in stationPricing
Compare
7shifts alternativeHomebase alternative
Resources
All resourcesClosing checklist templateOpening checklist templateHow to ask for Google reviews
Company
The storyStart freeSign inhello@standley.app
© 2026 standley
PrivacyTermshello@standley.app