Courtside Cafe Simulation

Simulation for cafe operations

For a campus cafe, I built and validated a discrete event simulation in Arena to test whether self-ordering kiosks and workforce changes would reduce waiting time without creating new pressure in the kitchen.

What I built

• Modeled the current cafe flow in Arena.
• Tested multiple demand and staffing scenarios.
• Worked with the cafe manager to verify and validate the model.
• Studied how self-ordering kiosks affected kitchen load and inventory strategy.

Result

The best scenario moved one cross-trained cashier into the kitchen workforce. In simulation, that reduced waiting time by 16% and saved at least $288 per day.

The project was small, but the lesson stuck: good analytics work often starts by modeling the real bottleneck instead of the visible one.