I manage restaurants in Iraq and build the apps they run on.

I’m Ahmed Hijazi, Inventory Control Specialist and Baghdad Branch Manager at Basra Delight. I design and code the apps my work needs, and test every version on the real job before anyone relies on it. Staff in four branches now use my food-safety app every day.

See the six apps Email me

Six apps, built and running

Open the ones that are online, or read how each one works below. Every screen here shows made-up demo data, never real people or real numbers.

How I build

I design, code and test every app, starting from the work it has to do. Each one began on the restaurant floor, not on a whiteboard.

  1. Start from a real problem

    Every app began as something at work a spreadsheet couldn’t handle: checklists sent late, stock that didn’t add up, sales totals that were quietly wrong.

  2. Design it around the people using it

    I work out what the app must do and who uses it, often starting from the paper form or the POS export it has to replace.

  3. Build it and test it on the real job

    Every version runs on my own phone and real branch data first. When a number doesn’t match what I see in the branch, I don’t stop until I find out why.

  4. Ship, then keep fixing

    Staff tell me what’s slow or confusing, and the next version fixes it. The apps change as the work changes.

What I bring is knowing the work as well as the code: what a supervisor needs at seven in the morning, what makes a stock count wrong, and when a report is lying.

Hijazi Wallet

Live at wallet.hijazionline.com

A money app for Iraq. Log spending in a sentence, and ask an AI advisor before you buy.

Hijazi Wallet dashboard: 1,096,000 IQD left to spend this month, split into cash and bank
What’s left to spend this month, in dinars and dollars.
Hijazi Advisor answering whether a 350,000 IQD phone is affordable this month
Hijazi Advisor answers from your real balance and payments.
Monthly report with income, spending, savings rate and a spending-by-category chart
The month at a glance: income, spending, savings.
The dashboard in Arabic, laid out right to left, in dark mode
Fully in Arabic, right to left, in light or dark.
A savings goal with 700,000 IQD set aside and its deposit history
Savings goals, loans and extra income, each with a history.
Three steps for adding Hijazi Wallet to the iPhone Home Screen
On iPhone, it walks you through adding it to the Home Screen.

What it does

Hijazi Wallet keeps track of cash and bank balances in Iraqi dinars or dollars, along with loans, savings goals and extra income. You log an expense by typing it, snapping a receipt, or telling Hijazi Advisor, the AI built into the app. Ask it “can I afford this?” and it answers from your actual balance and the payments still due this month.

What was hard

Apple’s developer program isn’t open to people in Iraq, so the iPhone version is a web app you add to your Home Screen. It still locks with a passcode, keeps working offline, and backs up to your account. The Android app is in closed testing on Google Play.

Arabic had to be right from day one, because the first users are Iraqi. On the web that meant rebuilding how the whole layout mirrors from right to left.

BD Audit

In daily use at Basra Delight

Food-safety audits for a restaurant group: hygiene checklists, fryer-oil tests and marination times, all checked from the phone.

A supervisor's home screen with Oil test, Chicken marination and today's hygiene checklist
A supervisor’s day: oil tests, marination, the hygiene checklist.
Oil test form: pick the fryer, photograph the tester, enter TPM and temperature; the test is flagged 9 minutes late
Oil test: photo of the tester, the reading, and a reason if it’s late.
Checklists by branch, showing a late checklist waiting for a decision and verified ones below
The auditor sees every branch’s checklists, late ones first.
Deciding a late checklist: the reason, an earlier warning, three choices, and a map showing it was sent from the kitchen
A late checklist: reason, history, location. Then a fair decision.
The checklists screen in Arabic
Staff can use it in Arabic or English.
An oil test report as a PDF: reading of 11.5 TPM marked Good, with branch, fryer, time and proof photo
Any record can be shared as a PDF report.

What it does

Supervisors fill in the daily hygiene checklist, test the fryer oil and log chicken marination on their phones, with photos, a selfie, a signature and their location. Auditors review each one and see who was late. Managers get reminders before each deadline, and every record can be shared as a PDF in English or Arabic.

What was hard

Being fair. A late checklist isn’t an automatic fine: the auditor sees the reason, the person’s earlier warnings and whether they were really in the kitchen, then chooses no penalty, a warning or a fine. Every decision is logged.

Reminders arrive as real push notifications, on iPhone too, even though the app installs from a web link instead of the App Store.

Inventory App

Windows desktop app, in use

Stock control for a restaurant’s central store: what came in, what went out, and what to order next.

Dashboard with product count, low-stock and stock value cards above a stock overview table
Every item’s stock for the month, with low stock flagged.
Smart Order: suggested purchase quantities for the next 10 days by supplier
Smart Order turns the daily average into a purchase list.
Full monthly report with charts of the most used and most purchased items
The full report, ready to export to Excel.
Branch orders entry: quantity used per product for a date
Daily entry: what each branch took from the store.

What it does

Each day you enter what the branches took from the store and what was bought. The app keeps a running balance for every item (opening stock, minus what was used, plus purchases and adjustments), values it at cost and flags anything running low. Smart Order turns the daily average into a purchase list for the next 7 to 30 days, grouped by supplier.

What was hard

Making the numbers easy to trust. Every cost change goes into a price history and every entry into an activity log, so a surprising figure can always be traced back to the day it came from. It handles several stores and works in English or Arabic.

Daily Sales Forecast

Windows desktop app, in use

Predicts tomorrow’s sales for each branch, and how much chicken the kitchen needs for them.

Forecast for Monday: about 5.28 million IQD expected, likely range 4.9 to 5.5 million, and the expected items
A forecast with a likely range, not just one number.
Calendar of September with each day's sales and units
Every imported day on a calendar. Weekends stand out.
Dashboard with days on record, total sales, and a monthly performance chart
Months side by side for one branch.
Order sheet: 175.7 kg of chicken required for the forecast date
The order sheet: kilos of chicken for the forecast day.

What it does

It reads the daily sales reports from the Omega POS system and builds each branch’s history day by day. For any date it forecasts sales from how that weekday has actually sold, adjusted for the recent trend, and lists the items expected to sell. The order sheet turns that into the chicken the kitchen needs to prepare.

What was hard

Seven locations of very different sizes. Mixing them made forecasts four and a half times too high, so each location is forecast on its own, and a shop running two tills is added together rather than counted once. Delivery-app orders are tracked as their own channels.

Branch Sales Analyzer

Try it in your browser

Load a month of point-of-sale data and see what really sells, and what changed since last month.

Six months of sample data: strongest and weakest month, revenue by month with a moving average
Six months at once, with the trend line and the story in one sentence.
The analyzer on a phone screen
It works on a phone too.

What it does

It ranks every item by revenue or quantity, compares months side by side, and calls out the biggest gains and drops, new items, and items that stopped selling. A monthly chart with a moving average shows the direction. Everything runs in your browser: the file never leaves your computer.

What was hard

One of the POS export formats repeats subtotal rows inside the item list. Counting them makes every total exactly four times too high, and the result still looks believable. The analyzer reads both formats and drops the subtotals.

Teacher Exam Builder

Open source, Mac and Windows

Build an exam from a question bank and print it as a clean PDF, in English or Arabic.

Exam builder with three sections of questions, marks per section and a total of 47
Sections, drag-and-drop order, marks totalled as you go.
Exported English exam PDF with school header, student fields and instructions
The exported PDF, ready to print.
Exported Arabic exam PDF laid out right to left
The same in Arabic, right to left.
Question bank with filters by subject, type, difficulty and topic
A reusable question bank, searchable and filtered.
The app interface in Arabic
The whole interface also runs in Arabic.

What it does

Teachers keep reusable questions in five types: multiple choice, true or false, short answer, essay, and fill in the blank. An exam is built in sections by drag and drop, with marks totalled as you go, then exported as a print-ready PDF with student fields, instructions and the right amount of answer space.

What was hard

Arabic PDFs. The letters have to join correctly and lines have to read right to left, while question numbers and marks still land on the correct side. And when a question goes into an exam, the exam keeps its own copy, so editing the bank never changes an exam that was already given.

Resume

I started in hospitality in 2011 as a banquet captain at the Crowne Plaza in Beirut, trained in hospitality management in Lebanon, and went on to run restaurants in South Sudan and Iraq. Today I’m Inventory Control Specialist and Baghdad Branch Manager at Basra Delight, a restaurant group based in Basra.

The apps grew out of that work. When a spreadsheet stopped being enough, for stock, for sales, for making sure every branch keeps its food safe, I built the tool instead. Each one is tested on real work before anyone else relies on it.

Outside the restaurants I build for the people around me: a money app that handles two currencies, and an exam builder for teachers.

Download my resume (PDF)
2011
the year I started in hospitality
20%
less inventory waste
$15K+
saved every year
65+
staff led in one branch

Experience

  • Feb 2026 to presentBasra Delight, Baghdad

    Branch Manager, Accountant & Store Keeper

    Run the Baghdad branch together with its accounting and its two stores: the main store, which takes the large supplier orders, and the branch store.

    • Check the branch’s daily closing reports, and its Toters and Baly delivery sales, against our own records.
    • Count the main store every week and reconcile it with head office.
    • Handle supplier payments, cash reconciliation and salaries, and report to head office in Basra every day.

  • June 2025 to presentBasra Delight, Basra and Karbala

    Inventory Control Specialist

    Manage inventory operations for 200+ stock items, working directly with purchasing, stock tracking and financial record-keeping. On site in Basra until January 2026, and remote for the Basra and Karbala branches since February 2026.

    • Improved restocking efficiency by 35%, eliminating stockouts during peak periods.
    • Maintained a zero error rate in financial records through careful data entry.
    • Daily warehouse audits with 100% accuracy and FIFO compliance.

  • Oct 2023 to May 2025Basra Delight, Basra

    Assistant Operations Manager

    Helped run daily operations across several high-volume Basra Delight branches, leading a team of 65+ staff in one of them, before moving to head office as Inventory Controller.

    • Maintained a 95% customer satisfaction rating.
    • Introduced 15+ menu items with the executive chefs, increasing average check size by 18%.
    • Cut new-employee ramp-up time by 40% through revised training.

  • Jan 2023 to Aug 2023Big Bites Restaurant, Juba

    Manager & Chef

    Ran the kitchen and front of house of a multi-concept restaurant in South Sudan.

    • Designed menus adapted to local tastes, increasing repeat customer visits by 30%.
    • Built teamwork between the kitchen and service teams, cutting staff turnover by 50%.

  • Sep 2021 to Dec 2022Delta for Contracting, Juba

    Foreman

    Supervised construction projects from start to finish, in full compliance with safety regulations and project specifications.

    • Delivered projects within 5% of their projected timelines.
    • Trained and mentored 10+ new team members.

  • Apr 2020 to Sep 2021Online freelancer

    Gift Cards & Subscriptions Associate

    Handled customer orders and inquiries for gift cards and subscriptions.

    • Processed orders with 99% accuracy and a 4.8/5 customer satisfaction score.
    • Resolved 95% of customer issues on first contact.

  • Sep 2018 to Nov 2021Fouad Houssein Used Spare Parts, Lebanon

    Salesman

    Sold used spare parts to customers in the shop.

  • Jul 2011 to Jul 2014Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Beirut

    Banquet Captain

    Led banquet service for the hotel’s events and functions.

Education

  • 2014 to 2017Bir Hassan Institute, Lebanon

    Technical Baccalaureate in Hospitality Management

Skills

  • Inventory control
  • Accounting
  • Branch management
  • Vendor relations and procurement
  • Food cost control
  • POS systems (Omega POS)
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Team leadership
  • Menu development
  • Data analysis and reporting
  • Arabic and English

Tech I build with

  • React Native and Expo
  • JavaScript and TypeScript
  • Python
  • Electron desktop apps
  • SQL, SQLite and Supabase
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Qt (PySide6)
  • Web push notifications