meal-planner/docs/instructions.md

Payload CMS Backend Developer Challenge: Meal Planner

Thank you for your interest in this role. This challenge is designed to assess your skills in backend development, data modeling, problem-solving, and your ability to customize the Payload CMS Admin Panel to build a complete, practical solution.

1. The Problem

The Current Manual Workflow

In a busy elderly care home, the meal ordering process is entirely manual and paper-based.

The Caregiver's Daily Routine: Every day, three times a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner), a caregiver walks from room to room with a stack of pre-printed paper forms. They ask each resident for their meal preferences and mark the choices on paper. These forms are then collected and delivered to the kitchen.

The Kitchen Staff's Daily Routine: The kitchen staff receives all the collected paper forms. Their workflow involves:

• Reading each individual form to understand what needs to be prepared for each resident
• Manually tallying all ingredients across all forms (e.g., "82 bread rolls, 65 portions of butter...") to know what quantities are needed for the next day
• Checking off each form one by one as they prepare individual meal trays
• Discarding the forms after the meal is served

The Original Paper Forms

Figure 1: Original paper form for Breakfast orders

Figure 2: Original paper form for Lunch orders

Figure 3: Original paper form for Dinner orders

Pain Points of the Manual System

• Error-prone: Papers can be lost, misread, or damaged
• Time-consuming: Manual counting and tallying is slow
• No historical data: Once a meal is served, there's no record for analytics or planning
• Inefficient: Kitchen staff must handle each paper multiple times
• No visibility: No way to track what's been prepared vs. what's pending

2. Your Challenge

Your task is to digitize this entire workflow using Payload CMS.

You need to design and build a solution that:

• Allows caregivers to efficiently capture meal preferences digitally
• Enables kitchen staff to see aggregated ingredient needs for meal planning
• Provides a way to track meal preparation progress
• Maintains historical data for analytics and reporting
• Implements proper access control for different user roles

3. Required User Roles & Access Control

Your solution must support three distinct user roles with appropriate access control:

• Admin: Full system access
• Caregiver: Needs to capture meal preferences from residents
• Kitchen: Needs to view meal orders, plan ingredients, and track meal preparation

You must design and implement the appropriate access control for each role. Consider:

• What data should each role be able to create, read, update, or delete?
• Are there specific fields that should be read-only for certain roles?
• What parts of the admin interface should each role have access to?

4. Core Requirements

Your solution must address the following key requirements:

A. Data Model

You need to design a data model that captures all the information from the paper forms (see figures above). At minimum, your model should support:

• Resident information (permanent data like name, room number, dietary restrictions, etc.)
• Meal orders with:
  • Date and meal type (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)
  • All the meal-specific options shown in the paper forms
  • Order status tracking (e.g., pending vs. prepared)
  • Any special dietary notes or preferences

Note: The paper forms show different fields for each meal type. Your data model should reflect this.

B. Caregiver Workflow

Caregivers need an efficient way to:

• Select a resident
• Choose the date and meal type
• Quickly enter meal preferences based on the resident's choices
• Submit the order

The interface should be optimized for speed and ease of use on a tablet.

C. Kitchen Workflow

Kitchen staff need to:

• View aggregated ingredient needs: Select a date and meal type to see a summary of all ingredients needed (e.g., "82 bread rolls, 65 portions of butter")
• Access detailed order information: See individual resident orders for meal preparation
• Track preparation progress: Mark orders as prepared/completed
• Historical data: Be able to review past orders for analytics and planning

D. Kitchen Dashboard

You must create a custom page in the Payload Admin UI where kitchen staff can:

• Select a date and meal type
• Generate a report showing aggregated ingredient quantities
• The report can be displayed as JSON or in a more user-friendly format

5. Technical Constraints

• Platform: Must be built using Payload CMS
• Database: Must use PostgreSQL database adapter (@payloadcms/db-postgres)
• Seeding: Must include a seed script that runs on onInit (in payload.config.ts) to populate test data
• Authentication: Use Payload's built-in authentication system with the three required roles

6. Reference: Paper Form Fields

To help you build an accurate data model, here are the fields from each paper form:

Breakfast Form Fields

• Frühstück lt. Plan (Breakfast according to plan)
• Bread items: Brötchen (bread roll), Vollkornbrötchen (whole grain roll), Graubrot (grey bread), Vollkornbrot (whole grain bread), Weißbrot (white bread), Knäckebrot (crispbread)
• Brei (puree/porridge)
• Bread preparation: geschnitten (sliced), geschmiert (spread)
• Spreads: Butter, Margarine, Konfitüre (jam), Diab. Konfitüre (diabetic jam), Honig (honey), Käse (cheese), Quark, Wurst (sausage)
• Beverages: Kaffee (coffee), Tee (tea), Milch heiß (hot milk), Milch kalt (cold milk)
• Additions: Zucker (sugar), Süßstoff (sweetener), Kaffeesahne (coffee creamer)

Lunch Form Fields

• Portion size: Kleine Portion (small), Große Portion (large), Vollwertkost vegetarisch (whole-food vegetarian)
• Suppe (soup)
• Dessert
• Special preparations: passierte Kost (pureed food), passiertes Fleisch (pureed meat), geschnittenes Fleisch (sliced meat), Kartoffelbrei (mashed potatoes)
• Restrictions: ohne Fisch (no fish), Fingerfood, nur süß (only sweet)

Dinner Form Fields

• Abendessen lt. Plan (Dinner according to plan)
• Bread items: Graubrot (grey bread), Vollkornbrot (whole grain bread), Weißbrot (white bread), Knäckebrot (crispbread)
• Bread preparation: geschmiert (spread), geschnitten (sliced)
• Spreads: Butter, Margarine
• Suppe (soup), Brei (puree)
• ohne Fisch (no fish)
• Beverages: Tee (tea), Kakao (cocoa), Milch heiß (hot milk), Milch kalt (cold milk)
• Additions: Zucker (sugar), Süßstoff (sweetener)

Common Fields (All Forms)

• Resident information: Name, Zimmer (room), Tisch (table), Station
• Hochkalorisch (high calorie)
• Abneigungen (aversions/dislikes)
• Sonstiges (other notes)

7. Seeding & Submission

Seed Data Requirements

Your project must include a seed script that runs on onInit (in payload.config.ts). This script must create:

• Users:
  • admin@example.com (password: test, role: admin)
  • caregiver@example.com (password: test, role: caregiver)
  • kitchen@example.com (password: test, role: kitchen)
• Sample Data:
  • At least 5-10 sample residents with realistic information
  • At least 15-20 sample meal orders covering different residents, meal types, and dates
  • Mix of pending and completed orders to demonstrate the workflow

Submission Instructions

You do not need to deploy this project.

1. Create a new public GitHub repository for your solution
2. Build your solution locally
3. Ensure your seed script runs correctly on pnpm dev
4. Commit all your code to your repository
5. Include a README.md in your repository with:
   • Instructions on how to run the project locally
   • Confirmation that the seed script works and the login credentials
   • Brief explanation of your design decisions:
     • How you structured your data model and why
     • How you implemented access control for the three roles
     • How you designed the kitchen dashboard and aggregation
     • Any challenges you faced and how you solved them
6. Email the link to your repository to with your job application to jobs@layerfinance.com (cc: mihael.presecan@layerfinance.com)

8. Evaluation Criteria

Your solution will be evaluated on:

• Problem-solving approach: How well you understood the workflow and translated it into a digital solution
• Data modeling: Quality and appropriateness of your Payload collections and field structure
• Access control: Proper implementation of role-based permissions
• User experience: How intuitive and efficient the interfaces are for each role
• Code quality: Clean, well-organized, and maintainable code
• Payload expertise: Effective use of Payload's features and best practices

9. Bonus Points (Optional)

These are not required but will make your application stand out:

• Enhanced UI: Create a more polished kitchen dashboard using Payload's UI components instead of raw JSON
• Additional features: Any other improvements that would make the system more useful in a real care home setting

Good luck! We look forward to seeing your creative solution.