Amela
ℹ︎For confidentiality, company names, project names, and system images have been replaced with pseudonyms and mock-ups.
Minato Welfare Services Co., Ltd. — New Platform Launch Story

Meal management at nursing facilities,Built in-house from scratchto a digital platform.

CareMeal is a meal management platform connecting nursing and welfare facilities with catering vendors. It unifies everything from per-resident meal reservations to ordering, consumption records, and billing on a single platform.

The launch story of how a brand-new cloud platform, built in-house from scratch, resolved the frontline pain of "managing eaten/skipped meals by phone, fax and Excel, racing against cutoff times, and hand-calculating billing at month-end."

Meal records
Real-time visibility
Catering orders
One-click confirmation
Billing work
Monthly auto-issue
Meal-type support
Regular to pureed meals
Amela
CareMeal Today's meals
Eaten
128
Skipped
12
101
Resident A
Regular
Eaten
102
Resident I
Minced meal
Skipped
106
Resident O
Low-sodium meal
Change
Confirm order
01
CLIENT
About the client

"Minato Welfare Services," one of Japan's leading operators of nursing and welfare facilities.

They operate many nursing and welfare facilities across multiple areas, serving daily meals to residents and users. Each facility must tailor meal types to each person's condition — regular, minced, pureed, low-sodium and more — adjusting for daily health and medical visits.

Meals are ordered from and provided by an external catering vendor. The facility, the vendor and HQ must share daily-changing meal information accurately, and the accuracy and speed of that data flow determine operational quality.

500+
Facilities onboarded
300k meals
Monthly meal data
4Meal type
Supports regular to pureed meals
BUSINESS FLOW — The meal management process
STEP 01 · Facility staff
Meal reservation
Register each resident's eaten/skipped status and meal type on a calendar
STEP 02 · Platform
Auto-tally meal counts
Auto-aggregate into per-facility meal counts within the cutoff
STEP 03 · Catering vendor
Cooking & delivery
Receive orders and serve based on the menu and meal-count sheets
STEP 04 · HQ
Stats & auto-billing
Aggregate monthly from consumption records and auto-issue invoices
02
CHALLENGE
Design challenges to solve

Keep daily-changing meals running accurately and without interruption.

These were not technical problems but operational challenges tied directly to resident safety, frontline workload, coordination with the catering vendor, and billing accuracy. The new platform had to solve them all at once.

Managing eaten/skipped accurately prevents meal mix-ups and waste
With transcription by phone, fax and Excel,Daily changes easily lead to mistakes.
Confirming orders within the cutoff lets the catering vendor prepare with room to spare
Daily meal tallying was by hand, andchronic last-minute notices were routine.
Flexibly handling changes in health and allergies leads to safer meal service
Meal-type changes and cancellationsa daily risk of missed sharing was present.
Automating billing from consumption records greatly cuts month-end work
Per-facility meal tallying and billinghand-calculation, concentrated at month-end were routine.
03
ARCHITECTURE
The architecture we built together

From reservation to billing, on one platform.

Unifies the work of three parties — facility, catering vendor, and HQ — on a single platform built entirely in-house from scratch. Manage each resident's meals on a calendar, auto-tally meal counts, and hand them off to the catering vendor. Consumption records then flow automatically into statistics and billing.

AmelaEXECUTION
8 months
Duration
42 person-months
Total effort
Domain ①
Dining booking
Challenges
Managing eaten/skipped in paper ledgers and Excel, with slow updates
Solution
Centralized on a calendar
One tap per resident to change eaten/skipped status or meal type
Domain ②
Ordering integration
Challenges
Meal tallying done by hand, with orders to the catering vendor going out at the last minute
Solution
Auto-tally meal counts and auto-order
Aggregate by facility and meal type, and send within the cutoff
Domain ③
Stats & billing
Challenges
Hand-calculate meal counts at month-end and create per-facility billing
Solution
Auto-issue invoices from consumption records
Visualize meal trends on a dashboard as well
Domain ④
Auth & integration
Challenges
Separate login management needed for facility, vendor, and HQ
Solution
Unify authentication with SAML SSO
Secure access with role-based permissions
TECH STACK
Frontend
React Ant Design Chart.js
Backend
NestJS Sequelize
Infra & Integration
MySQL AWS SSAML SSO
04
IMPACT
The value the platform creates

A platform that reduces frontline workload and supports safe meal service.

A platform for real-time visibility into meals
Visualize eaten/skipped meals without waiting for month-end, keeping both service and billing accurate.
A mechanism to confirm orders with one click
Meal counts reach the catering vendor automatically within the cutoff, creating breathing room for preparation.
A setup that can auto-issue billing
Auto-generate per-facility invoices from consumption records, compressing month-end work.
Coordination where all three parties share the same information
Facility, catering vendor, and HQ stay connected with always-current meal information.
🧑‍🦽
STAKEHOLDER
Residents & users
✕ Typically
Missed change updates risk meal mix-ups
✓ At Minato Welfare Services,
Meal-type and health changes reflect instantly
Safe meal service
The right meal for each person, reliably
👩‍⚕️
STAKEHOLDER
Facility staff
✕ Typically
Buried in meal management via phone, fax, and manual transcription
✓ At Minato Welfare Services,
Enter on a calendar and order with one click
Greatly reduce record-keeping work
Free up time for the core care work
🚚
STAKEHOLDER
Catering vendor
✕ Typically
Last-minute meal-count notices squeeze preparation
✓ At Minato Welfare Services,
Receive orders by facility and meal type early
Cooking and delivery with room to spare
Curb food waste and overtime
🏢
STAKEHOLDER
HQ & operations
✕ Typically
Hand-tally meal counts at month-end to create billing
✓ At Minato Welfare Services,
Auto-issue invoices from consumption records
Make month-end work zero-touch
Grasp accurate management data instantly
05
DEMO
Three scenarios

Experience meal management with a working demo.