Not an app.
A hire
Tessa is the maintenance manager who lives in your team's texts. Your crew texts her the way they'd text you. She figures out what's broken, gets the right vendor moving, and keeps everyone posted until it's fixed. At every location. At 2am. Without you.
You didn't open a restaurant to chase down an HVAC guy
The walk-in's down. Again
A fire to put out before you've had coffee. And it's your phone that buzzed.
Just to get one tech on site
Who did we use last time? What's their number? Are they even in our system?
You hear about it as an emergency
No visibility until a problem is already costing you covers and comped tables.
You are the whole system
Every vendor, every quirk, every repair history lives in your memory. When you're off, the system is off.
The best hire you've ever made
She never clocks out
Your team just texts
No app. No login. No training. They text the problem, and a photo exactly like they'd text you. It's the interface they already use fifty times a day.
She handles it
Tessa asks a few questions, logs the ticket against the right piece of equipment, and texts your vendor for that job. Day or night.
You get the summary
She keeps your team and vendor in sync until it's fixed, and pings you only when something's urgent or stuck. You stay out of the fire drill and keep running the business.
What Tessa won't do without you
She never spends a dollar without your approval
Tessa gets the right tech moving. Quotes, approvals and invoices run through controls you set, so nothing gets paid without a sign-off.
She only texts vendors you've approved
No marketplace, no random techs showing up at your back door. If nobody on your list fits the job, she hands it to your manager.
She doesn't let a job go quiet
Vendor says no or doesn't answer? She moves to the next one on your list. Still no response after three, she flags your manager.
Stuck jobs come to you, not to a dashboard
An urgent repair still open after 8 hours gets texted to your managers and to you. Routine ones get flagged after two days.
You could never justify a facilities manager. Until now
With 3 to 20 locations, a full-time maintenance hire doesn't pencil. So the job falls to you. Tessa fills that role for a fraction of a salary, priced per location. You're not buying a tool. You're filling a role.
The record builds itself
Every text becomes a ticket. Equipment, repair history, which vendor showed up and how fast, all captured as a byproduct of Tessa doing her job. It's not another system your team has to remember to update. And every Monday you get the recap and forecast in one text.
I run four restaurants. I built Tessa for mine first
I'm Chris Viola. I run four restaurants and build them for other operators. I've been on both sides of the walk-in: paying for the repair and pulling the permit for it. For years our maintenance system was me: my phone, my vendor list, my memory of which walk-in acts up in July.
Tessa is the hire I wanted and could never justify. I'm rolling her out in my own restaurants alongside our first design partners, so every rough edge hits me first, and I fix it that week.
What owners ask me first
Who sets her up?
We do it with you. Send us your locations, your vendor list and the equipment that breaks most, and we load it. Your team gets one number to text. That's their whole onboarding.
Do my vendors need an app?
No. Tessa texts them the job and they text back: yes, no, an ETA, or done. If they can answer a text from you, they can answer one from her.
I already have a maintenance system
Keep it. Most systems still need someone to type the issue in and chase the vendor. That's the part Tessa does. Tell me what you use on the call and we'll figure out how they fit.
What if she gets it wrong?
She asks before she guesses, she only works your vendor list, and anything stuck lands with your managers. Worst case looks like today: a person picks up the phone.
I know what happens when you hand your team one more app. It gets ignored by week two
That's why Tessa isn't one. Your crew already knows how to text. That's the whole interface. I built it this way because I wasn't about to hand my own team something they'd never open.