That’s how Elías met LibreOffice Base .

But the magic was a button labeled When clicked, a macro ran a query that opened a second form listing every product with less than 20 units left, automatically sorted by supplier. The manager could now order empanada dough before the lunch rush even started.

He even added a with custom buttons: "Save & Next Zone" and "Report Waste," which opened a tiny dialog form to log broken jars or expired cheese directly into a MERMAS table.

He set up the tables: PRODUCTOS , CLIENTES , PROVEEDORES , VENTAS . The raw data was solid, like a clean kitchen counter. But the problem was never the data—it was the people . The waiters were too busy, the manager was impatient, and the new stock boy was terrified of databases.

Elías was the data keeper of "El Rincón del Sabor," a sprawling family restaurant that had grown from a single taco stand into a three-story labyrinth of kitchens, warehouses, and a loyalty club with 5,000 members. For years, he managed everything with a chaotic system of spreadsheets, sticky notes, and an ancient Access database that crashed if you looked at it wrong.