About me
My name is Arif Yeniözdoğdu. I live in İstanbul and I have been working for myself since 2010. I work in three areas: food, IT and software. They are not three unrelated hobbies — each one grew out of the one before it.
I started in food
In 2010 I started out trading food. The first years taught me the side of the business nobody sees: supply, cost, waste, the count at the end of the day. The product in the window is always the same; the difference is made by the arithmetic behind it. Then I moved from trading to operating, and stepped inside the shop.
Running a business and building one are not the same job
Today I operate Keyf-i Kumpir & Waffle branches in five districts of İstanbul — Bostancı, Ataşehir, Kartal, Maltepe and Ümraniye — along with one Chef's Yusuf branch. I have also built brands of my own.
Running someone else's brand at a profit is a different job from building your own. Someone else sets the rules and you produce the result. What the standard is, why it exists, and where bending it breaks the business — I learned that in franchise branches.
The branches I operate
These brands are not mine. I am the side that runs the branches, and I write it that way on purpose: what I am selling here is the operation, not the name above the door.
The brands I built
Kıtır Waffle, Rakelyan Cafe Fast Food, and Hadi Yiyelim !!! as a restaurant — the name I later gave to the software as well. Here I saw the consequence of every decision directly, from the menu and the prices to the sign above the door and the packaging.
The second line: technology
In the same years I opened a second line: supplying technology to corporate companies. Servers, network hardware, licences and the rest. Being the side that delivered the product, I saw up close where corporate IT departments get stuck — and the problem was usually not a missing product, but that nobody had taken ownership of the job.
Over time the work moved from supply to service. Today ArfYzd Bilişim supports the IT departments of corporate companies with its own team: virtualization, databases, networks and server management. I have never advertised this side. The work came through people who knew us, it stayed small on purpose, and it never appeared online. This site is the first place I describe the IT work openly.
I wrote the software because I needed it
I didn't come to software in order to sell it. I came to it because my own business needed it. Off-the-shelf programs either did half the job or asked me to bend the business to fit the program. In the end I sat down and wrote it myself.
It happened in this order, and each step paid for the next one.
First, my own shops
Internal systems for businesses I was already running, where I could see the same day whether a decision had helped.
Then, work for someone else
Job-tracking applications written for another owner's business, against his routine rather than mine.
Then, mobile
Applications and games on iOS and Android. Every application I write today is running inside a real business — mine, or one belonging to someone I work with.
PpfxTR
I founded and own PpfxTR; the brand is registered. In Kartal we do vehicle paint protection and wrapping.
The service ERP, the online contracts the customer approves from their own phone and the one-time-code verification behind them are all mine — I built them and I still run them. This is where my three lines of work meet at once: the business is mine, the software is mine, the systems are mine.
Efil Hukuk
I founded Efil Hukuk. The legal work is done by lawyers; I run the systems and the process — case flow, record keeping, internal software and reporting.
It is the same division of labour I use everywhere else: the person who knows the craft does the craft, and I make sure the work leaves a record behind it.
Expert witness and mediator
I serve as a court-appointed expert witness and as a certified mediator in the Turkish legal system. Both gave me habits rather than titles: don't talk about a file you haven't read, and don't decide before you have heard both sides. Those habits are just as useful in a partnership meeting, or in a dealership meeting.
It all came together in one product
Everything that built up in the restaurants and in the code came together in one product: Hadi Yiyelim !!!, a food ordering platform. The customer website, the iOS and Android apps, the courier app, the restaurant panel and the back office — I wrote all of them.
My advantage here is that I know both sides from the inside. When I design a restaurant panel I know how many taps the job can take at the busy hour, because I have stood behind that counter at that hour. When I design a courier screen I know the courier has no free hand for the phone. That is the whole point of coming out of the kitchen and writing your own software: you know which question to ask.