School Project (Android Development) point me in the right direction

For school project i must develop an android app. Actually 2 (user/owner)

This is the concept: App for take-away restaurant where user can select dishes in the app, then somehow confirm his order. I also must develop a second app (for the restaurant owner) where new orders will pop and he can prepare them and afterwards send back a notification to the user that his order is ready to be picked up.

Additional info.. I am allowed to use a sql server for this because every order must also be a new record in the database for archive purposes and so the owner can somehow lookup all orders for past month(s).

What i need to know.. I need ideas about how to structure the orders/sql/notifications part.. i know android cant directly communicate with a MySql server. So what do i have to put in-between? I did some research and found out that perhaps a simple web service that will pass the requests to the database is a solution here. Any advice on that? Also any advice on how to do Owner-to-Client notifications when a order is ready to be picked up?

PS. the second app does not have to be an android app.. can be a simple java program made to pull (and perhaps print) orders with the functionality of changing the order status and push notifications back to the client.

All advice || suggestions are welcome