If you’ve been looking for restaurant food cost software, we’ve got a guide for you!
No restaurant can be successful if it doesn't have a tight grip on its food costs and profit margins. This is why having the right restaurant food cost software in place is so valuable.
Restaurant food costing software lets you accurately manage recipe costs and understand how much your restaurant makes from each menu item. This is essential for planning the right menu, managing your inventory, and ensuring your restaurant sales are actually resulting in profits.
In this guide, we’re going to uncover some of the best restaurant food and beverage costing solutions. First, let’s dive into what this software actually is!
What is Restaurant Food Cost Software?
Restaurant food and beverage costing software refers to tools that let restaurants easily calculate their food and beverage costs for all menu items. Understanding the cost of ingredients and the recipes that are created from them is essential for producing a profitable menu.
Using the right food and beverage costing software helps you to be smarter about how you create and price menu items, as well as how you manage inventory. Many recipe costing software tools also include accounting and inventory management solutions to help you manage your food costs more efficiently.
Food costing software needs to work with your restaurant’s POS system. In fact, many POS systems include their own recipe costing feature. This makes it easier to add new menu items, monitor sales, and track your profits.
Accurately pricing menu items can be a real challenge for any kind of restaurant, which is why using the right restaurant food costing software is so useful.
Best Restaurant Food Cost Software Solutions
Food costing software makes menu costing a far more accurate and efficient process. This is critical to get right if you want your restaurant to run profitably.
If you’re looking for the right restaurant software program designed for managing recipe costs, then here are some of the best solutions available right now.
1. Craftable
Craftable is an accounting and food cost management platform designed for the hospitality industry. You can use it to cover various accounting and financial management tasks.
Craftable offers a solid range of accounting features. This includes all of the accounting tools your restaurant will need for more accurate and efficient financial management. Of course, there are also effective food costing and reporting tools.
You can use Craftable to automate invoice management, payments, and operational reporting. The platform is designed to maximize efficiency while providing a single online platform to manage all areas of your restaurant’s finances.
Craftable also offers some helpful integrations with POS systems and other restaurant software solutions. This can make it a convenient restaurant accounting software tool.
Main Features
- Food costing and reporting tools
- Automated invoice management
- Payment automation
- Operational reporting
- Over 60+ integrations
2. MarketMan
MarketMan is a complete restaurant inventory management system that incorporates many features. The focal point of the software is its order management and inventory tools. MarketMan also includes a recipe costing software tool.
The recipe costing features provide restaurants with a complete cost breakdown of each menu item. The useful thing about MarketMan is that there’s also integrated price tracking, real-time alerts, and automated price updates. This means you get a full menu analysis with this tool to help you build a more profitable menu.
You can access quite a wide range of functionality from this platform.
Main Features
- Recipe costing software
- Purchasing and ordering management
- Inventory management
- Expense tracking
3. Apicbase
Apicbase is a food and beverage management solution. It includes restaurant food cost software. The platform provides complete visibility into back-of-house operations. A key part of this is providing cost insights into the restaurant’s menu items.
Restaurants can use Apicbase for menu engineering, inventory management, procurement, running sales analyses, planning the menu, planning production, and more.
It’s not the only platform that can help you understand recipe costing, but it does offer many insights into your menu and restaurant performance.
Apicbase keeps all of your restaurant’s data in a central place. It’s a fairly straightforward tool to use, allowing you to efficiently manage all your food and beverage inventory tasks. Ultimately, it can help restaurants design and manage more profitable menus while reducing food waste.
Main Features
- Menu engineering
- Menu planning
- Inventory and procurement management
- Detailed sales analytics
4. MarginEdge
MarginEdge is a powerful food costing software solution. You can use MarginEdge to gain clear insights into your food costs, as well as automate various back-office operations from a single platform.
MarginEdge includes a wide range of financial management tools for restaurants. This incorporates invoice processing, cost management, inventory management, and recipe analysis tools into the platform. These different tools all help you gain detailed insights into how your restaurant’s food sales are performing, what your profit margins look like, and how to optimize your menu.
The platform integrates with your POS system, allowing you to easily incorporate the software into your restaurant’s operations.
Main Features
- Invoice processing
- Cost management
- Inventory and food usage
- Recipe and menu analysis
- Back office efficiencies
5. Restaurant365
Restaurant365 is a restaurant management software solution that you can use for accounting, store operations, and workforce management.
A key part of the platform’s Store Operations module is recipe costing software. This lets you automate item and recipe costing for easy menu management. The tool also offers some insights into your food costs. For example, you can compare actual versus. predicted food costs in real-time, as well as easily identify patterns in food waste.
Besides offering food and beverage costing software, Restaurant365 also incorporates other features into its platform. This includes a complete restaurant accounting solution, inventory management tools, workforce management, detailed insights, and restaurant intelligence.
If you’re looking for restaurant food cost software that’s part of a larger restaurant software solution, then Restaurant365 is a good choice.
Main Features
- Recipe management software
- Sales forecasting tools
- Restaurant accounting solution
- Restaurant workforce management
- Actionable, dynamic data insights
6. Meez
Meez is a kitchen management software tool designed for chefs. The software includes features for food costing, recipe organization, and team training.
The central focus of Meez is on food costing and helping restaurants get accurate insights into their food costs. This includes detailed insights into things like prep loss, UoM, and accounting for yields.
There is also a recipe organization tool, and a helpful scaling and conversions tool to reduce food waste when planning menus.
It’s easy to fit Meez into your existing restaurant software stack, and it can provide some valuable insights and assistants for all areas of kitchen management.
Main Features
- Food costing
- Recipe scaling and conversions
- Recipe organization
- Staff training
Conclusion
There are many solutions available if you’re looking for restaurant food and beverage costing software. Whether you’re looking for an all-in-one software platform or a simple cost calculator, make sure your restaurant uses a costing tool designed for the restaurant industry.
This is one of the most valuable pieces of software to help you accurately manage and improve profits.
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