Key Takeaways:
- Restaurant inventory management software is an advanced management system designed specifically to help restaurants better manage inventory.
- Implementing the best restaurant inventory software provides numerous advantages, like reduced food costs and waste, enhanced traceability and compliance, lower labor costs & more.
- The first step in choosing restaurant inventory software is outlining your current inventory management needs and pain points. Consider factors like your restaurant type and size, typical ingredient volumes, food prep processes, and staffing.
Whether you’re a seasoned restaurateur or just opening your first eatery, you know one truth that applies across the hospitality industry – profits are slim. In fact, according to the National Restaurant Association’s report, 75% of restaurants in the United States struggle to maintain positive cash flow, largely due to challenges in managing and minimizing food costs.
Looking for Restaurant Management Software? Check out SoftwareSuggest’s list of the best Restaurant Management Software solutions.
Luckily, today’s robust restaurant inventory management systems can provide real solutions to get your food costs under control. By tracking your ingredient usage, the best platforms help restaurants large and small increase visibility, reduce food waste, streamline ordering, and ultimately drive profitability.
Let’s get started –
What Is Restaurant Inventory Management Software?
Restaurant inventory management software is an advanced inventory management system designed specifically to help restaurants better manage inventory. It allows restaurants to closely track ingredient usage, inventory counts, vendor orders, inventory spending, waste, and theft.
Choose a restaurant inventory management system that seamlessly integrates with your point-of-sale (POS) and accounting software. This integration streamlines the entire process, from order placement to financial reporting, providing a comprehensive solution for effective restaurant management. Accurate tracking ensures optimal stock levels, reduces waste, and enhances overall operational efficiency.
This type of inventory tracking software creates visibility into the quantity and value of food and other items that restaurants have on hand at any given time. The best restaurant inventory management platforms make use of barcodes, digital ordering, integrations, and reporting tools to seamlessly manage inventory processes.
With real-time tracking and analysis capabilities, they allow restaurant managers and staff to make data-informed decisions around ingredients and portions to minimize waste and reduce costs. Rather than relying on ancient pen-and-paper or spreadsheet tracking methods, purpose-built restaurant inventory management software gives food establishments robust digital tools to gain control over inventory.
Implementing these systems can help dramatically decrease costs and increase profit margins for restaurants.
Key Benefits Of Restaurant Inventory Management Software
Implementing the best restaurant inventory software provides numerous advantages that can greatly improve your restaurant operations. The main benefits that the restaurant inventory system offers are outlined below.
1. Reduced Food Costs and Waste
One of the biggest challenges facing restaurants is managing food costs and waste. Between over-ordering, spoilage, and theft, many establishments end up wasting a substantial portion of the ingredients they purchase.
Restaurant inventory management platforms provide granular visibility into exactly what food items a restaurant has on hand and how they are being used. With real-time tracking of inventory counts and food usage down to the ingredient level, managers can optimize ordering to reduce spoilage due to excess perishables sitting in storage for too long.
2. Enhanced Traceability and Compliance
From boutique eateries to massive chains, all restaurants have to comply with health, safety, and transparency regulations around food supplies and prep. This means being able to quickly pinpoint the supplier and receiving date for any given ingredient at a moment’s notice.
Likewise, suppose a health concern emerges around a particular food item or batch. In that case, restaurants need immediate access to logs showing which dishes used that ingredient and on which days to facilitate targeted notifications and recall.
Rather than combing through mountains of paper or spreadsheets, restaurant inventory systems allow staff to instantly pull up the supply chain, usage, and storage data on any dish or ingredient. Having this information at their fingertips helps restaurants easily comply with traceability rules and facilitates rapid, precise responses if issues emerge around specific inventory items.
3. Lower Labor Costs
Restaurant inventory management platforms dramatically reduce the amount of time staff spends counting, tracking, reordering, receiving, and storing inventory items.
From digitizing counts to automatic reorder suggestions to barcode receiving, today’s systems automate many of the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of inventory management. This frees up staff to focus on providing better hospitality and allows managers to optimize labor scheduling.
4. Streamlined Operations and Purchasing
Lack of visibility into changing inventory levels forces restaurants into inefficient routines around inventory management and ordering. Cooks run out of key ingredients daily because no one knows how to restock the walk-in. Inventory management software provides control and coordination to these disconnected tasks that underpin daily restaurant operations.
Cooks can quickly check stock on hand before prepping items. Auto-replenishment alerts notify purchasing when stocks hit reorder points. Delivery days sync up with usage patterns automatically.
Interesting read: Restaurant Inventory Management: Best Practices and Strategies
Our selection of these Restaurant Inventory Management Software is based on thorough research and analysis. We have listed these softwares based on usability and satisfaction score that include features, ease of use, customer support, ratings, and number of reviews from SoftwareSuggest. Our goal is to help businesses select the right softwares that can help them optimize their business processes.
Top 10 Restaurant Inventory Management Software
With so many options on the market, narrowing down the top inventory management systems can be overwhelming. To help make your decision easier, we’ve compiled the 10 best inventory management software for restaurants. The top providers are detailed below –
| Software Name | Pricing | Features |
|---|---|---|
| Custom pricing | Waitlist management, Stock management | |
| Smart: $14 per month | Stock management, Cash management | |
| Essential: $189 | Customer relationship management, Menu and order management | |
| Starting from $69 per month | Payment processing solutions, Reporting and analytics | |
| Core: $69 per month | Access to loyalty points, Customizable loyalty rewards | |
| Starting from $179 per month. | Inventory waste tracking, Recipe costing & digital cookbook | |
| Custom pricing | Order tracking alerts, 3rd-party inventory management options | |
| Custom pricing | Reconciliation, Recipe management | |
| Custom pricing | Recipe and menu engineering, Detailed barcode label printing | |
| Custom pricing | Robust accounting integrations, Bar and food inventory tools |
1. POSist
POSist is a popular restaurant management platform that is based on SaaS. It not only helps in managing a single restaurant but can also be used to manage a chain of restaurants. POSists keep tight control of the stocks and work to prevent any sort of wastage or theft of resources.
Features
- Restaurant billing software
- Online ordering
- Takeaway and delivery
- Inventory management
- Time and advanced management
- Waitlist management
- Stock management
- Food costing
- Order management
Pricing
- Custom pricing
- It’s user-friendly and simple to use.
- Integrates easily with the cloud.
- The features make managing the restaurant straightforward.
- Affordable with straightforward billing.
- Alerts and notifications for keeping an eye on restaurants from a distance could be better.
- There’s no option to arrange tables based on the restaurant’s floor plan.
- It only works on Android and doesn’t support other mobile platforms.
2. SlickPOS
SlickPOS stands out as a user-friendly, cloud-based point-of-sale system designed for a variety of businesses, including restaurants, cafes, food trucks, cloud kitchens, and entertainment centers. This versatile platform facilitates business growth by addressing crucial aspects such as customer satisfaction and inventory management.
Features
- Integrate online orders
- Order tracking
- Table management
- Inventory management
- Point of sale
- Data import and export
- Stock management
- Cash management
- Billing and menu management
Pricing
- Free: $0 per month
- Smart: $14 per month
- Annual: $139 per month
- It’s easy and doesn’t cause problems.
- They help customers a lot and are really good.
- Works well for all kinds of businesses.
- You can easily check sales data.
- Easy for people to use.
- Uses the internet for Point of Sale (POS).
- Bills are made quickly and clearly.
- Not many features are available.
- Some POS functions are not there.
- Takes up a lot of space.
- Takes a long time to make invoices.
3. Lightspeed Restaurant
With Lightspeed Restaurant’s restaurant inventory software, users can reduce costs and maintain stock levels that too effortlessly. It automates most of the restaurant’s tasks thereby saving time for other important tasks. It helps in reducing food costs which makes it perfect for small to midsize restaurants that want to automate tasks like ordering and receiving supplies without having to spend money on a separate inventory app.
Features
- Vendor management
- One-click ordering
- Automatic inventory
- Customer relationship management
- Menu and order management
- Recipe costing
Pricing
- Starter: $69
- Essential: $189
- Premium: $399
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Great customer service is available.
- Easy time tracking system.
- Simple and user-friendly interface.
- Timely and prompt payment process.
- Contracts are inflexible.
- The mobile app lacks the desktop version’s strength.
- The platform can be somewhat unstable.
Interesting read: 14 Free and Open Source Point of Sale (POS) Software
4. TouchBistro
TouchBistro is a restaurant management software platform that is designed to provide better restaurant management, POS, and inventory management services. It helps the servers to generate more sales and provide better services. It comes with an array of features that not only keep a check on inventory but help in managing the entire restaurant.
Features
- Menu management
- Staff management and scheduling
- Tableside ordering
- Payment processing solutions
- Reporting and analytics
- Restaurant inventory management
- Customer relationship management
- Floor and table management
Pricing
- Starting from $69 per month
- The software has a sleek and uncomplicated design, making it visually appealing.
- It works well for both big companies and small businesses alike.
- It’s easy for users to navigate and operate.
- It’s affordable, helping businesses save money.
- The system ensures security when used on-site.
- It doesn’t operate in the cloud.
- There are occasional glitches in the generated reports.
- It lacks an all-in-one point-of-sale (POS) system.
- Some essential features are missing.
- Users may experience extended wait times for certain functions.
5. ToastPOS
ToastPOS is a robust restaurant POS software for all types of food service businesses, including bars, lounges, and restaurants. It presents each customer with a fair tip percentage. It has a built-in loyalty-based program. This restaurant inventory software creates a path for the restaurants to analyze which items are bestsellers and keeps a tap on all the aspects of the restaurant business.
Features
- Customer management
- Real-time monitoring
- Sales metrics
- Access to loyalty points
- Customizable loyalty rewards
- Personalized webpage
- Restaurant software updates
Pricing
- Quick Start Bundle: $0 per month
- Core: $69 per month
- Growth: $165 per month
- Build Your Own: Custom
- The customer service is excellent, and always ready to help.
- It’s easy to use and navigate for all users.
- You can trust it to work consistently and without issues.
- It lets you split checks easily for convenient transactions.
- The interface is super easy to understand and operate.
- Clicks respond quickly, making the experience smooth and efficient.
- There are additional fees for credit card processing.
- It can be pricey compared to other options.
- Some features are still under development and not fully functional.
6. MarketMan
MarketMan offers an intuitive cloud-based inventory and vendor management solution tailored for restaurants. Seamless POS integration coupled with specialty features like low stock alerts, robust vendor tools, purchase order tracking, invoice scanning, dynamic menu costing, and waste/theft monitoring enables optimized inventory control and cost management.
Features
- Supplier order automation & approvals
- Inventory waste tracking
- Recipe costing & digital cookbook
- Advanced profitability reporting
- 50 invoice scans per month
Pricing
- Starting from $179 per month.
- It offers real-time supplier cost updates, ensuring accurate and up-to-date pricing information for better cost control.
- Streamline your ordering process with a single click, saving time and reducing the likelihood of errors in your purchase orders.
- You can build a digital cookbook from your recipes, promoting organization and accessibility in your kitchen for efficient meal preparation.
- Monthly and annual billing options are flexible, allowing you to choose a payment structure that aligns with your budget and operational needs.
- The software incurs a substantial $500 setup fee.
- The absence of integrated Point of Sale (POS), payment processing, or labor cost tracking features may require additional tools.
- Some users report that the software is too buggy for chefs.
7. Upserve
Upserve’s integrated POS and inventory management solution delivers automated inventory tracking, deductions, mobile scanning, one-click reordering, vendor-managed replenishment, and item-specific cost analysis from supplier to plate. An outstanding inventory feature includes an in-app mobile barcode scanner, allowing seamless inventory management via iPhones or Android phones.
Features
- Fully integrated POS inventory management
- One-click ordering
- Order tracking alerts
- 3rd-party inventory management options
- Mobile inventory app
Pricing
- Custom pricing
- UpServe is great for managing restaurant staff because it helps them keep track of their ingredients in real time.
- It can automatically create orders based on how much stuff is left.
- It also works with suppliers, tracks deliveries, and handles invoices.
- The software helps restaurants control how much money they spend on making food.
- Upserve might cost a lot for small or budget-friendly restaurants.
- Switching to Upserve might be tricky. Both the staff and the bosses might need training to use it, which could slow things down for a bit.
- Sometimes, Upserve might have technical problems, like bugs or glitches.
8. Crunchtime
CrunchTime combines food, inventory, and labor management with real-time visibility and analysis across locations. Purpose built for restaurants, capabilities span automated supplier replenishment, comparison of planned versus actual food costs, customizable reporting, and mobile analytics. CrunchTime provides customized reports and dashboards for real-time insights into restaurant operations, ensuring effective management.
Features
- Inventory counts
- Reviews & ordering
- Reconciliation
- Recipe management
- Sales forecasting
Pricing
- Custom pricing
- It works with over 1,000 different apps, including well-known restaurant cash registers and money management programs.
- It connects to the USDA food database to figure out the nutrition details for recipes.
- The mobile app helps keep track of inventory very precisely.
- It can also help with making schedules and managing labor costs.
- You need to ask for a special price quote because the prices aren’t listed.
- It might be too big for smaller restaurants.
- The customer service is only available for limited hours.
9. Yellow Dog
Yellow Dog offers a specialized F&B inventory solution enabling accelerated item setup, streamlined order/receiving workflows, usage-based replenishment recommendations, digital vendor invoicing, accurate physical inventory counting, and insightful reporting.
Yellow Dog offers a unique feature for labeling and distributing prepped ingredients, making it suitable for large-scale catering businesses with central kitchens, such as food truck fleets
Features
- Real-time reporting
- Purchase orders management
- Recipe and menu engineering
- Detailed barcode label printing
- Freepour integration
Pricing
- Custom pricing
- You can easily pay every month with a subscription.
- It enables seamless transfer of raw ingredients or prepared food.
- It works with Freepour to keep track of inventory using a scanner and scale bar.
- It connects with accounting software like QuickBooks.
- You need to ask for a special price quote.
- Customer support isn’t available all the time
- You have to pay for training when setting it up.
10. Craftable
Craftable provides tailored inventory apps for bars, restaurants, and hotels focused on food or beverages. Flexible plans allow large operations to customize offerings while smaller customers only pay for the exact tools needed. The platform seamlessly integrates with popular accounting software such as QuickBooks, providing flexibility to large operations with essential tools and allowing small operations to avoid unnecessary expenses on unused features.
Features
- Robust accounting integrations
- Bar and food inventory tools
- A la carte pricing
- Offline functionality
- Flexible vendor payments
Pricing
- Custom pricing
- Craftable offers distinct tools for both bars and restaurants, allowing businesses to pay only for the features they require.
- The payments module accommodates various methods, including physical checks, e-checks, and automated clearing house (ACH) transfers.
- The bar tools incorporate scales and bottle scans to boost accuracy in inventory management.
- The Snap invoice feature enables users to effortlessly scan invoices using their phones.
- Bar and restaurant tools come with individual pricing.
- The absence of standardized pricing means potential clients need to request a custom quote.
- One notable drawback is the absence of an order forecasting tool, limiting the platform’s ability to predict and plan for future inventory needs.
Interesting read: 15 Best Open Source and Free Restaurant Management Software
How To Choose The Best Restaurant Inventory Management Software For Your Restaurant
As a restaurant owner, choosing the right inventory management software is crucial for efficiently tracking your ingredients and products. The key factors to evaluate the best inventory management software for restaurants are detailed below –
1. Define Your Requirements
The first step in choosing restaurant inventory software is outlining your current inventory management needs and pain points. Consider factors like your restaurant type and size, typical ingredient volumes, food prep processes, and staffing.
Also, reflect on your biggest inventory struggles right now –
- Do you lack real-time visibility or have high waste?
- Are vendor orders eating up margins, or is theft an issue?
Clearly establishing your operational requirements and objectives will help you assess how well different platforms can address your needs. Prioritize must-have features like barcode scanning or waste tracking as you compare options on the market.
2. Assess Ease of Use
Once you have highlighted must-have capabilities, examine how intuitive and easy-to-use the various restaurant inventory management systems options are for managers and staff. Complex platforms with steep learning curves often don’t achieve adoption. Prioritize inventory tools with simple menu navigation, drag-and-drop customization for different reporting needs, and touchscreen compatibility for line cooks and servers.
Whether you operate a single location or 100 stores, the system should facilitate tight inventory control without requiring extensive training or adding daily hassles for busy teams. Ideally, the software will be intuitive enough for part-time staff to quickly log waste or check stock levels from mobile devices while focusing on customers.
3. Compare Integration Capabilities
Modern restaurant management requires coordination across a web of systems from payroll to ordering to front-of-house. Restaurant inventory management systems with robust integration capabilities can sync up processes across platforms for smoother operations and real-time data sharing.
Assessing integration options also ensures your new system can connect with both the POS system you have in place now as well as options you may switch to down the road. From accounting tools to vendor catalogs, selecting inventory software that plays well with your other systems will maximize efficiency and flexibility.
4. Features and Functionality
When selecting the best restaurant inventory management software, prioritize systems that offer comprehensive features. Look for solutions with real-time tracking, automated order management, recipe costing, and integration capabilities with other essential tools like point-of-sale systems.
Ensure the advanced inventory tools align with the specific needs of your restaurant, such as managing perishables, tracking ingredient quantities, and providing actionable insights into consumption patterns.
5. Cost and Scalability
Evaluate the cost structure of the restaurant inventory management system, considering not just the initial investment but also ongoing fees and potential scalability. Opt for a solution that fits your budget while providing room for growth. Some systems offer tiered pricing based on the size of the restaurant or the number of users, ensuring flexibility as your business expands.
6. Customization and Flexibility
The best inventory management software for restaurants allows for customization to suit the unique needs of your restaurant. Look for systems that can adapt to changing menu items, suppliers, and business processes. This flexibility ensures that the software remains effective as your restaurant evolves, providing a long-term solution that grows with your business.
7. Customer Support and Training
Consider the level of customer support and training provided by the software vendor. Opt for a solution that offers reliable customer support channels and comprehensive training resources.
This ensures that your team can quickly address any issues that may arise and maximize the software’s capabilities effectively. A responsive support system is crucial for maintaining smooth restaurant operations without disruptions.
Bottom Line
Efficient restaurant inventory management is crucial to controlling costs and minimizing waste in a notoriously low-margin industry. By implementing one of the inventory management systems on this list, restaurant owners and managers can gain better control and visibility into their ingredient and food stocks.
This will enable them to increase profits by optimizing purchasing and production, reducing spoilage and theft, improving menu planning, and enhancing the customer experience. Whichever restaurant inventory system fits best with your restaurant’s size and needs, putting good inventory management practices in place should be a top priority in the new year.
The investment will quickly pay for itself in food cost savings and reduced labor for manual tasks—ultimately benefiting your customers, employees, and bottom line.
Restaurants need an effective inventory management system to accurately track all food and beverage items they have in stock, order when inventory gets low, analyze inventory costs and waste over time, and make data-driven decisions to improve purchasing and stock levels. Accurate inventory tracking enables restaurants to optimize profits long-term.
A basic restaurant inventory management system usually costs between $15 to $150 per month, depending on the number of features available as well as the number of users supported. In contrast, more advanced systems with real-time inventory tracking, accurate food cost calculations, and integrations with other software cost upwards of $200 per month based on the number of locations.
Most restaurant inventory systems available today can integrate with POS systems, accounting systems, supplier databases, food cost calculators, menu engineering software, and more to enable complete control and understanding of inventory costs and sales.
To get started implementing a new restaurant inventory management system, restaurant owners should fully define their needs for inventory and cost control, set a clear monthly software budget based on locations, users, and key features, extensively review top recommended systems that meet their requirements, select software that offers setup and provides high-quality ongoing customer support.
Proper staff training is required to accurately input purchase data, set and track stock levels, log inventory, generate reports, and get the most value from a restaurant inventory management system. Training helps avoid input errors and ensures all staff properly contribute to maintaining stock counts, monitoring waste, and informing ordering needs. Managers are empowered to analyze the data for clear process improvements over time through system use.
Rohit Rajpal is an accomplished writer and data enthusiast passionate about unraveling the intricacies of information and data. With a deep understanding of the subject matter, Rohit strives to simplify complex concepts and make them accessible to readers. Rohit’s expertise in the field and his knack for clear and concise communication make his blog an invaluable resource for those seeking clarity in the data-driven world.
