Best Restaurant Inventory Management Software

Managing inventory for a restaurant is often a complex and time-consuming operation.

But it doesn't have to be! With good restaurant inventory management software, the process of managing restaurant inventory can be less stressful.

With so many different restaurant inventory management software options on the market, it can be hard to decide which is best for your unique restaurant. In this article, we'll look at some of the best inventory management software apps available in 2023, and discuss the features and benefits that make them stand out in the crowded market. Choose which restaurant inventory management software is the best option for your business based on the pros and cons and see if it fits your budget.

Top restaurant inventory management software options

• Posist

• xtraCHEF by Toast

• MarketMan

• Restaurant365

• Petpooja

• Craftable

• Apicbase

• MarginEdge

• SynergySuite

• CrunchTime

Choosing the best restaurant inventory management software — what should you look for?

Restaurant inventory management software is extremely useful for restaurant businesses, as it can help streamline operational efficiency, specifically for inventory tracking, ordering, and accounting.

It’s crucial for a restaurant to track and maintain inventory on a daily basis to avoid running out of stock or wasting money on food costs. By utilizing restaurant inventory management software, restaurants can save time and money while maintaining an accurate, digital record of inventory, purchases, vendors and suppliers, and keep all of this information organized in one place.

Before you read through the best restaurant inventory management software options available to you, consider taking a moment to determine your problem areas with the way you currently manage your inventory. Which part of the daily operations is most time-consuming or difficult? What issues or problems do you often make regarding inventory that you would like to find a solution for? Write those answers down or keep them front of mind as you read through the pros and cons of the best restaurant inventory management software below. 

Posist

Posist is business-for-business restaurant software that helps food and beverage restaurants streamline front of house, back of house and out of house operations.

Pros of Posist

• Very easy to use and configure

• Helpful implementation team and easily accessible customer support team

• Display of orders is great for both customers, back of house and front of house. There is seamless transition between orders.

Cons of Posist

• Does not offer a free trial or list pricing options
• Report formatting needs to be customized and needs more flexibility for reports for greater than a month
• Does not auto-calculate required inventory or stock

Price of Posist

Unfortunately, Posist does not publicly disclose pricing information. They provide a custom price plan based on your business size and they do not offer a free or trial plan.

xtraCHEF by Toast

xtraCHEF by Toast offers precise restaurant costing tools including invoice automation, recipe costing, and inventory management directly tied to your purchasing trends to help improve productivity and increase profits.

Pros of xtraCHEF by Toast

• Seamless integration with Toast POS

• Free mobile app for faster inventory counting

• Financial reporting on inventory with suggested shopping lists (currently in beta)

Cons of xtraCHEF by Toast

• Requires actual inventory counts to run reports: does not provide perpetual inventory

Price of xtraCHEF by Toast

Starts at $179 per location per month

MarketMan

A cloud-based software, MarketMan offers restaurants solutions for inventory and supply management including budgeting, purchasing, order optimization, food costs, ordering handling, catalog and supplier management.

Pros of MarketMan

• Ability to track costs of inventory and menu items to determine exact breakdown of costs per menu item and their profit margins

• Excellent COGs tracking and inventory reporting with insight into waste, theft, over portioning and provides solutions for improvement

• Easy and straightforward to navigate and use across multiple locations

Cons of MarketMan

• Lengthily process for setting up system

• Technical set up is possibly too difficult for the average employee or chef to use and will require training on system

• Difficult to print or and manage recipes out of the system

Price of MarketMan

MarketMan offers three pricing levels with it’s cheapest option at $127 per month per location. The professional level costs $169 per month per location and it’s ultimate pricing level is $339 per month per location.

Restaurant 365

Restaurant365 is a SaaS accounting and operations platform specifically for restaurants. It is restaurant inventory management software that integrates with your POS, vendors, and banks to simplify inventory and reporting.

Pros of Restaurant 365

• Provides in-depth data insight on your restaurant’s accounting and inventory

• Permission settings to control access to information by user

• Allows for automation of your business to bring it to another level and easily re-order products when inventory is low

• Ability to customize reports for your needs

Cons of Restaurant 365

• The mobile app is not as user-friendly as others on the market

• Extensive onboarding and training required to learn the software

• Expensive packages that do not include workforce-relevant software (HR, payroll, and hiring)

Price of Restaurant 365

$435/month for the essential package or $635/month for the professional package.

Petpooja

Petpooja is restaurant inventory management software that includes multiple features to help streamline and improve your business operations.

Pros of Petpooja

• Kitchen and menu management 

• Reporting and analytics with built in accounting, billing and invoicing

• User friendly and 24/7 support team

Cons of Petpooja

• Need to manually update menu items

• Difficult to upload and manage inventory in system

Price of Petpooja

With a flat rate pricing model, Petpooja costs $150 per year.

Craftable

Craftable is a complete restaurant inventory management software designed to drive profit and reduce labor costs for restaurants. It was designed to help you control all features for your bar or menu to keep a better eye on variance and recipe costs.

Pros of Craftable

• Straight forward software that is easy to use

• Houses purchasing, receiving and inventory audits in one location

• Integration with POS, time clocks, accounting platforms and more provides a one stop shop 

• Provides recipe cost breakdown and insight into data analytics

Cons of Craftable

• Director panel only available at higher cost to allow for overseeing multiple locations

• Difficult and time consuming to add data across all locations

• Complex onboarding process

Price of Craftable

Craftable pricing starts at $99.99 per month and then offers a premium level for $149.99 per month or a pro level for $199.99 per month.

Apicbase

Apicbase is restaurant management software that allows you to run multiple restaurants by centralizing your operations in one place.

Pros of Apicbase

• Real-time insights to food and labor costs and sales margins for multiple locations

• User friendly tools for staff to track inventory and make purchases from pre-approved vendors

• Easy to navigate, user-friendly design

Cons of Apicbase

• Cannot match orders with deliveries automatically

• Does not track expiration dates in inventory to allow system to notify you when products are reaching expiration or are no longer good for sale

• Data insights are not as customizable as other options on the market

Price of Apicbase

Apicbase starts at $149 per month but offers other package options for businesses and will provide a quote based on your business size.

MarginEdge

Built by former restaurant owners for restaurant owners, MarginEdge is deeply rooted in providing a service that helps simplify all the complexities of running a business and reduce the amount of annoying, office tasks that manages or business owners need to do.

Pros of MarginEdge

• Easily integrates with various POS

• Implementation team assists with data upload to only train you on the software and technology’s more relevant features to streamline set up

• Assists with identifying issues causing higher food costs and suggests areas of improvement and solutions to assist you with problem solving

• Eliminates annoying data entry and tracking down invoices

Cons of MarginEdge

• Can be difficult to use for more complex invoices

• Does not eliminate time to write out recipes and upload inventory or recipe breakdowns

• Set up is a lot of work but the ME team helps eliminate the bulk of it

• Limited customer support hours

Price of MarginEdge

With no set up or integration fees and no commitment required, MarginEdge starts at $300 per month.

SynergySuite

SynergySuite is restaurant inventory management software for leading global restaurant chains that offers a back-office platform to simplify critical business areas, such as food safety, scheduling, cash management, inventory and purchasing, as well as recipe cost analysis and more.

Pros of SynergySuite

• Easy to use interface across all devices, mobile and desktop friendly and can be integrated with POS or other systems

• Access multiple data points easily and quickly

• One platform to manage food cost, labor cost, HR, scheduling and inventory and purchasing information

Cons of SynergySuite

• It is cloud-based so all information is stored in the cloud

• Reporting terminology can be complex

• No free trial or free version

Price of SynergySuite

SynergySuite costs $225 per month but the pricing is customized to the number or locations and modules used.

CrunchTime

CrunchTime is a restaurant management software platform for operations with multiple units that helps to better manage food costs, labor and other tasks across all of your locations. 

Pros of CrunchTime

• Ability to focus on variances and discrepancies at a micro-level to help with ROI tracking and management

• Provides a good framework for your business to locate errors and create solutions

• All in one platform with intuitive, easy to use design and integrations

Cons of CrunchTime

• Inventory reporting lists by location as opposed to total of all items which can cause some confusion for inventory reporting

• Inconsistent screen layouts

• No free plan or trial period

Price of CrunchTime

CrunchTime does not share its pricing information publicly, as they offer custom pricing for software dependent on the restaurant size.

What’s the best restaurant inventory management software for your specific business?

The Toast all-in-one restaurant platform can easily integrate with some of the most widely used restaurant software while also offering business owners a way to simplify inventory with xtraCHEF by Toast.

xtraCHEF by Toast offers modern inventory management tools to keep your culinary and finance teams on the same page. Blend invoice automation, recipe costing, and Toast POS sales data into a seamless inventory solution that goes beyond counting cans.

Regardless of what you choose, make sure your restaurant inventory management software gives you some me time back in your day. You'll thank yourself later! 

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