Plate costs that keep up with your invoices.
Ingredient prices change all the time. Keeping a costing spreadsheet current takes work. I’m building Food Cost so you can review invoice photos, enter recipes by voice or text, and see what each dish costs when prices change.
- Status
- Built and tested on sample data. A pilot in a working kitchen is next.
- Prices come from
- Invoice photos and PDFs, reviewed line by line
- Recipes come from
- Voice, typing, or a photo of a recipe card
- The rule
- Nothing changes a cost until a person approves it
Say a recipe out loud and see what the plate costs.
The chef records the recipe the way they'd explain it to a new cook. The app turns it into ingredient lines, flags anything it can't read exactly, and shows the plate cost against the menu price.
Seafood pasta, one plate, spoken: four ounces dry spaghetti, six scallops, two prawns, three ounces of house tomato sauce, two teaspoons of olive oil, parsley to finish.
Proposed lines cost out at $0.45, $3.00, $2.50, $0.38 and $0.12. "Parsley to finish" has no quantity, so the app flags it for review instead of guessing. The chef adds an $0.08 estimated allowance for it and the dish is marked Estimated.
Plate cost $6.53. At a $28.00 menu price, food cost is 23.3%, leaving $21.47 after food, before labor, rent, and every other cost.
A price change on one invoice recosts every dish that uses it.
Two weeks later the seafood order comes in with prawns up 20%. The app proposes lines from the photo and matches recurring items to what was approved before. One line has a new pack size, so it asks. Once a person approves the invoice, every dish that uses prawns is recosted.
Invoice 10482 from a fictional supplier lists six lines. Four match products approved before, including prawns, now $60.00 per 40-count tray instead of $50.00. The olive oil comes in a different pack than last time, so the app asks a person to confirm it rather than reuse the old one. The fuel surcharge is kept out of food cost.
After approval, three dishes recost on their own. Seafood pasta goes from $6.53 to $7.03, or 23.3% to 25.1% of a $28.00 menu price. The change is attributed to the ingredient price, not to a recipe change.
The details that change a plate cost.
Pack sizes, trim, and portions all affect what a dish costs. Food Cost is being built to keep track of those details with you.
Capture by photo or PDF
Several photos become the pages of one invoice. A PDF holding several invoices can be split. The original is kept with the record, so every price can be traced back to the paper it came from.
Review, line by line
The app proposes supplier, pack, quantity, and price for each line, and a person confirms them. Once an item is approved, later invoices from that supplier come in with the match already proposed. A changed pack reopens the question. You can approve the clear lines and leave an uncertain one pending.
No double posting
A re-photographed invoice, a forwarded duplicate, or a retry after a dropped connection won't post a purchase twice. Likely matches are flagged for a person to check.
Credits and fees handled
Credit memos, returns, and invoice-wide discounts are handled explicitly. A one-off refund doesn't become a new going-forward price. Tax and deposits always stay out of food cost. Delivery and other fees stay out too, unless the owner chooses to spread them across the items.
Exact units and yields
"6 × 2.5 kg" becomes a cost per gram. A weight ounce and a fluid ounce are different things. A trim yield raises the true cost of what reaches the plate: 20 lb of ribeye at $24/lb with an 80% usable yield is $30 per usable pound.
Preps and real portions
Sauces, stocks, and doughs are prep recipes with their own yield. Dishes use them by weight or by a portion the chef has measured, such as a 4 oz ladle of the house tomato sauce. Change the sauce and every dish that uses it follows.
Plate costs marked complete or not
Each dish shows plate cost, food cost percentage, and dollars remaining after food, marked Complete, Estimated, or Incomplete. A dish missing a price shows what's missing rather than a misleading percentage.
One list of things to fix
Missing prices, unmatched ingredients, and invoices waiting for review sit in one list, ranked by how many dishes they affect. Answering one question, such as a prawn's weight, can complete six dishes at once.
Supplier comparison and history
Compare what you've actually paid each supplier for the same item, see price trends, and tell whether a dish got more expensive because of the price or because the recipe changed. Try a what-if, like five scallops instead of six, without touching the real recipe.
Give each person the access they need.
The owner decides who can do what. A dishwasher can be allowed to photograph invoices without ever seeing a price. A chef can maintain recipes and approve purchases without touching settings or exports. Kitchen-only accounts never get access to the schedule or the staff roster.
Your recipes and prices are yours.
Owners can export ingredients, prices, and recipes as spreadsheets, or download an archive with the original invoice photos. Each restaurant’s information is kept separate.
Tested on sample data. A kitchen pilot is next.
The features are built and have been tested with sample data. Now they need real invoices, real recipes, and feedback from a working kitchen. Food Cost isn’t ready for general use yet.
Real invoice testing comes next
Invoice reading hasn't been measured against real invoices yet. Until it has, we won't publish accuracy figures or time savings.
Camera and voice need a kitchen test
Capture and recording work in the browser. Testing on physical phones in a working kitchen, noise included, is part of the pilot.
The outside services aren’t connected yet
Reading invoice and recipe photos, turning recordings into text, pulling menu prices from Toast, and receiving invoices by email are built but not yet connected to live services. Without them, lines can be entered and reviewed by hand, and recipes typed or dictated with the phone keyboard.
Not an inventory system
Food Cost tracks what ingredients cost and what plates cost. Stock counts, waste tracking, ordering, and accounts payable are outside its scope.
What chefs and owners ask.
Does AI decide my costs?
No. AI will help read invoice photos, but you check the details before approving them. That service isn’t connected yet. Costs are calculated from the quantities and prices you’ve approved. If a recipe detail is unclear, the app asks you to check it.
Do I have to type in every ingredient first?
No. Ingredients come in as you approve invoices, and recipes can be spoken, typed, pasted, or imported from a photo of a recipe card. A starting price can be entered by hand or from a supplier quote, and it's labeled that way until an invoice confirms it.
Is "remaining after food" my profit?
No, and the app says so on the screen. It's the menu price minus the plate cost. Labor, rent, fees, and every other cost still come out of it.
Will it work with Innate Scheduler?
It's a separate, optional app in the same suite. It's designed to share the restaurant account and look, and kitchen-only users never get schedule access. Innate Reporter is planned to pull approved plate costs into the weekly report.
When can my kitchen use it?
A kitchen pilot comes next. You can request to join the trial and tell us you’re interested in Food Cost. We’ll let you know when it’s ready to test.
Help test the next part of the suite.
Food Cost is still in development. Join the trial program, tell us you’re interested in kitchen testing, and we’ll let you know when it’s ready.