Menu Costing Software

Any ideas as to which menu costing software works best for a full service restaurant (no bar.)

Ok...I'll be the one. Software to price food? You're in the wrong business.

Dinerlover,

Cheftech is a wonderful piece of software that will help you streamline your inventory, recipe management and save you time in the long run.

You will have to manually input every invoice into the database but after that the software does all the work. IT will intergrate all your purchases into a real time inventory spreadsheet that shows items purchased, usage, sales and ending inventory.. which in the end will give you a pretty acurate food cost.

Sounds like a bit much to do but honestly it has saved me about 10 hours a week in back office work. I still break out a scale to check wieghts on meats but as long as you are up to date with entering invoices your life will be so much easier!!!

diner,
well i am in v960's camp but will try to moderate my response since my wife has demanded that i be more nice
before you spend money on software do the costing manually for several weeks or even months.
reason i advise this is it will give you a greater gut feeling for changes and on most occasions they will beat a computer hands down.
the theroy in teaching is;
say
see
write
if you are doing it manually trust me you will say, see and write. for whatever reason this will open up channels in the brain (i can still remember my last construction job 20 years ago which was a large hotel and can still remember every door opening and what it required. needless to say while this does piss me off it also shows the theory to be true)
the other added benefit is if the power goes down your brain doesn't and you still have a gut feeling within one percent of the actual.
and yes it is anal retentive but then again most engineers and chefs are
hope it helps

I think the problem here is confusing cost and price. This is not just confined to the food industry.

Cost should be able to be defined and tracked. Price has everything to do with perception. Price should be determined by what a customer thinks is a good number. You cannot make the same margin on every menu item.

Flame on.

Cakes

Prisonchef,
You or your wife are correct...I need to be nicer. I'm a jerk and know it. However s/w for pricing yur food? Are you Marriott? Get what you can.

most of the big corps i have worked with, have bought customized software. for a full service, with hundreds of inventory items, you should hire a company to do the whole job. they will have a base program, and tailor it to your needs. i am assuming, of course, you will have several stations, for servers, and printers in the kitchen, and a station for the cashiers, and one tied in, from the office. the right system, can do payroll, menu costing, inventory, and tons more. best of all, it gives you theoreticals, which you can compare the manual numbers to. yes, even with the computer, you should still do manuals, like jack said. but for a full service, millions in sales place, its a great time/money saver.

Design your own spreadsheet. How much easier can that be? If you use Open Office (Sun), even the software is free.

It would have to be some pretty extensive software. Pricing a menu (and determine mix etc.) "by the numbers" in the most accurate fashion, is very much the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" ...

You might take a look at a fairly lengthy post I made a while ago which touches on menu pricing ... the post is about halfway down the page ...
http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11912

pen and paper or set up a spreadsheet...there's something about doing it by hand that gives you a better "feel" for what each meal costs you..and it's less difficult then it sounds as so many items are used in multiple places

Thanks for all the replys!

Cornbread, thanks, I'll check that software out. Anything that can save me time, means I'm spending more time looking after the front.

Sure, I'm been doing the costing manually, but it's got to be more effecient using a "packaged" software. It will be great to tie in invoices to inventory that ties into recipes that tie into the menu.