The COGS-Well Blog: Guides, Insights, and Success Stories

For restaurant groups with a central warehouse or commissary, the internal supply chain is often one of the most challenging parts of the business to manage. Here is how we help restaurants automate their commissary operations.

For Souvla, scaling their restaurant brand successfully meant achieving a level of structural control around inventory management that manual tools simply couldn't provide.

This guide breaks down the three pillars of theoretical tracking: Theoretical Usage, Theoretical Cost, and Theoretical On-Hand. See the difference between what should have happened and what really happened.

Recipes can be more than just a set of instructions – when integrated into an inventory and recipe management system, they become a powerful tool for maximizing margins.

There is a core set of features that a restaurant operator should look for in any inventory, recipe, and cost management system. Before purchasing a system, it is best to know what features and integrations should be standard in a comprehensive system. Restaurant Inventory Management A restaurant inventory management system should include features for importing invoices, exporting to your accounting system, and counting, ordering, receiving, and transferring inventory items

Is a 32% food cost good? Is your restaurant as profitable as it should or could be? Theoretical Cost and Usage Variance analysis is the highest level of insight into evaluating a restaurant’s operational performance.

In today's challenging restaurant landscape, every dollar counts. Menu engineering the difference between hoping a dish is profitable and knowing exactly how much it contributes to your bottom line.

Beatrix, a neighborhood restaurant and coffeehouse under Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants, wanted more synergy between their inventory, recipes, and prep. A phased rollout of COGS-Well helped streamline the process and reduce the manual lift.

A great restaurant inventory management system does more than offer smart features – it comes with a team that helps you succeed. Even the most advanced technology can fall short without the right service and support to back it up.

In the fast-paced restaurant industry, efficiently managing invoices is crucial for increasing profitability and improving your operations. Automating that process is one of the easiest ways to maximize your performance and output. Simply scan your invoices, and let automation handle the rest – from receiving them to paying your vendors. Traditional manual invoice processing can be time-consuming and prone to errors, diverting valuable resources from your core business activi

As multi-unit operators look back on another year of progress, the key drivers of success are having access to industry experts, specialized tools, and greater flexibility within their restaurant management system. Here’s a look at the COGS-Well features and support services customers used most this year.

COGS-Well works with all kinds of food and beverage service operations, from independent restaurants and bars to multi-unit chains, hotels, catering companies, entertainment venues, and country clubs. COGS-Well makes it easy for restaurants to gain control over inventory, boost accuracy, and improve profitability.

For most restaurant owners, food and beverage costs are the largest expenses. To manage a profitable kitchen, you need a clear view of your margins. Calculating your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is the most direct way to understand how your inventory costs are impacting your bottom line. COGS is the cost of producing the food and beverages you sell to your customers. In other words, it is the cost of the inventory used over a period of time to deliver the food and beverage sales

Mezeh Mediterranean Grill is a fast-casual restaurant chain known for fresh, made-from-scratch Mediterranean dishes. Their journey with COGS-Well shows what happens when a restaurant team embraces structure and accountability.

Many operators still handle core processes like invoice processing, inventory counts, and recipe management manually, or with systems that aren't synced. COGS-Well takes the heavy lifting out of those tasks while integrating with your existing workflow.

As Café Ficelle expanded, COO Brenton Woodruff knew they needed the right tools to control inventory, streamline ordering, manage the front-of-house, and keep costs under control. That’s when Café Ficelle turned to COGS-Well for restaurant inventory and recipe management and SpotOn for their POS system.

When selecting restaurant technology, operators can choose between two primary approaches: purchasing from a single vendor that offers solutions in multiple areas (an all-in-one provider) or building a tech stack using specialized vendors (best-in-class providers) for each part of your business. For example, a point-of-sale (POS) vendor that also offers loyalty, labor management, and inventory control solutions is typically considered an all-in-one provider. In contrast, a ve

The highest ROI in restaurants often comes from automating a few basic inventory processes. A simple shift towards automation can enable you to improve controls, save time, increase accuracy, and add new insights.

In the restaurant business, time is money. Most operators don’t have time to dig through spreadsheets or wait until the end of the month to find out whether they made money. You need fast, accurate answers – and that’s where cost accounting comes in.

Impact Kitchen has built a loyal following by doing things differently. From lower COGS and cleaner reporting to easier inventory and recipe management, their team has the tools they need to stay in control and save their time every step of the way.