Scalable Inventory Management: Core Features for Food & Beverage Ops

At COGS-Well, we specialize in the complex needs of high-volume foodservice operations—from growing multi-unit restaurant chains and hotels to large-scale catering companies, entertainment venues, and country clubs.

Most of our customers get started by automating a few core inventory processes that can be implemented quickly to see an immediate impact. Over time, they begin to utilize our advanced features. Our customers consistently report reductions in their Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) of 2-3%.

The Foundation: High-Impact and Easy to Implement Features 

These core features in COGS-Well can be implemented quickly to give your team immediate added controls, time savings, and insights:

• Invoice Automation: Say goodbye to manual invoice processing. Scan invoices and automatically update your accounts payable and inventory system. Accuracy is improved, and time is saved for your managers and accounting team.

• POS Integration and Reporting: Your menu items, categories, and the sales mix are imported daily. This information can easily be viewed via dashboards and in a variety of sales reports, including multi-location.

• Real-Time Receiving: Take advantage of immediate visibility into what you're buying from each vendor and how prices are fluctuating. You’ll get cost change alerts immediately.

• Mobile Counting: Lose the spreadsheets and conduct inventory counts, by storage location, via a tablet. Item information is always up to date, and counts are valued instantly. Valuation adjustments can be exported to your General Ledger.

• Automation of Transfers: If your locations are doing transfers between locations, and/or ordering and receiving from a commissary, these processes can be automated quickly. Adjustments can be exported to your General Ledger.

"The integration of scanned invoices directly into our inventory management system has been transformative. This feature alone has revolutionized the way we handle inventory costs, providing both efficiency and accuracy." – Otis Huemmer, Divisional Chef, OVG Hospitality

“Having tablets, opening up COGS-Well, and counting inventory is nice and easy for us.” – Greg Meeks, Beverage Program Director, Lure Fish House

Beyond the Basics: Advanced Operational Features 

Once COGS-Well customers have our foundational features implemented, they gain more controls, insights, and efficiencies with the following:

• Prepared Item Recipes: Creating recipes for your prepared items builds the foundation for creating recipes for the menu items you sell. As an added benefit, you can also count your prepared items, and their value reduces your COGS.

• Recipe Costing & Modeling: Creating recipes for your menu items enables you to evaluate the theoretical cost and profitability of each item, based on current ingredient costs. Model different pricing, target cost percentages, or ingredient changes to optimize margins for new and existing menu items.

• Dynamic Ordering: Enter and track purchase orders. COGS-Well can also suggest the items and quantity to order based on par levels or usage projections. Orders can be emailed or EDI-exported directly to vendors.

• Waste Tracking: Log specific causes of loss—such as spoilage, overproduction, or accidents. Spotting these patterns is the fastest way to minimize losses.

“When it’s time to cost out new menu items, COGS-Well makes this seamless. We save a lot of time with costing exercises because back in the day, we just did everything by hand over and over again.” – Peyton Strait, Director of Procurement, Lure Fish House

“By utilizing a waste log, you can drill down and find the root cause of issues like your inventory showing an over-usage of something. It's important because it affects all your other numbers, especially if you're a brand using theoretical costs and usage.” – Jeremy Lanni, Senior Director, Information Technology, &pizza

The Gold Standard: Advanced Variance Analysis & Menu Analytics  

Our most dedicated customers go a step beyond advanced operational features to create recipes for all their menu items. This enables them to utilize features for Menu Engineering and Theoretical versus Actual (AvT) variance analysis. These features add a new level of intelligence that can’t be done efficiently without a system.

• Menu Engineering (Stars & Challenges): Evaluate your entire menu based on the popularity and profitability of every item. Identify your "Stars" (high profit/high popularity) and your "Challenges" (high profit/low popularity) to optimize the performance of your menu.

• Theoretical vs. Actual Variance: Compare your theoretical costs and inventory usage (what should have been) to your actual costs and usage to discover variances. This is the best way to know if you are performing as well as you could be, and if not, where to find the problems.

“We were always questioning the data integrity of the menu engineering reports that we did manually. COGS-Well solved that problem for us.” – Emir Ayden, Director of Operations, Impact Kitchen

“By shifting our focus to theoretical versus actual variances, the managers know that regardless of inventory cost changes, we are evaluating them based on what they can control. They realize that variances only occur from things like waste, over- or under-portioning, theft, etc.” – Jennifer Beougher, CFO, Ruby Slipper Restaurant Group

Summary: Three Levels of Implementation

COGS-Well empowers restaurant operators to get started quickly and enjoy immediate benefits. The Foundational features alone will more than cost-justify the investment. The Advanced and Gold Standard features provide additional controls, efficiencies, and insights as they are layered in. Whether you just need the basic features or want to do it all, our platform is built to grow with you.