Chefy vs DishCost

Chefy is a web-based hospitality costing platform for kitchens, bars and multi-venue groups. It tracks food costs and menu margins, with product price changes updating costs through recipes and menu items. Chefy Core supports nested recipes, standard products, wastage recording and approval workflows; its free plan includes one core venue, costing, recipes, bulk product import and real-time costing updates. Chefy can process supplier invoices with AI to extract prices. It syncs Square sales and menu items to costed recipes; Square is the POS it currently links to. Chefy Admin provides performance analytics, contribution margin, approvals and audit logs across venues. Chefy Go offers mobile-first tools for prep, wastage recording and stock counting on the floor. Margin threshold alerts and automated daily reports provide further monitoring. Chefy says data is encrypted at rest, hosted in Australia and automatically backed up, and that it does not hold formal certifications such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001. Core is free; modules start at $12 a month per module.

DishCost is a web application for independent, single-location restaurants that calculates recipe costs, tracks ingredient price changes and highlights weak menu margins. Recipe views show line-item ingredient costs, total and per-serving costs, food cost percentage, suggested price and profit per serving. Changing an ingredient price automatically recalculates recipes and prep items that use it, including dishes built from those prep items. Weekly order counts classify dishes as Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles or Dogs. Ingredients and prices can be imported in bulk through CSV using a downloadable template. Pro adds order-guide imports from Sysco, US Foods, BEK or other vendors, with column mapping and SKU-based price updates, plus PDF and CSV exports and email support. The free tier has no time limit, and free tools can be used without an account. Pro costs $39 a month through Stripe for one kitchen, unlimited recipes and ingredients, and no per-seat fees. DishCost does not provide multi-location dashboards, live POS sync, inventory counts, invoice OCR, or in-app per-recipe nutrition and allergen tagging.