Chefy vs Ratatool

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.

Ratatool is web software for food-service businesses managing recipes, costs, margins, production, supplies, inventory and food traceability. Users build recipes from supplier ingredients and sub-recipes, calculate ingredient costs, food cost and margins, and track supplier price history. The system can notify users when an ingredient reaches a critical threshold. Production planning turns required quantities into supplier orders, while inventory tracking, yield and portion scaling, menu profitability and ingredient price updates support daily operations. Traceability records can include allergens, nutrition labels, expiration dates and batch numbers. Ratatool says AI can scan invoices to help load initial data. Multi-site features support locations and employee permissions. Recipe documents can be printed and data exported to PDF, CSV and Excel; CSV imports and Stripe payment processing are described. The ESSAI plan is free for four recipes and 15 ingredients, with no subscription or credit card. STANDARD is billed 24 € per month annually; PREMIUM is billed 41 € per month annually.