Restaurant food cost intelligence

The food-cost number
you can actually trust.

FORKast reads your invoices, ranks your menu by what actually sells, and shows exactly how much of your food cost is verified — plate by plate, week by week.

No credit card required · Cancel anytime · Setup in one afternoon
$63Kavg annual leak found*
96%recipe coverage verified
3%median variance after 60 days
30yrfoodservice + distribution executive
FORKast — Food Cost Dashboard
This Week · Verified Food Cost
28.4%
Ideal target
28.0%  +0.4% variance
Recipe coverage Verified: 96% of sales
NY Strip 10oz $14.22 on target
Salmon 6oz $8.90 +$0.38 change
Chicken Breast $4.17 on target
3 recipes need finishing — complete them to verify 100% of sales.
Built by
Ritz Escoffier, Paris
Wharton School of Business
James Beard House
Former Sysco & Shamrock Executive Consultant
Bell Bank Park Food Architect
The problem

Your invoices change every week.
Your recipe costs should too.

Most operators never catch the drift between what they priced and what they're paying — until the P&L shows up a month late.

Recipes costed once, never updated

You built your menu costs when you opened. Salmon is up 18% since then. Your recipe still says $7.20.

House-brand shrinkflation — the silent margin thief

Your distributor quietly switches the packer behind a house-label item — say, a #10 can of pinto beans. The label never changes, but the new manufacturer has a lower drain weight. They rarely tell you. You never retest. Your yield just dropped and your cost per portion just climbed — invisibly, every order.

You don't know what you don't know

A 6% variance sounds manageable. On $1M in sales, that's $60,000 in untracked loss — spread across dozens of items and invisible until month-end.

Partial recipes skew your average

Other tools average in items with incomplete recipes and give you a number that sounds good but can't be trusted. You need to know what's verified.

1pt = $10K
per $1M in sales, per year
Every 1 point of food cost on $1M revenue equals $10,000 a year. Straight to the bottom line. Most independent operators are running 3–6 points above their ideal without knowing it. FORKast shows you where those points are hiding — and verifies only the recipes you've actually completed.
How FORKast works

Know. Catch. Control.

Three jobs. One platform. Built for the person holding the clipboard and the person reading the P&L.

Your true cost
on every plate.

FORKast ranks your menu by what actually sells, so you cost the items that matter most — first.

PMIX ranking: "37 items are 80% of your sales — cost these first." Stop costing 200 items when 37 drive your P&L.
Recipe import: Bring your MarginEdge, P3 or Galley recipes. Ingredients are matched to your order guide automatically.
Coverage meter: Only verified recipes count toward your food cost %. See exactly how much of your sales are confirmed accurate.
Batch prep & sub-recipes: Cost your prep items, not just final plates. Spanish line cards for the kitchen. Coming soon
PMIX — Top items by sales volume
1Grilled Salmon
18.2%$8.90
2NY Strip 10oz
14.9%$14.22
3Chicken Piccata
11.6%$4.17
4Pasta Primavera
8.1%$3.44
5Ribeye 12oz
6.5%$18.60
These 5 items = 59.3% of your sales. Cost them first and you know your food cost by Friday.

Every change,
on every invoice.

Your invoices change every week. FORKast flags every pack-size shift, substitution, and off-contract price before it becomes a month-end surprise.

Yield & drain-weight detection: Catches when a house-label packer changes and the usable yield quietly drops — same SKU, same label, different product.
Off-contract substitution detection: Flags when you receive a different product than what you ordered or contracted for.
Price alerts: Immediate notification when an invoice price deviates from your contract price.
GPO benchmarks: "Is my price good?" — compare your contracted price against group purchasing benchmarks. Coming soon
Invoice alerts — this week
Yield change detected — Pinto Beans #10 can (house label)
Packer changed · Drain weight down 11% · Label unchanged · Same SKU
−11% yield
Off-contract substitution — 80/20 Ground Beef
Ordered 80/20 · Received 73/27 blend · Higher fat = lower usable yield
Review
Price within contract — Chicken Breast
Invoice $2.18/lb · Contract $2.20/lb
✓ OK

Close the gap
between ideal and actual.

Inventory that learns your shelf order. Variance that tells you why. Food cost you can act on before the month ends.

Mobile inventory with shelf-order learning: Walk your walk-in and the count sheet follows your path. Faster every time. Coming soon
Honest accounting: Your first count is your starting value. Real food cost starts at count two — FORKast is built this way from day one.
Variance by item: See each overrun flagged as price, portion, or waste — so you fix the right thing.
Multi-location roll-up: One view across all your locations. Compare variances, catch the outlier. Coming soon
Variance report — this period
ItemIdealActualVarianceCause
Salmon $8.52 $8.90 +$0.38 Price ↑
Ribeye $17.80 $19.20 +$1.40 Portion
Chicken $4.20 $4.17 −$0.03 On target
Pasta $3.50 $3.44 −$0.06 On target
Getting started

Your top sellers costed
in one afternoon.

Your full menu in a week. No consultant required.

Upload your order guide

Drop in your distributor price list. FORKast normalizes pack sizes and units automatically — cases, cans, catch-weight included.

Upload your sales mix

Connect your POS or upload a sales report. FORKast ranks every item by revenue and flags the 20% that drive 80% of your sales.

Cost what matters first

Build recipes for your top sellers — or import them from MarginEdge, P3 or Galley. Watch your verified coverage meter climb.

Count, and watch variance

Your first count sets your starting value. From count two on, your food cost is real — verified, variance flagged, and updated every invoice.

Customer result
"We'd been running food cost at 34% for two years. FORKast found $4,200 a month in portion control fixes, pack-size drift and substitutions we never noticed. We're at 29% now."
−5pt
food cost reduction
$50K
recovered in first year
6 wk
to first verified number
J
James R. — Executive Chef & Owner
Independent full-service restaurant · Phoenix, AZ · 3 locations
* Results from a FORKast operator, 90-day period. Individual results vary based on menu size, recipe completeness, and invoice volume. Methodology available on request.
Bo Bryant — Founder, FORKast
By the numbers
30+ years foodservice & distribution
500+ restaurants advised
4 successful operator exits
$1B+ distribution revenue managed
Built by Bo Bryant
"I've sat on both sides of the invoice — as the operator paying it, and as the Sysco and Shamrock executive consultant writing it. FORKast is built on everything I learned about where the margin actually hides."

Bo Bryant is a 30-year foodservice and distribution executive, trained at the Ritz Escoffier in Paris and the Wharton School of Business. He has advised more than 500 independent restaurants, managed over $1 billion in distribution revenue, and helped operators through 4 successful exits.

FORKast is the tool he always needed and never had — built specifically for independent operators who can't afford a full-time analyst but can't afford not to know their real food cost.

Ritz Escoffier, Paris
Wharton School of Business
James Beard House
Former Sysco & Shamrock Executive Consultant
How it compares

Built differently,
on purpose.

Most food-cost tools show you a percentage. FORKast shows you what's inside it — and what isn't.

Feature FORKast R365 MarketMan Compeat
Verified-coverage food cost (complete vs. partial recipes) ✓ — — —
Menu ranked by sales to cost highest-impact items first (PMIX) ✓ Partial Partial —
Pack-size change detection ✓ — Partial —
Off-contract substitution detection ✓ — — —
Can-yield and catch-weight costing ✓ ✓ Partial Partial
Inventory sheet learns your shelf order Soon — — —
Bilingual recipe cards (English/Spanish) Soon — — —
Public pricing / single-location plan ✓ — ✓ —
Self-serve trial (no sales call required) Soon — ✓ —

Competitor information as of October 2026, sourced from public websites. "Partial" = feature exists with significant limitations. Re-verified quarterly.

Pricing

Simple pricing.
Per location, per month.

No contracts. No setup fees. Cancel anytime.

Founding offer $99/mo locked for life for the first 50 operators. — spots remaining. Book a walkthrough to reserve yours.
Restaurant
Essential costing
$99
per location / month · billed monthly

Everything an independent operator needs to know their true food cost and catch invoice problems.

  • PMIX-ranked recipe costing
  • Coverage meter — verified vs. partial
  • Invoice upload + pack-size normalization
  • Pack-size change detection
  • Price alerts vs. contract
  • Variance reporting by item
  • Recipe import (MarginEdge, P3, Galley)
  • 30-day free trial · no credit card required
Intelligence
Advanced intelligence
$149
per location / month · billed monthly

Everything in Restaurant, plus the tools that catch what your distributor hopes you won't notice.

  • Everything in Restaurant
  • Off-contract substitution detection
  • GPO benchmark comparison coming soon
  • Mobile inventory with shelf-order learning coming soon
  • Multi-location roll-up dashboard coming soon
  • Batch prep scheduling coming soon
  • Bilingual recipe cards (EN/ES) coming soon
2× money-back guarantee. If FORKast doesn't find at least 2× your annual subscription in food cost savings in your first 90 days of active use, we'll refund double your money. See terms →
Multi-location operators: Contact us for volume pricing. Need a consulting strategist on your numbers? GRS Consulting →
Questions

Common questions.

No. FORKast shows you which recipes to build first — the ones that cover the most sales. Most operators cost their top 20 items and already have 70–80% of their revenue covered. You'll see your verified food cost within one afternoon of setup.
You can upload a sales report export from any POS — FORKast reads the file and builds your PMIX. Direct POS integrations are on the 2026 roadmap. If you have a specific system, let us know and we'll prioritize accordingly.
FORKast can import your existing recipes from MarginEdge, P3 and Galley. You don't start from scratch. The difference is what FORKast adds on top: the coverage meter, pack-size and substitution detection, and the PMIX-first workflow.
If FORKast doesn't identify at least 2× your annual subscription cost in food cost savings within your first 90 days of active use, we'll refund double your subscription amount. "Active use" means at least one inventory count and invoice upload per week. See the full terms for how savings are measured.
Both. The Restaurant and Intelligence plans are designed for independent operators and small groups (1–5 locations). Multi-location pricing is available for larger groups. FORKast is not enterprise software — it's built to be usable by a single chef-owner without a full-time analyst.

See your real food cost
this week.

Your top sellers costed in one afternoon. Your full menu in a week. Built by a 30-year foodservice and distribution executive who has sat on both sides of your invoice.

No credit card required · Cancel anytime · 30-day free trial