We turn the invoices you already get into costed menu cards, price alerts, and a smarter order guide. No POS, no count sheets, nothing for your team to install.
Send us what you already have. We build it. You review it. It stays live.
| Ingredient | Portion | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Haddock fillet | 5 oz | $3.20 |
| Brioche bun | 1 | $0.57 |
| Batter / breading | std | $0.15 |
| Tartar, lettuce, tomato | std | $0.35 |
| Skin-on fries (side) | 6 oz | $0.50 |
| Fry oil | ~2 oz | $0.12 |
| Food cost | $4.89 |
The tools that promise to fix that make you set up recipes, run counts, and connect a POS before you see a single number. The software is powerful, but the work lands on you. We take it off your plate and keep your numbers current every time a new invoice comes in.
BuildCard Studio works the other way around. You send what you already have, your distributor purchase history and your menu, and we build two sets of cards: recipe and build cards for your staff, and cost-and-margin cards for your managers. We set up cost monitoring on your real purchases and build an order guide from how you actually buy. We do the work, from documents you can pull in ten minutes.
A card for every dish: ingredients, portions, food cost, and margin. Your staff get a clean build sheet; your managers get the cost view. Branded with your logo.
We watch the invoices you send and flag what moved: the scallops that jumped 21%, the fuel surcharge that crept in. You re-price or re-spec before it eats your margin.
An order guide built from how you actually buy: weekly averages and suggested quantities, organized by station in the order you walk your kitchen. Reordering stops being a guess.
Sample numbers, in the format you'd receive. Yours come costed from your own invoices and branded with your logo.
Flags fire when an invoice arrives, not on a schedule. We only flag moves big enough to matter, and we say so when a number is still based on thin data. The monthly email is a recap of what we already caught.
Verified food cost % (calculated, not typed), gross profit and margin, a staff build sheet for the line, and a manager-confidential cost view. Watch-outs and cost-driver callouts where they matter.
Every competitor, the big inventory platforms, the new AI tools, the POS add-ons, makes you build recipes, count shelves, and connect systems before you see a number. Most charge per location, many lock you into a year, and that setup grind is exactly what their own reviews complain about.
We start from your invoices. No setup, no POS, no homework. We do it for you.
No POS required · No per-location pricing · No per-invoice fees · No contract
Because our numbers come from your invoices and menu, not hand-keyed counts, you can trust them on cost, price, and purchasing. There's no manual entry to drift.
Tracking waste and shrink is an optional add-on that uses periodic counts. We won't claim we're flat-out "more accurate," just accurate where the data is clean.
Purchase history, invoices, menus, and your logo, by email or a shared folder. We give you a ready-to-send note for your distributor reps that CCs future invoices to your own BuildCard address. After that, the data comes in on its own.
We cost every item against your actual invoices, check the math, and build your branded cards.
You get staff and manager cards. A quick sign-off confirms the few things only your kitchen knows, like portions and house recipes.
As new invoices arrive, Watch flags the price moves and your order guide updates itself.
Up to 12 months of distributor purchase history (CSV/Excel) plus PDF invoices, from each distributor you use.
A PDF, a clean photo, or a link. Main menu plus any late-night, brunch, or seasonal menus.
Highest-resolution version you have (PNG/SVG/PDF) so your cards come out branded as yours.
Compare that to $150–$400 a month for software you run yourself. Your cards are yours to keep, for good.
Cost figures shown throughout are illustrative samples, not a quote. Final cards reflect your own invoice data and a chef sign-off.
No. There's nothing to install, no integration, no login. You send documents you can already pull from your distributor portal, and we do the rest.
Watch checks the invoices you send as they come in and flags any ingredient that moved meaningfully, both the spikes you'll want to re-price around and the drops you can take advantage of. We only flag moves big enough to matter, and we tell you when a number is still based on thin data. Once a month you get a short recap of what mattered.
Your numbers come straight from your invoices, so there's no hand-keyed count to drift. As new invoices come in, Watch updates the picture and your order guide refreshes. Tracking waste and shrink is available as an optional add-on that uses periodic counts.
No login, no password, no customer ID. Your work is filed under your restaurant name. When you send new invoices, we match them to your existing portfolio automatically, whether that's next week or next year.
Your invoices and menus are used to build and maintain your cards, and nothing else. We don't sell or share your data. Full terms are on the site.