One of the most important restaurant operations is inventory management. If you don’t keep a close eye on your inventory, you could be losing a lot of money.
In the past, restaurant owners managed inventory with pen-and-paper. That method resulted in lots of human errors, inaccuracies, and lack of clarity.
Today, restaurant inventory management software offers a wide range of features and benefits that help you manage and optimize inventory.
In this article, we’ll cover the top restaurant inventory management systems to help you streamline inventory, boost direct revenue, and improve guest satisfaction.
Why is restaurant inventory management important?
As mentioned, inventory management, or lack thereof, can result in leaking finances and affect your revenue management strategies.
Here are the top reasons why you should consider using an inventory management solution in your dining concept.
Reduces food waste
An inventory system helps you reduce food waste by identifying your most frequently-ordered dishes. These systems also help you log in new inventory and quantities.
Some inventory management solutions allow you to create notifications when items are running low.
Optimizes costs
By identifying your most in-demand dishes, you can reduce the quantities of rarely-ordered food items and cut costs. You can also seek vendors with adequate pricing for in-demand items.
In addition, tracking inventory efficiently allows you to pinpoint areas where you can cut costs while maintaining quality.
Ensures accurate financials
In the hospitality industry, where profit margins are often tight, accurate inventory records are vital. Understanding the cost of goods sold (COGS) helps you make informed decisions to maximize revenue and minimize costs.
Enhances operational efficiency
Restaurant inventory management software saves your staff hours of time, allowing them to focus on your guests and delivering delightful dining experiences.
Improves customer satisfaction
Many restaurants don’t realize how inventory management affects their guests. When guests order food but are told the item isn’t available, it’s a lost sale.
Inventory management means being able to pinpoint guest preferences and maintain top ordered items to ensure more restaurant sales.
This also translates to higher guest retention and loyalty.
Saves hours of labor
According to Supy.io, restaurant inventory management systems can save F&B operators over 40 hours of labor each month. They can also boost profitability by up 32%.
Best inventory management software for restaurants
Below are our top picks for the best restaurant inventory management systems.
Based in the Middle East, Supy boasts offices in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and the UK.
Supy is a data-driven inventory management software designed for multi-location restaurants.
Their top inventory features include real-time visibility, automated ordering recommendations, parallel stock counting, and advanced analytics.
Restaurants using Supy can track and fix inventory discrepancies, including monitoring inventory levels, reviewing stock, and identifying irregularities with built-in alerts.
According to their website, concepts using Supy can count stock 3x faster and twice as accurately using digital, synchronized sessions with their team.
Pricing:
Supy offers 3 paid plans of inventory solutions, Basic, Premium, and Enterprise. However, they do not display pricing for any of those plans. There is no free trial available.
Saudi-based Foodics is a leading F&B point-of-sale (POS) system that offers inventory management and tracking, among other solutions.
Over 30,000 restaurants use Foodics’ POS, inventory management system and other restaurant management features.
Besides inventory management and POS, Foodics offers a cashier solution, kitchen display screens, customer display screens, and other solutions that ensure front-of-house and back-of-house operate seamlessly.
Customers often choose Foodics because of its easy setup, real-time inventory reporting, advanced analytics features, and payments solutions.
Pricing:
Foodics doesn’t offer independent pricing for its inventory management solution. Foodics offers 3 plans for its restaurant POS, which includes inventory management. Its starter plan begins at around $59 per month.
It also has other offerings, such as a cashier system, kitchen display screens, and important elements in a restaurant’s tech stack.
Founded in Montréal, Canada in 2005, Lightspeed has teams spread across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The company serves retail, hospitality and golf businesses in over 100 countries.
LightSpeed offers a comprehensive POS and inventory management system for restaurants.
Their top inventory features include real-time ingredient tracking, food waste reduction tools, and automated replenishments.
Pricing:
Like other restaurant inventory management systems on this list, LightSpeed offers 3 pricing plans. Their basic plan amounts to $109 per month for one location and includes 1 register.
The value of each plan varies based on the number of locations and registers needed. They also have different pricing, in other currencies, for various locations like the UK, Australia, Canada…etc.
MarketMan is a cloud-based inventory management and purchasing platform that simplifies back-of-house operations for many dining concepts.
MarketMan aims to simplify the entire process from tracking inventory to procurement. It offers reporting features, supplier management, recipe costing, which breaks down the cost of ingredients for every menu item.
Other features include a CRM to identify prospects and opportunities, suggestive ordering, which uses predicative analytics to forecast demand and reduce food waste.
Unlike many of the inventory management systems on this list, MarketMan offers solutions for restaurants and distributors.
Pricing:
MarketMan offers 3 fairly costly pricing plans. Their Starter plan begins at $199 a month and includes a web and mobile app, POS and accounting software integrations, price tracking and alerts, among other features.
One of the oldest inventory management solutions is Crunchtime. Launched in 1995, Crunchtime Information Systems Inc. offers web-based back-of-house solutions for hospitality and dining concepts.
They help F&B businesses cut costs, improve operations, and make data-drive decisions. Popular Crunchtime users include Chipotle, Domino’s, Dunkin’, and Five Guys.
Crunchtime helps food concepts manage inventory, staff scheduling, food safety, as well as control food and labor costs, while ensuring great customer experiences.
Pricing:
Crunchtime doesn’t share its pricing structure on its website. They offer a personalized demo and will likely make an offer afterwards.
Founded in 2011, Restaurant365 is a restaurant management system that offers inventory management solutions to over 40,000 locations. Their solution helps F&B concepts control food costs, boost sales, among others.
Restaurant365 offers a workforce management platform and integrates with financial, operational, and team processes for higher efficiency.
Besides inventory management, Restaurant365 aims to boost back-office productivity. Accordingly, the company offers POS, accounting, and vendor integrations.
Pricing:
Unlike many of the inventory management solutions on this list, Restaurant365 doesn’t offer monthly billing.
Billed quarterly Their Essential plan amounts to $499 a month and includes accounting, labor, inventory management, and POS, vendor, and bank connections.
How to choose a restaurant inventory system
As you can see, the different inventory management solutions have overlapping features.
So, how can you pick the one that’s most suitable for your dining concept? Here are a few tips.
Easy to integrate with other solutions
It’s important you use an inventory management solution that integrates with other software. For efficient restaurant operations, you’ll need a seating management system, a phone integration, reservation management, and POS system integrations.
Has multiple services within a single platform
You may have noticed how restaurant inventory systems are tied to POS solutions. This is important because when your cashier or server logs in a new order, it automatically notifies inventory and your numbers change.
This gives you a clear idea about what you have left in stock and your servers can inform guests of availability to increase sales for sitting inventory.
You can also use your POS system to identify top ordered dishes to personalize guest experience. You can use this data in your restaurant’s marketing strategy.
So, make sure it’s a solution that ties into other aspects of your dining concept.
Has robust reporting features
This point shouldn’t come as a surprise. Without strong reporting, you might as well not have an inventory solution.
Reporting helps you identify trends, consumer behavior, and can help you plan seasonal menus and dishes.
Predicative inventory management, which helps you forecast demand, optimize inventory levels, and reduce waste, is one of our restaurant tech trends for 2025.
Further reading
7 Best Reservation Systems for Restaurants Compared [2025]
9 Ways to Reduce No-Shows at Your Restaurant
Best Table Management Systems for Restaurants in 2025
10 Marketing Tools for Restaurants to Engage & Retain Guests
21 Restaurant Marketing Ideas to Drive Guest Spending in 2025
Mohammed Rafy
Operations
