Apicbase Explained | Why Its The Backbone Of Multi-Site Restaurants

“What can Apicbase do for our _______?”

Fill in the blank with:

• ‘100 hotel restaurants’… 
• ‘15 fast-casual outlets’, … 
• ‘a fine-dining franchise on three continents’, or… 
• ‘an emerging dark kitchen network.’

… and you get a question that lands in my inbox a few times every week.

And, every time I see it, I have to resist the urge to type a one-sentence response: 

‘Everything!’

Because that’s the answer. But it’s also an unhelpful answer.

So this post is a slightly longer — but immeasurably more helpful — dive into what Apicbase can do for your business. Once you go through this short breakdown of all nine Apicbase modules [and that will take you eight minutes, flat], you’ll get a glimpse of the benefits that have prompted thousands of F&B professionals to refer to our platform as ‘the backbone of their operation’.

Some of those benefits include:

• quickly figuring out [and closing] the gap between actual and theoretical food cost;
• centralising F&B management… regardless of how many units & locations you have;
• access to data-driven decision making… without manually crunching the numbers;
• preventing rogue purchasing [record even those emergency supermarket trips];
• breezing through inventory counts with increased speed & accuracy. 

So set your timer for eight minutes, and get ready to love Apicbase after they’re are up!

1. Menu Engineering

The Menu Engineering module is the ‘always on’ brain of your entire operation — whether that operation is five or 500 units. It gives you an at-a-glance overview of your ingredients, recipes, and menus. It also lets your F&B crews work their collaborative magic regardless of where they are in the world. It’s the only module you have to use when you sign up for Apicbase. It’s the alpha & omega of the entire system and makes every other module tick.

With this module, you can:

• manage all your raw materials [& add allergen, nutri & packaging info, set prices & more] 
• create fully costed recipes [& immediately see if you’re not hitting your food cost targets]
• develop profitable menus [& auto-generate bills of materials to speed up production]

As recipes are your core data set, you should consider this module the nerve centre that keeps everything on track. In addition to managing everything listed above, the Menu Engineering module lets you do real-time recipe costings, calculate menu margins, and upload step-by-step production and plating videos.

Use this module to: automate costing calculations even if you scale production; immediately load your recipes with allergen, nutritional, and packaging information; eliminate ‘educated guesses’ when getting to the bottom of food cost variance, and more.

2. Inventory Management

In every F&B operation, inventory management accounts for a considerable chunk of time and effort… and, despite that, it’s often the thing that goes haywire first. Why? Well, because keeping track of [and figuring out errors in] actual and theoretical stock is hard to do. Especially when you’re trying to do it manually for dozens of locations.

That’s where Apicbase’s Inventory module comes to the rescue.

Our system makes it almost impossible NOT to spot inventory mistakes early on.

How?

Well, on the actual stock side of things, you’re still doing inventory counts… occasionally. But now, your kitchen teams are doing them digitally via tablets and barcode scanner apps. The numbers are instantly uploaded and processed by the system. And error-prone spreadsheets have become a thing of the past.

However, the real magic happens on the theoretical side of the equation, where integration with POS and other systems all deplete/alter your inventory levels accurately, leaving you and other decision-makers with precise numbers that can be trusted. 

Because of this, as soon as a discrepancy creeps in, you know where to look for it [or who to ask about it]. And because you always know your inventory numbers, ordering becomes a one-click activity [instead of a dash to count the storage rooms right at the end of the third shift].

Use this module to: zero in on inventory variance; prevent over or under-stocking caused by inaccurate inventory counts; track down unresolved food cost variance without guessing at the cause; keep waste and shrinkage under control; minimise CoGS thanks to dialled-in inventory practices, and more.

3. Production Planning

Are your BoH production processes hectic? Disorganised? Difficult to keep on track? They don’t have to be. With our Production Planning module, you can quickly build a streamlined workflow for every outlet… every workstation… and every staff member. 

The best part?

No! More! Spreadsheets!

All your production plans are stored in the Apicbase cloud — accessible to everyone with a click… and easy for you to check at a glance. You can schedule production weeks in advance and attach detailed instructions to every item. This way, you can plan out your staff roster and ensure consistency across all your locations.

Use this module to: eliminate wasteful and inconsistent prep practices; reduce the time you spend on the phone and in email making prep arrangements; get your mise-en-place instructions ready with a click by duplicating production SOPs, and more.

4. Procurement

With our Procurement module, you can transform your bills of materials into purchase orders, so you’re always ordering precisely what you need and when you need it.  Or set up your par levels and tell the system to order to par every time an ingredient falls under its designated minimal quantity. And you can connect the system with your vendors so that they can feed you information about their quantities, packaging, and real-time prices.  That way, your margin calculations per recipe and menu are always up to date.

Use this module to: fix your flawed and error-prone manual ordering process; save time by sending orders with just two clicks; eliminate unrecorded rogue spending; streamline order management [cloud-based per unit or central kitchen ordering], work on optimising food costs by eliminating waste and over-ordering; work on improving vendor relationships, and more.

5. Central Kitchen

Your central kitchen is the beating heart of your sprawling operation. There — more than anywhere else — you want to make sure you run a tight ship. Our Central Kitchen module allows your teams to cooperate, even when they are miles apart physically. They can create production plans for outlets, work on new menus, manage and track internal orders, and see inventory levels at a glance without calculating them manually. As a result, you’re left with an efficient and profitable kitchen that runs like clockwork.

Use this module to: efficiently plan production for all your outlets from a single location; keep your internal supply chain on a leash; quickly place internal orders [and then monitor their status]; and more.

6. HACCP & Tasks

There’s more to running an efficient F&B operation than preparing excellent dishes while crushing your revenue goals. A lot more. From staff training and equipment maintenance to HACCP and regulatory compliance. This HACCP Task Management module simplifies it all, liberating you from unruly spreadsheets and delivering you to a cloud-based compliance paradise. 

With HACCP & Tasks, drag & drop CCP tasks per outlet, assign them to team members, and document everything on the spot. Not only will you impress compliance officers, but you’ll also ensure that all your guests and employees are 100% safe and secure at all times.

Use this module to: get back hours your team now wastes on manually tracking and recording HACCP tasks; set up tasks in advance at HQ and keep track of execution in a visual dashboard; always have access to the necessary documentation; know who to talk to in case of problems; keep a historical record of operational tasks so you can spot irregularities, and more.

7. Accounting

Even with a back-office full of accounting magicians, invoicing and payment mistakes happen regularly in the F&B industry. You wouldn’t be the first to end up paying for undelivered goods… or the first to misplace an invoice and end up paying a late payment fee. The first mistake balloons up your food cost. The second one also eats away at your bottom line… plus, it puts a strain on your vendor relationships. But both can be avoided with our Accounting module!

Use this module to: stop paying for undelivered/wrong orders; eliminate unruly spreadsheets from your processes; save your accounting team hours [and sometimes even days] tracking down purchase documentation and errors; automate and streamline A/P processes; increase the productivity of procurement and accounting teams, and more.

8. Sales Analytics

The Sales Analytics module provides you with an at-a-glance overview of your operations. It’s a clean, action-focused dashboard that tells you how your menus per outlet are doing financially. You can look at your business as a whole or go as granular as you need to, quickly figuring out which menu items are already profitable and which need extra tuning to get there. 

One handy feature in this module — the profitability matrix — lets you identify your menu stars instantly. No more guessing or crunching the numbers for days on end!

Use this module to: cut down on time between deploying a menu and figuring out if it’s profitable; get real-time data to create popular menus; instantly identify your menu stars and dogs; review outlet and menu performance at a glance, and more.

9. Application Programming Interface [API]

It’s time to squash those data silos with Apicbase’s robust API capabilities.

Instead of constantly switching between tools — entering and then re-entering data, double-checking the numbers, and thinking about who to call for access to this or that software — connect it all to Apicbase and create a tech ecosystem that actually makes your life easier.

Apicbase’s API module lets your disparate tools speak a common language without relying on patchwork coding and shaky integrations. 

It frees up your IT department so they can work on important things instead of constantly putting out tech-related fires. 

And the clean data helps Apicbase deliver better insights so you can close the gap between the actual and theoretical food cost.

Use this module to: build your restaurant tech ecosystem and save money by eliminating custom-built integrations that don’t work; sidestep constant system glitches; get accurate insights fed to you by EPOS and other customer-facing tools, and more.The whole F&B process is powered by Apicbase — our production, stocktaking, procurement and customer-facing apps form an ecosystem with automated workflows.