How Leading Restaurant Groups Are Rebuilding Their Tech Stack with Best-of-Breed Systems

Most restaurant tech stacks weren’t really planned. Tools get added when something breaks, or keeps breaking, and people need a quick fix. It’s a reactive process.

In fact, 94% of restaurant companies say they won’t replace or upgrade technology unless they absolutely have to.

The consequence is that hospitality businesses get locked into outdated systems. If that sounds like a competitive handicap, it’s because it is.

But that’s starting to change.

Over the past decade, I’ve been involved in many Apicbase rollouts. A few years ago, most of our conversations were with executive chefs and ops managers. Today, we’re speaking with Heads of Digital, CIOs, and CTOs.

That shift tells you everything: restaurant companies are investing seriously in digital maturity.

Chefs and managers are still deeply involved—no one knows the day-to-day better—but the digital strategy now sits with people who’ve spent their careers building systems for scale and resilience. 

And from those conversations, a clear model has emerged.

In this article, I’ll break down the blueprint that leading foodservice companies are using to rebuild their tech stacks.

Inside the Best-of-Breed Restaurant Stack

If you want a stack that scales, don’t start by listing features. Start by asking what each system needs to support.

In hospitality tech architecture, clarity of responsibility is everything. Integration is crucial, yes, but just as critical is deciding which system does what and why. Without clear ownership, even the best tool will become a source of friction. 

A high-performing restaurant tech stack supports five essential functions:

1. Connect systems: how those tools communicate and stay in sync
2. Run operations: the tools that power the business day-to-day
3. Control financials: how systems track cash flow and safeguard profitability
4. Serve the customer: how systems enable consistent, high-quality experiences
5. Generate insight: how raw data becomes trusted decisions

They are the pillars. They’re also the pressure points. When they’re solid, your architecture stays strong, even as complexity increases

The essential functions align with the layers in a best-of-breed architecture:

1. Data and Connectivity Layer
2. Operational Core
3. Finance Layer
4. Customer-Facing Layer
5. Insights Layer

Let’s break down what happens where, and why, starting with the core.

1. Data & Connectivity Layer: A Single Source of Truth

This layer does two things: it defines how systems communicate, and it gives them a shared foundation for understanding the information exchanged.

The integration layer acts like a translator between your systems.

Instead of connecting every tool directly to every other tool (which quickly becomes a mess), each one connects just once to a shared interface, usually through middleware or an API gateway.

This makes integrations far easier to manage.

When systems are built around a central data layer, you don’t have to rebuild everything when one tool changes. You just plug it in the system.

Casper van Tricht
Integrations Manager, It’s Us

If something changes in one system, it doesn’t trigger a domino effect of updates across the stack. The rest of the architecture holds steady.

Right below that, the data layer keeps everything aligned.

It standardises your key business terms—like SKUs, recipes, supplier codes, outlet IDs, and employee roles—so all your systems use the same definitions. 

That’s what makes reporting, forecasting, and automation consistent and reliable. You’re no longer pulling data from five sources and wondering which one is right. Every system pushes data to the data lake, making it the source of truth for analytics.

Together, the integration and data layers make sure:

• Data is clean and consistent across departments
• Everyone is working off the same numbers
• You can change tools without disrupting every dataflow

And for IT, it means fewer headaches.

They don’t have to maintain a series of custom-built links between tools. They only need to manage the connections between your core platforms and your data lake or warehouse, one per business domain.

2. Operational Core: Where Work Happens

This is where execution lives. These are the systems your teams use daily. The tools that power procurement, production, sales, and service on the ground.

These tools run the daily operations:

• Buying ingredients 
• Keeping track of stock 
• Managing recipes and menus
• Planning what gets prepped, where and when 
• Staff scheduling
• Tracking sales transactions 

This is the heartbeat of your foodservice business. The tools that generate core ops data. Everything else depends on it, on how good these systems are. 

And they’re all connected. If you change the menu, you need to buy other ingredients. Recipes affect what needs to be prepped. Sales data helps plan staff schedules and depletes inventory. Stock levels then feed back into reorders.

If those systems aren’t connected, it gets messy. People start exporting data into Excel, keeping side spreadsheets. It’s time-consuming, and mistakes slip through because no one can see the whole picture.

For example, Apicbase brings together recipes, inventory, purchasing, and menu planning in a single platform. Everything works together, so you don’t need workarounds. And when you open a new location, you don’t have to start from scratch. You just plug the site into the setup you already have.

We started with Apicbase, then built the rest of our tech stack around it—choosing best-of-breed tools that were already integrated.

Jornt Depreter
Director of Central Business Services, Lunch Garden

3. Finance Layer: Connecting Costs to Performance

Financial systems reveal how the business is truly performing. But they’re only as accurate and as useful as the data they get.

In many restaurant businesses, finance is stuck waiting for data from numerous disconnected systems.

• Sales numbers need to be cleaned up
• COGS come from manual exports
• Labour costs are off because of scheduling mistakes

It makes reporting slow and numbers hard to verify. Try finding the cause of a margin drop weeks after the fact. 

But with the right tech setup, that changes.

If your inventory, POS, and scheduling systems all send clean, structured data into a single location, such as a data warehouse, and then into your financial tools, everything aligns. The numbers are accurate. They’re up-to-date. And they actually match what’s happening in your restaurants.

You get a P&L that reflects real life, not something that lags behind by two or three weeks when it’s already too late to act.

This layer usually includes:

• Accounting
• Spend and expense tracking
• Financial reporting
• Tax and compliance

When your data definitions are consistent and your systems talk to each other, your finance team doesn’t have to waste time chasing or verifying numbers.

They get:

• Clean COGS
• Accurate labour costs
• Daily sales updates

And they can focus on what really matters:

• Cash flow
• Margins
• Variances
• Runway

4. Customer-Facing Layer: Syncing the Guest Journey

This layer captures every interaction the customer has with the business, across both digital and physical touchpoints. 

It typically includes:

• Order and service channels: kiosks, QR menus, mobile apps, web ordering, payment systems
• Brand communication and loyalty: CRM, email, SMS, loyalty platforms, feedback tools
• In-store screens: digital menus, allergen info, nutrition displays, self-checkout

These tools are typically the most flexible and rapidly evolving. They evolve quickly because customer expectations change fast, and so do marketing strategies and tech trends.

They may appear to be standalone tools, but they still rely on the rest of your system to function properly.

For example, they need:

• Accurate menus and pricing
• Up-to-date allergen and nutrition info
• Real-time stock availability

Crucially, customer-facing tools don’t ‘own’ this data. They just use it.

And that’s a good thing. Because the primary data lives in your central system (the data layer), you’re free to update or replace customer tools, like testing a new app or switching kiosk providers, without breaking everything else behind the scenes.

Even better, you can track every digital interaction a guest has and connect it to your core business data: which SKUs were sold, where, when, and how. 

That means your customer experience data isn’t isolated—it feeds into the same system that runs your kitchen and tracks your stock.

So you can improve the guest experience and analyse performance without creating more silos.

5. Insight Layer: Hospitality Decision Engine

The insight layer consolidates data from core systems like POS, procurement, inventory, scheduling, production, and finance, and organises it into a single, coherent view.

The insights layer is your decision engine. It’s the part of your tech stack that helps you understand what’s really going on in your hospitality business.

Reports, KPIs, insights, they’re only as good as the data model behind them.

Mateusz Kostrzębski
Head of IT, Vapiano, ex-AmRest, ex-Dean & David

It pulls in clean, standardised data from across your restaurant systems, such as inventory, sales, staff schedules, and purchasing, and displays it all in one place. Because the data is connected and consistent, you can actually trust what you’re seeing.

This makes your reporting tools and dashboards much more helpful. Instead of just showing numbers, they tell a cohesive story in which all key business metrics play a part: revenue, spending, usage, and scheduling. 

• What’s happening right now?
• Why is it happening?
• What should we do next?

When everyone in the company sees the same numbers, managers, execs, head office, and local teams are all on the same page, quite literally.

That means:

• No discussion over which spreadsheet is right
• No delays because someone’s double-checking numbers
• Faster, better decisions across the board

Also, when you open a new site, you don’t have to build new reports. The new location just starts showing up in the dashboards automatically.

In short, the insights layer is where all your hard work with integrations and data models pays off. It helps everyone work smarter, faster, and with more confidence.

Managing Complexity and Getting Buy-in

This is a blueprint. It’s the ideal setup. Some parts might feel out of reach today. But this is the direction the restaurant industry is heading.

Why? Because it’s founded on a practical insight: 

When systems aren’t connected, the data doesn’t line up, but no one feels responsible. Because whose fault is it anyway? In that setup, even a small change, such as updating allergens, can turn into big headaches. 

But when your stack is built around clear business domains, each with a defined owner, complexity becomes manageable.

That clarity creates momentum. Everyone knows who’s responsible: across tech partners, ops teams, finance, and IT. And that clarity is what actually moves the business forward.

Just as importantly, clarity is what gets the project approved in the first place. When executives see a well-structured plan, with clear ownership and fewer moving parts, it’s far easier to get their buy-in.