BACON Restaurant Management
Software Questions
Plus, different restaurant management software programs offer different tools. Some are great at managing liquor cost, but weak on food cost. Others have scheduling software in addition to their food cost modules.
It’s important that you keep things as simple as possible, do your research, and don’t over commit to something you won’t be able to understand in the future. After all running a profitable restaurant is the name of the game! If you are just spending your time working on software all day, you are ignoring the most important thing…OPERATING YOUR RESTAURANT.
Is BACON a Full Restaurant Accounting Software Program?
No, BACON is a Food Cost, Labor Cost, Beverage Cost and Direct Operating Expense tool designed to help bridge the gap between your POS system and your Accounting Program. Most POS systems lack the detail you need to get important data and most accounting programs (like QuickBooks) don’t give you the data you need to be proactive. They will get you SOME of the data you need to run a more profitable restaurant, but the data is old by the time you get it. BACON, on the other hand, helps you create a budget in just a couple of minutes per month AND gives you daily updates on your food cost, beverage cost, labor cost, prime cost and direct operating expenses in relationship to that budget. Using this REAL TIME information, you can make changes immediately rather than waiting until it is too late to find out that you missed your food cost again.
YES, this is one of the core functions in BACON. At any moment in time, you will be able to know exactly how much money you have spent on a specific category and how much more you can spend on that category to hit your budget. Armed with this data, you can free up your managers to take over more purchasing control, without fear of them over (or under) ordering.
Does BACON Integrate with my POS System or Labor App?
YES, BACON integrates with ALL major POS systems and Labor Applications. To see if your system is already setup or to learn more about integrations and their functions, please view our integrations page.
Which currencies does BACON support?
We have every major currency already included in the software. However, every once in a while we are asked to add one that is not loaded and are happy to do that.
What if I have Questions About Restaurant Financials?
This is probably the most asked about topic and for good reason: it can be confusing! Here is a very basic overview on calculating your restaurant financial targets.
– Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS): The cost of the raw ingredients (food, beer, wine, liquor) that you sell. For more information on calculating your food cost, please visit this page.
– Labor Costs: Cost of labor + employer expenses (taxes, benefits, insurance, etc.). For more information about labor costs, please visit this page.
– Prime Cost (Total CoGS + Labor Costs/Total Sales): Prime Cost is a “golden number” that should be looked at weekly and should always be between 55%-60% of your sales. For more information on calculating Prime Cost, please visit this page.
– Direct Operating Expenses (DOE): Items you purchase but don’t sell back to customers, such as toilet paper, napkins, gloves, foil, to-go containers, and chemicals. DOE is usually 6-8% of your sales. To understand more about the difference between CoGS and DOE, please watch this video.
If you need a deeper understanding of restaurant financials and how to calculate and use them in your restaurant, I recommend taking our SCALE course. And if you don’t want to do any of the math yourself, our costing software clickBACON will do all of the math for you!
Inventory is a pain in the rear! While it’s a key component in calculating a perfect Cost of Good Sold (CoGS) number for Food Cost, Beer Cost, Wine Cost, Liquor Cost, it’s only as good as the data you use. In other words, “Garbage In = Garbage Out.” If you are not updating your recipes and purchase prices per product on a daily basis, your inventory values will be wrong. And if your recipes are not perfect, well, your inventory values will be wrong. It’s a slippery slope that could potentially lead you to make changes in your restaurant based on BAD information.
In BACON we have created a special patent-pending algorithm called Rolling CoGS. This has been tested against accounts that take inventory and it is VERY accurate. In some cases, it’s even more accurate. Plus, there is NO need to take inventory, no need to update your prices on each product and no need for recipes on every single item.
It’s because the Food Cost at 59.24% is actual month to date purchases divided by sales, while the rolling Food Cost is using our algorithm to take historical data into account. What happened here is that this restaurant received a large food delivery this morning, but has not sold any of that food yet. They only receive a breadline delivery once per week, so it will take almost an entire week to sell that food. While the Rolling Food Cost is a long term indicator that is more accurate to the actual number. Previously, you would have to wait till the end of the month to get this kind of information. But with BACON, accurate and actionable data is available at your fingertips daily so you can run a better restaurant.
What if we do take inventory, does BACON support that?
YES, we also allow you to take inventory weekly or monthly. You can take weekly inventory on easy to count stuff like Beer, Wine and Liquor then monthly inventory on Food.
YES, any device with an internet connection. We are 100% cloud based and accessible via all web browsers no matter if it’s a PC or MAC. BACON also works on all mobile devices.
Can I Try Before I Buy?
YES, there are a couple ways you can get under the hood of BACON.
If you want to literally go inside the software right now, you can click the button below to see sample cost data, as well as build Checklist, Prepsheets, Order Guides, Inventory Sheets, Kitchen Build Sheets that you can use in your restaurant and save to a free account. No credit card, nothing!