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CostCook

For independent caterers and small kitchen teams

Know what every event should cost before you quote it.

CostCook carries each supplier price you approve through recipes, menus, and draft orders. See expected food cost before you commit, then turn the confirmed event into shopping, prep, and packing work.

Book a 15-min demoWatch the 1:51 product tour

Bring one real menu or order. Nothing to install.

A confirmed CostCook order quoted at $26.92 per guest and 39.6 percent food cost, compared with $27.12 per guest and 39.9 percent at today's prices, a 0.7 percent rise.
Quoted stays quoted. Current prices keep future work up to date.

One changed price can leave every other sheet behind.

Supplier prices change in one place. Recipes live somewhere else. Menus and event quotes may be copied again. By the time the shopping list is written, the cost used on the phone may already be stale.

  • A supplier price changes

    Which dishes, menus, and unconfirmed events use that ingredient?

  • The guest count moves

    Which portions, batches, cases, and equipment need to change?

  • The event is over

    What should the food have cost, and what did the kitchen actually spend?

Change the source. See where the change goes.

Reviewed ingredient prices flow through reusable recipes, menus, and draft orders. Confirm an event when the plan is ready; later prices keep updating future work without rewriting what was approved.

  1. Supplier evidence

    A file, photo, invoice, receiving record, or manual price.

  2. Review and confirm

    CostCook suggests matches. You decide what is saved.

  3. Ingredients

    Pack price, pack quantity, yield, conversions, and supplier.

  4. Recipes and menus

    Reusable sub-recipes, dishes, portions, and cost per guest.

  5. Draft order

    Menu, guests, selling price, live plan, and food-cost target.

  6. Confirm and run it

    Freeze the event, then work through Shop, Prep, and Pack.

Purchases move future costs. Posted receiving and other confirmed price evidence can update the current ingredient price.

Confirmed events stay frozen. The plan and money approved for an event are not silently restated.

The product, not a mockup

Watch one order go from recipe to sent purchase orders to the shelf.

A 180-guest wedding, start to finish: the costed recipe, the order’s money, the purchase orders actually emailed to vendors, a delivery that isn’t perfect, and the shelf that agrees at the end. Real interface, real sends into a capture inbox, every number labeled for what it means.

A silent, captioned screen recording of CostCook following one order start to finish. There is no narration; a music bed plays and every claim is written on screen, so nothing is carried by audio alone. A year of orders on the books, the next big one a wedding of 180 plates three days out. The braised short rib recipe with its costed lines, the beef carrying 93 percent of the plate. The order: 180 guests at $68 a head is $12,240.00 of revenue against $4,845.61 of food, 39.6 percent food cost, with the price that meets the 30 percent target named on screen. The same order as a shopping list grouped by vendor, in the whole packs you actually buy, Baldor totalling $690.82. A capture inbox showing the purchase orders the confirmation actually emailed, one per vendor, each with its own PO number; then one opened: PO-00783-002 to Green Valley Produce, five items, a $516.08 subtotal, payment terms and dock notes. Receiving: arugula a case short, recorded and saved for follow-up; baby spinach with an extra case, sixteen delivered where fifteen were quoted, $477.16 paid against the $410.40 estimate. The ingredient’s live cost panel showing the paid price as current cost with its source recorded. The inventory screen with the shelf counted today. Finally the order’s comparison band: quoted at $26.92 a guest, $27.12 at today’s prices, a 0.7 percent move with the quote still holding.

Book a 15-min demo

Guided setup

From costing settings to a first costed order.

CostCook walks an owner or manager through the minimum connected kitchen: costing defaults, business and supplier details, ingredients, a dish, a menu, and a first order.

Save and return at any time. If the kitchen already has data, the guide shows what is complete instead of creating duplicates.

  1. 1Kitchen settings
  2. 2Business and suppliers
  3. 3Ingredients
  4. 4Recipes
  5. 5Menu
  6. 6First order

Open the calculation at each stage to see how pack price, yield, recipe quantities, menu portions, and guest count affect the result. Finish by opening Shop for the first order.

A sauce can stay one recipe, even when it lives in five dishes.

Ingredients hold the buying facts. Sub-recipes hold reusable batches. Dishes combine them. Menus define what each guest receives. Change a shared fact once and its live consumers recalculate.

Start a recipe three ways:

  • Start blank
  • Duplicate an existing recipe
  • Import a supported file

Imported matches are suggestions until you approve them. Missing prices or conversions remain visible problems instead of becoming zero-cost ingredients.

A CostCook recipe's ingredient lines, each showing the amount used, trim yield, amount to buy, and its share of plate cost.
Used, yield, and bought stay on the same recipe line, beside the cost they produce.

Change a draft guest count and the kitchen plan changes with it.

Choose a menu, enter the event and guest count, and set the selling price. CostCook compares theoretical food cost with your target and names the selling price that would meet it. Confirm when the plan is ready to freeze.

Shop
Consolidated ingredients by supplier, whole-pack buying, and trusted on-hand quantities.
Prep
Scaled dishes, whole sub-recipe batches, instructions, labels, and checkoffs.
Pack
Dishes, quantities, equipment, and completion checks before the order leaves.
A CostCook shopping list grouped by supplier, showing each ingredient's need, on-hand amount, whole packs to buy, and supplier subtotal.
Trusted shelf quantities reduce buying. They do not reduce the theoretical food the event consumes.

Send the order. Receive the truck. The price you paid becomes the price you plan with.

Confirming an event turns its shopping list into purchase orders: emailed to the vendors that take email, printed for the cash-and-carry stop. Receiving records what actually arrived, and the paid price can become tomorrow’s current cost.

  • Post supplier receiving
  • Import and review an invoice
  • Enter a purchase manually

You confirm the write. Receiving decisions are reviewed and posted once; imported matches remain staged until approved.

A price sheet is not a purchase. It can update catalog cost without creating actual spend.

An ingredient's live cost panel: $29.82 per 3 lb pack, $21.91 per kilogram usable cost, and a saved price source reading recorded purchase, Baldor, with the receiving it came from.
The paid price becomes the live cost, with its source on record.
An emailed purchase order, PO-00783-002 from Maple & Main Catering to Green Valley Produce: five items in whole packs, a $516.08 subtotal, payment terms, and delivery instructions.
The email the vendor actually receives: whole packs, a subtotal, your terms, sent straight from the confirmed order.
A receiving checklist for one vendor: arugula marked short with one case saved for follow-up, baby spinach received with an extra case at $477.16 against a $410.40 estimate, and lines posted to inventory.
The truck is never perfect. A short case is saved for follow-up; an invoice over the quote sits beside the number you were promised.
The CostCook inventory screen after receiving: shelf value and count summaries, and the received ingredient's row showing its on-hand quantity, counted today.
And the shelf agrees: what arrived is on hand, counted today, valued at what you paid.

See exactly where the number came from

Food cost, buying, and spend are not the same number.

CostCook keeps them separate so the kitchen can tell what a menu should consume, what it still needs to buy, and what was actually recorded afterward.

Theoretical food cost
Exact recipe consumption valued from current pack prices, conversions, yield, and miscellaneous cost.
Estimated buy cost
Whole packs still needed after trusted on-hand quantities. Pack and batch rounding can make it higher.
Actual purchase spend
Correction-aware purchases recorded in the ledger. It is not the plate, menu, or event food-cost numerator.

Open a calculation to inspect pack price and quantity, purchased and usable unit cost, yield, recipe-line contribution, sub-recipe output, plate cost, menu cost per guest, event cost, and the source and date CostCook can prove. Missing facts stay visible.

The complete list

CostCook does 151 specific things.

Every one is shipped and written from the code, not the roadmap. The whole list lives on its own page, grouped so you can scan straight to the parts your kitchen cares about.See every feature

From the chef

Bring one real menu or order.

I spent twelve years cooking professionally before becoming a software engineer. CostCook is the system I wanted when one menu had to become a quote, shopping list, prep plan, and pack list without losing the cost along the way.

Rayan, the chef who built CostCook

Rayan

A 15-minute working session

We’ll place your menu or order in CostCook’s costing chain and see whether the workflow fits your kitchen. CostCook is still early, so this is a practical fit check, not a generic sales deck.

Book a 15-min demo

Prefer to talk or text? 973-870-6309.