Six apps for independent restaurant operators
Each app does one job — invoices, reviews, recipes, scaling, menus, the weekly P&L. Free to start. Built and tested at Mouton's Bistro & Bar in Cedar Park, Texas before release.
The Restaurant Consultant
12 operational domains in one app. Cost of goods, labor, prime cost, controllable expenses, reviews, menu engineering, recipes, inventory, vendors, scaling, training, daily ops. Weekly P&L pulse on a phone.
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Review Responder
Drafts a professional Google review reply in under 30 seconds. Handles 5-star celebrations, 3-star ambiguity, and 1-star service-recovery moments. Edit before posting; sounds entirely like the operator.
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VendorWatch
Scan paper or PDF invoices with the iPhone camera. Pulls line items, compares against the prior invoice from the same vendor, flags overcharges, missing items, duplicates, and case-pack changes.
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MenuCraft
Type or paste menu items, pick layout, output print-ready PDF. Lunch, dinner, brunch, happy hour, banquet — store as many as you need. Specials reprint on the same day, not three weeks later.
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MyCookbook
Searchable, version-tracked recipe library. Scan from photos or PDFs. Find any recipe by name, ingredient, allergen, or station in 5 seconds. Replaces the binder-and-laminated-card approach.
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ChefScale
Scale any recipe to any batch size in seconds. Smart unit conversion. Flags items where straight scaling produces a wrong answer (bake math, sauce reductions, salt) so the chef does the judgment call.
Read the full feature breakdown →Common questions about the suite
Why six apps instead of one all-in-one platform?
All-in-one platforms start to make sense around the five-location mark — when integration overhead pays for itself. Below that, narrow apps each doing one job perfectly outperform the platform on every metric except dashboards, and dashboards do not run a restaurant. Independent operators sub-five locations are better served by stacking the apps that solve their actual current problem.
Which one should I start with?
Most operators start with Review Responder (because every restaurant has reviews) or The Restaurant Consultant (because it covers the widest ground). Add others as specific pain points come up — VendorWatch when an invoice surprises you, ChefScale when a Saturday batch comes out wrong.
Do I have to install all six?
No. The apps work independently. There is no bundle to buy. Pick the ones that solve current problems; ignore the rest until you need them.
Do they share data with each other?
Selectively. MyCookbook and ChefScale sync recipe data on the paid tier. Other cross-app integrations live in The Restaurant Consultant as it ingests inputs from the operator. Most apps are designed to work standalone — by intent, not as a limitation.
How quickly do they show value?
Minutes. Review Responder drafts a first reply in under 30 seconds. VendorWatch catches its first overcharge on the first invoice you scan. The Restaurant Consultant gives the first weekly P&L pulse the moment onboarding finishes (15–20 minutes). These are tools, not platforms — they work on first use, not after a 90-day rollout.
Multi-location operators?
The Restaurant Consultant supports up to 5 restaurant profiles on the paid tier. Review Responder handles multiple Google Business locations. The others are per-user; multi-location MyCookbook and ChefScale roll out via shared kitchen access on the paid tier.
Each app is published by ALSTIG INC, founded by Ben Mouton — a 14-year independent restaurant operator. Free to start. Pricing lives inside each app via App Store IAP.
Looking for operator-direct deep-dives? Read the full articles library or browse the restaurant operations glossary.