What it does
The Restaurant Consultant is the flagship app on the ALSTIG stack — the one tool that covers the widest operational ground for an independent restaurant. Twelve operational domains in one app: cost of goods, labor cost, prime cost, controllable expenses, reviews, menu engineering, recipes, inventory, vendor management, scaling, training, and daily ops review.
It exists because most restaurant operators don't need a $50K/year platform with a 90-day rollout. They need a working tool that runs the weekly review on a phone — sales-by-daypart, cost variance, prime cost trend, the things a working operator would otherwise piece together from POS exports and a spreadsheet.
The app generates a weekly P&L pulse across all 12 domains. Monday morning, you open the app and see what changed. Food cost up 1.2 points week-over-week? It flags it. Labor pushed past the 35% upper band on a slow Tuesday? It flags it. Specific, dollar-anchored, decision-ready.
Key features
- Weekly P&L pulse across 12 operational domainsSales-by-daypart, COGS variance, prime cost trend, controllable expenses — all generated automatically from your inputs each week.
- Cost-of-goods tracking with category breakdownTrack food cost, liquor cost, beer cost, wine cost separately. Each category has its own NRA-aligned target band built in.
- Labor cost with full burdenWages + payroll taxes + benefits = true labor cost. Most operators report only gross wages and underestimate by 3–7 points.
- Reviews dashboardAggregates Google reviews across the dining-room locations you manage.
- Menu engineering matrixPlots menu items on the Kasavana-Smith stars/plowhorses/puzzles/dogs grid by sales mix and contribution margin.
- Multi-location support on the paid tierUp to 5 restaurant profiles. The free tier covers one location indefinitely.
- Web + iOSCapacitor build — works in a browser AND on the App Store. Sync across devices.
How operators use it
Related articles
- How to read your restaurant P&L
- How do I automate food cost management?
- How do I lower labor costs?
- Apps for scaling restaurant operations
Related glossary terms
FAQ
Built by an operator
The Restaurant Consultant is published by ALSTIG INC, founded by Ben Mouton — a 14-year independent restaurant operator. Every app on the ALSTIG stack came from a problem hit during the run, and every feature was tested at Mouton's Bistro & Bar in Cedar Park, TX before release. Free to start. No platform contracts. Read the operator-direct articles or browse the operations glossary.