Are your staff spending hours every week on work that should happen automatically?
Do you find out about stockouts, scheduling gaps, or order errors after the damage is done?
Stop Running Your Restaurant on Manual Effort
Most restaurant operators spend more time chasing data and fixing process failures than running their business. Orders get missed at the pass. Inventory runs out mid-service. Staff schedules take half a day to sort. Suppliers send invoices that don't match what arrived.
At RaftLabs, we fix the operational drag that costs restaurant groups revenue every single day. We've shipped automation for order management, inventory, staff scheduling, kitchen display integration, loyalty, and payroll — across QSRs, multi-site groups, and full-service restaurants. Each project starts with a fixed scope and a fixed price.
Most builds ship in 10–12 weeks.
Order management and kitchen display automation — no missed tickets, no verbal relay
Inventory tracked in real time, with automated supplier reorder triggers
Staff scheduling built against actual cover counts, not guesswork
Sales, payroll, and reporting pulled automatically — no manual entry
RaftLabs builds custom automation software for restaurant operators covering order management, inventory reorder triggers, staff scheduling, kitchen display integration, loyalty programs, and payroll sync. A typical restaurant automation engagement runs 10–12 weeks at a fixed price starting from $12K–$15K per month for a lean delivery pod.
The operational drag inside most restaurant businesses
Running a restaurant group on manual processes means errors compound across every shift. An order gets shouted across the pass and missed. A stock count runs low because nobody checked before Friday service. A supplier delivers short and the invoice doesn't reflect it. A manager spends Sunday morning building next week's rota from a spreadsheet.
None of this is inevitable. Each of these is a workflow problem — a gap between systems that a person is filling with manual effort. We close those gaps with automation that runs in the background while your team runs the business.
What we build
Order management automation
Orders from your POS, online ordering platform, and phone channels merge into a single confirmed queue and push directly to your kitchen display system. No manual relay, no missed tickets, no double-entry. If an order is modified or cancelled, the update propagates automatically. You get a clean audit trail for every order across every channel.
Table reservations and waitlist
Reservation data from your booking system feeds automatically into staff briefings and kitchen prep counts. Waitlist updates are pushed to guests by SMS or app notification without a host manually calling down the list. No-shows and cancellations update covers in real time so your kitchen isn't prepping for covers that won't arrive.
Inventory tracking and supplier reorders
Ingredient levels update in real time as items are used. When stock hits a defined threshold, a purchase order goes to your supplier automatically — via EDI, structured email, or supplier portal API. You review the order before it sends, or set trusted items to send without approval. No more stockouts discovered mid-service. No more end-of-week manual counts.
Staff scheduling and shift management
Schedules are generated based on historical cover data, booking forecasts, and defined staffing ratios. Shifts are published to staff phones for confirmation. Unavailabilities and swap requests feed back into the schedule automatically. Managers review and approve — they don't build from scratch every week.
Kitchen display system integration
Your KDS receives tickets directly from the order management layer, grouped by course and station. Modifiers, allergen flags, and timing notes display on the correct screen without manual routing. Ticket completion updates order status across front-of-house and online channels. If an item is unavailable, the alert goes to front-of-house before the order is placed, not after.
Sales reporting, loyalty, and payroll
Daily sales reports compile automatically from POS data and land in your inbox before morning. Loyalty points calculate and apply at the point of payment without staff manually entering codes. Review request messages go to guests 30 minutes after payment. Approved timesheets export directly to your payroll system — no re-entry, no reconciliation.
What's the most expensive manual process in your operation right now?
Book a 30-minute call. We'll identify the three workflows most worth automating and what each one costs you today.
Related services
Restaurant software by capability
Restaurant Software -- full restaurant technology hub
Loyalty Programme Development -- restaurant loyalty points, tiers, and mobile rewards
On-Demand App Development -- food delivery and ordering app development
Frequently asked questions
More than most operators expect. The clearest wins are in areas where manual work is repetitive and the cost of an error is high. Order management is the most common starting point — routing orders from POS, online channels, and phone into a single confirmed queue, then pushing confirmed tickets directly to kitchen display systems without verbal relay. Inventory is the next layer: tracking consumption in real time against par levels, flagging low stock before a service, and triggering purchase orders to suppliers automatically when thresholds are hit. Staff scheduling can be generated based on historical cover counts and booking data, then published to staff phones for confirmation. Payroll can pull approved hours directly into your accounting system. Promotions, loyalty points, and review request messages can be triggered automatically at the point of payment. None of this requires replacing your POS or your supplier relationships — it connects what you already have.
Most restaurant automation builds run 10–12 weeks from kickoff to a deployed system your team uses in production. Simpler automations — a single workflow like automated supplier reordering or shift schedule publishing — can be live in 4–6 weeks. More involved projects that touch order management, inventory, scheduling, and payroll integration across multiple sites run 12–16 weeks. Cost depends on scope. Our lean delivery pod — one senior engineer plus part-time PM and QA — runs $12K–$15K per month. A typical 10-week single-site automation project is in the $30K–$45K range. Multi-site or multi-system projects are scoped after the first diagnostic call. We don't quote blind — we look at your current tools and workflows before any number goes on paper.
No. The point of the automation layer is to connect the tools you already have — POS, supplier portals, scheduling software, payroll, loyalty programs — rather than replace them. Most restaurant operators have 5–8 systems that don't talk to each other. The manual work in the gap between those systems is exactly what we automate. If your POS has an API or a webhook, we can read from it. If your supplier accepts EDI orders, structured emails, or has a portal, we can write to it. If your accounting software has an import format, we can generate the file. We start by mapping your current tool stack before scoping a single line of automation. If something in your stack genuinely blocks the automation and a replacement would save money, we tell you that directly. We don't build for the sake of building.
Yes, and multi-site is often where the ROI is clearest. When you're running 3, 5, or 10 locations, the manual overhead — compiling sales reports, chasing inventory counts, reconciling staff timesheets — multiplies by the number of sites. Automation consolidates all of that into a single view. You get one dashboard showing inventory levels, scheduled staff, and daily sales across every location, updated automatically. Supplier orders go out from one system, not from each site manager's email. Payroll pulls from confirmed shifts, not from manually filled timesheets. We've built multi-site automation for hospitality groups before. The architecture is different from a single-site build — data models need to account for site-level isolation and group-level reporting — but the delivery timeline isn't dramatically longer. Most multi-site projects run 12–16 weeks depending on the number of integrations.