Koust
Management of purchasing, stock, sales and cost of goods for restaurants and groups.
Stock tracking with thresholds and alerts is easy to rebuild. Koust adds purchasing, sales and cost of goods, with a supplier catalogue and negotiated prices built in: that is the part that remains hard to reproduce alone. It is for you to judge whether your venue needs that catalogue or just a simple product list.
What you lose
- Automatic import of sales from your till.
- The connection to suppliers' catalogues and invoices.
- Multi-venue consolidation for a group.
- The vendor's day-to-day assistance.
Existing alternatives to Koust
- Odoo CommunityOpen source
Odoo Community edition (LGPL): Inventory, Purchase and Manufacturing (bills of materials) modules for stock and costs.
- YokitupFree
Free plan: recipe cards, allergens and cost prices; full plan at €159/month per site.
- COS KitchenFree
Free, unlimited food-cost calculator for restaurants, with PDF export.
The prompt to build it yourself
Build me a purchasing, stock and cost-of-goods tool for a restaurant, for my venue, to replace a subscription. Stack: web app (Next.js or Node/Express) with SQLite, hosted on my small server, usable on phone and computer. No mandatory paid service, no telemetry. Core of the tool: - Supplier orders with receiving and checking of quantities received. - Theoretical stock calculated from sales entered or imported as CSV, and physical inventory to measure the gap. - Actual cost of goods as a percentage of turnover, per period. Requirements: - Units and conversions (kg, g, L, cl, piece); purchase price excl. VAT per product and per supplier, with a history of changes. - Recipe card per dish: ingredients, weights, losses and yield, cost per portion, selling price incl. VAT, margin in euros and as a percentage. - VAT configurable per product (for example 10% for catering, 20% for alcohol): to be validated by my accountant, hard-code nothing. - Allergens: the 14 mandatory allergens ticked per ingredient, and automatically carried onto each recipe card (decree 2015-447). - CSV import and export (products, suppliers, recipes) so I am not locked in. Out of scope: direct connection to the till, wholesalers and accounting. README: installation, database backup, and a reminder that the VAT rates and allergen declarations are to be validated with my accountant and my suppliers.
Frequently asked questions
- Can Koust be replaced by a custom-built tool?
- casevibecode verdict: Partly replaceable. Stock tracking with thresholds and alerts is easy to rebuild. Koust adds purchasing, sales and cost of goods, with a supplier catalogue and negotiated prices built in: that is the part that remains hard to reproduce alone. It is for you to judge whether your venue needs that catalogue or just a simple product list.
- What is Koust used for?
- Management of purchasing, stock, sales and cost of goods for restaurants and groups.
- What alternatives to Koust already exist?
- Odoo Community (open source), Yokitup (free), COS Kitchen (free). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
Community feedback
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