MarketMan
Stock, supplier, recipe and cost management for restaurants.
MarketMan links stock, suppliers, recipes and costs. Stock tracking can be rebuilt; keeping suppliers and prices up to date, and linking them to recipes, is the real recurring work. For a small venue with few suppliers, a home-made tool holds up. Beyond that, the subscription is justified.
What you lose
- Integrations with tills and accounting software.
- The proven mobile inventory app.
- Centralised management of several venues.
- Support in French, depending on the plan.
Existing alternatives to MarketMan
- 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 stock, supplier, recipe and cost 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: - Product catalogue per supplier with a purchase order sent by email. - Receiving deliveries, comparison with the purchase order, price differences. - Recipes linked to products, cost price updated when a purchase price changes, inventory and stock gap. 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: integration with accounting and the till, and multi-venue. 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 MarketMan be replaced by a custom-built tool?
- casevibecode verdict: Partly replaceable. MarketMan links stock, suppliers, recipes and costs. Stock tracking can be rebuilt; keeping suppliers and prices up to date, and linking them to recipes, is the real recurring work. For a small venue with few suppliers, a home-made tool holds up. Beyond that, the subscription is justified.
- What is MarketMan used for?
- Stock, supplier, recipe and cost management for restaurants.
- What alternatives to MarketMan already exist?
- Odoo Community (open source), Yokitup (free), COS Kitchen (free). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
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