Diced OS Blog
Insights for restaurants, bakeries, and cafes
Articles designed to help you track costs, protect margins, and automate the busywork so you can get back to your craft.
Why Cost Management Matters for Small Bakeries: The Complete 2025 Guide
Running a successful bakery is about more than creating delicious pastries and building customer loyalty. Behind every thriving bakery is a robust cost management system that tracks every ingredient, monitors profit margins, and ensures financial sustainability. With raw material costs typically representing 50-70% of total production costs for bakery operations, effective cost management isn't just helpful—it's essential for survival.
Read article →
Recipe Costing for Bakeries: How to Price Your Baked Goods for Maximum Profitability
Nothing breaks a baker's heart quite like discovering their bestselling croissant is actually losing money. Recipe costing—the process of calculating the exact cost and profit margin of every baked good—is the foundation of profitable bakery operations. Yet many talented bakers struggle with this crucial business skill, relying on guesswork and industry "rules of thumb" that can lead to financial disaster.
Read article →
Food Waste Reduction in Bakeries: Cut Costs by 20% with Smart Inventory Management
Food waste is the silent profit killer haunting bakeries worldwide. While bakers focus on perfecting recipes and delighting customers, unsold pastries, expired ingredients, and production overruns steadily erode profit margins. The National Restaurant Association reports that food waste can account for 4-10% of food purchases in food service operations—but bakeries often face even higher rates due to their focus on daily-fresh products.
Read article →
Cafe Inventory Management: 5 Problems Every Coffee Shop Owner Faces (And How to Solve Them)
Coffee shops are the heartbeat of communities worldwide, but behind every perfect espresso and latte art masterpiece lies a complex inventory management challenge. With over 72,854 coffee and snack shops operating in the United States alone, the competition is fierce, and the margin for error is slim. Effective inventory management isn't just about keeping the lights on—it's the difference between thriving and merely surviving.
Read article →
Coffee Shop Technology Adoption: Why Small Cafes Are Embracing Digital Solutions
The aroma of freshly brewed coffee mingles with the soft glow of laptop screens in modern coffee shops—a perfect metaphor for how technology is transforming the traditionally hands-on cafe industry. While coffee shops have always been community gathering places, today's successful cafes are embracing digital solutions to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance customer experiences.
Read article →
Restaurant Menu Engineering: How to Identify Your Most Profitable Items
Every restaurant owner dreams of a menu where every item contributes meaningfully to profitability, but the reality is often starkly different. Hidden among your bestsellers are likely items that actually lose money with every sale, while your most profitable dishes sit unnoticed by customers. Menu engineering—the systematic analysis of menu item profitability and popularity—transforms guesswork into data-driven decisions that can increase restaurant profits by 10-20%.
Read article →
Restaurant POS Integration: Why Your Cost Management System Needs Real-Time Sales Data
The disconnection between what happens at the register and what happens in the back office is one of the most expensive inefficiencies plaguing modern restaurants. While Point of Sale (POS) systems capture every transaction in real-time, most restaurants still manage costs, inventory, and profitability using separate systems that update hours or days later—if at all.
Read article →
The Hidden Costs of Poor Restaurant Inventory Management: A $50,000 Annual Problem
Restaurant inventory management might seem like a behind-the-scenes concern, but poor inventory practices can silently drain $50,000 or more annually from a typical restaurant's profits. While owners focus on customer service, menu development, and marketing, inadequate inventory systems create a cascade of hidden costs that compound daily.
Read article →
Small Restaurant Invoice Management: Turning Paper Chaos into Digital Success
The back office of most small restaurants looks like a paper tornado hit it. Stacks of supplier invoices buried under order forms, sticky notes with price changes scribbled in margins, and frustrated owners spending their evenings trying to make sense of illegible receipts. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone—and more importantly, there's a better way.
Read article →
Seasonal Menu Planning for Restaurants: Maximize Profits While Minimizing Food Costs
Seasonal menu planning represents one of the most powerful yet underutilized strategies for restaurant profitability. While many restaurants treat menu planning as a creative exercise, the most successful operators understand that strategic seasonal planning can reduce food costs by 15-25% while simultaneously increasing customer interest and sales.
Read article →