Solutions · F&B Manager

Stop running F&B from a spreadsheet on Sunday night.

Most F&B managers spend Mondays piecing together what just happened, covers from the POS, stock from a warehouse sheet, vendor invoices in email, payroll in a fourth place. HotelBee gives you a live outlet view that already knows last night's plate cost, this morning's 86'd items, and the three menu items that lost you money this week.

  • 4.2 ptsAvg. plate-cost reduction
  • −38%Stock variance, week one
  • 11%Avg. ancillary uplift
  • < 6 minDaily F&B close, per outlet
What goes wrong without it

F&B is the leakiest cost centre on the property.

Rooms are clean numbers, sold or empty. F&B is the opposite: hundreds of small decisions a day, each with a cost, and most of them invisible by Tuesday. The job becomes detective work nobody asked for.

  • Yesterday's covers, but not yesterday's margin

    The POS tells you how many plates went out. It does not tell you which ones lost money, that calculation lives in a spreadsheet that is updated weekly, when there is time.

  • Stock variance you find on Friday

    A 7kg variance on the tenderloin shows up at the end of the week. Was it portioning? Theft? A miscount? By the time you ask, the chef cannot remember either.

  • 86'd items the front office hears about last

    A reservation books a tasting menu the kitchen ran out of two hours ago, the host learns when the guest sits down. The complaint that follows is yours to manage.

  • Vendor invoices that never reconcile

    You ordered 24kg of branzino. The invoice says 26. The kitchen received 22. The match is done by hand, eventually, and the missing 4kg becomes a write-off.

  • A menu nobody re-priced for current cost

    Olive-oil cost is up 41% year-on-year, the carpaccio still sells for last summer's price, and nobody owns the trigger to revisit it. The margin quietly leaks.

A Tuesday close, two ways

Same outlet, with and without.

Two F&B managers at comparable 80-cover restaurants inside 100-room properties. One closes Tuesday in 90 minutes. The other does it in six.

Without HotelBeeBefore

90 minutes to close one night.

  • Export covers from POS, paste into a spreadsheet, reconcile by hand against the bookings sheet.
  • Walk the dry store and the walk-in with a clipboard. Type counts into the sheet later.
  • Discover a 7kg variance on the tenderloin, last Friday. Nobody remembers why.
  • Three vendor invoices in inbox. Match line-by-line against delivery notes, someone signed the wrong one.
  • Plate cost recalculated weekly, in a separate sheet, from a recipe doc that is two months out of date.
  • It is 11pm. The Wednesday menu has not been finalised yet.
With HotelBeeAfter

Outlet closed by 11:06pm.

  • 23:00 · One screen, covers, revenue, average spend, plate cost, stock variance, top movers.
  • 23:01 · Bee AI flags two dishes that lost money tonight and one that is almost out of stock for tomorrow.
  • 23:03 · Stock auto-deducted by recipe. Anything off-tolerance is highlighted; one-tap blind count for the rest.
  • 23:04 · Vendor invoices auto-matched to delivery notes. Two are clean; one is queued for review with the diff highlighted.
  • 23:05 · Tomorrow's menu published, 86'd items removed automatically across POS, online menu and front-office screens.
  • 23:06 · Outlet closed. Coffee, then home.
Where the alerts land

Reaches the team where they already are.

Stock alerts, 86 notices, vendor exceptions and the daily F&B summary all reach you and the chef wherever you already work. Slack, the kitchen display, SMS, or the manager mobile app.

  • Slack86'd items in #pass, vendor exceptions in #fb-ops, daily summary in #leadership.
  • EmailEnd-of-shift summary, weekly margin pack, monthly outlet P&L, branded for the property.
  • SMSOut-of-tolerance variance and emergency 86 notices only, never noise.
  • Microsoft TeamsSame digests, in your group property's native chat tool.
  • Notion / ConfluenceAuto-publish weekly outlet summaries to a living owner page.
  • Kitchen display86 list and prep changes appear on the KDS the moment the menu is updated.
  • Smart scalesTare-aware weighing devices feed straight into recipe variance, no clipboard.
  • Webhooks & APIStream covers, plate cost and variance into your own BI or accounting stack.
A shift, end to end

The rhythm of a service on HotelBee.

A real day at a 110-room city hotel with two outlets and 480 covers across the property, since they switched in late 2024.

  1. 11:30

    Pre-service brief

    One screen for the chef and the FOH manager, covers booked tonight, dietary flags, BEOs in play, items at risk of 86, and the two dishes Bee AI is suggesting to push.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch service

    POS rings checks, recipes deduct stock live, the online menu and QR codes hide anything 86'd. The chef sees variance against forecast in real time.

  3. 15:30

    Mid-day reset

    A two-minute summary, covers vs forecast, plate cost vs target, top movers, exceptions. Two vendor invoices auto-matched in the background.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner service

    Walk-ins booked through the booking engine arrive with their guest profile attached. Allergens flagged on the ticket. The bar tab and the room folio merge automatically.

  5. 23:00

    Close in six minutes

    One screen, one tap. Covers reconciled, stock variance flagged, tomorrow's menu published, the chef's prep list printed. Outlet closed.

What it changes for the role

A short before & after.

  • Daily close: 90 minutes → 6 minutes

    No more rebuilding the picture from POS exports and clipboards. The picture is already built, your job is to act on it.

  • Plate cost: weekly → live

    Recipe-linked deductions mean every check tells you its margin. Anomalies surface the same shift, not the next Friday.

  • Stock variance: monthly → per shift

    Per-shift variance per item makes the source of leakage visible, portioning, comp'ing, miscount or theft, while it is still fixable.

  • 86'd items: phoned-around → broadcast

    One tap pulls an item from the POS, the QR menu, the online menu, the booking engine and the front-office screens. The host stops finding out from the guest.

  • Vendor reconciliation: weekly → live

    Invoices auto-match to delivery notes; only the diffs land on your screen. Wash-overs and rounding errors surface the day they happen.

  • Menu repricing: yearly → triggered

    Bee AI flags ingredients trending up in cost and the dishes that have crossed your margin floor, with a one-tap action to reprice or replace.

My job used to be 30% spreadsheet, 30% chasing invoices, and the rest actual F&B. HotelBee inverts that. The spreadsheet is gone, the invoices reconcile themselves, and I spend Tuesday tasting the new menu instead of typing covers into Excel.

MS
Mira SchäferF&B Manager · 110-room city hotel · Vienna
Common questions

Questions F&B managers ask before switching.

  • Yes. The POS is offline-tolerant, checks ring, the kitchen prints, payments queue, and everything reconciles to the folio the moment the link comes back. You will not stop a service because of WiFi.
See the F&B workspace

A 30-minute kitchen-to-cover walkthrough.

We will share the live outlet workspace, walk through a real service, and answer the awkward questions about plate cost, variance and vendor reconciliation. Bring your worst-margin dish.