Restaurant AI Manager vs Restoke: which is right for your venues?
The short answer
Restoke and Restaurant AI Manager are both Australian and both cover invoices into costing, live stock, ordering and multi-venue reporting. Restoke is a strong kitchen-team platform with checklists, procedures and 39 named POS integrations. Restaurant AI Manager goes further where the money is: approval rules and budgets, supplier tenders, contract prices, credit claims drafted from the delivery check-off, orders worked out from bookings and functions, and AI that drafts the work for people to approve.
Choose Restaurant AI Manager if…
- You want control over spend: approval rules by value, venue and supplier, a purchaser queue, weekly budgets and spending limits per person — none of which Restoke describes on its ordering or headquarters pages.
- You want to tender your suppliers on your own 12 months of usage, hold them to contract prices on every invoice, and approve price changes with their GP effect shown before they reach your dishes.
- Short deliveries and price differences should turn into credit claims without anyone retyping them — the delivery check-off, the invoice and the order are matched three ways and the claim is drafted for you.
- Your orders and prep should come from what you are going to sell — bookings, functions and the sales forecast — not just par levels and counts.
- Counting happens in cool rooms and cellars: cartons, inners and singles on one line, scanners, voice, and counts that finish with no signal.
- You want an AI that does the busywork — drafting orders and credit claims, and a morning briefing — and you want to connect your own Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini to it.
Choose Restoke if…
- Seeing your till on a published list decides it: Restoke names 39 POS systems.
- Kitchen-team routines are the main job — checklists, step-by-step procedures, training tasks and health and safety templates are core Restoke features.
- You only need invoices and costing for now: Restoke’s Essentials plan covers those from $111 a month per site billed annually.
Restaurant AI Manager and Restoke at a glance
Every Restoke cell below is footnoted to a dated source at the foot of this page. Where a capability is not described on Restoke’s own site we mark it partial and say so — that means we could not confirm it, not that it is missing.
| Capability | Restaurant AI Manager | Restoke |
|---|---|---|
| Stock counts on a phone | YesCounts on a phone in shelf order, with cartons, inners, singles and open bottles on one line; phone camera, Bluetooth and handheld scanners; voice counting; counts finished with no signal; blind counts; variance in dollars, recounts and approval before posting. | YesScheduled stocktakes with the count list built for you, and barcode scanning for stocktakes on the Pro plan. Counting cartons, inners and singles on one line, voice counting and counting offline are not described on its inventory page.[4] |
| Stock kept up to date by deliveries and sales | YesDeliveries checked off at the door add stock to each item’s storage area; POS sales take it off through your recipes; waste, staff meals and transfers between venues come off at cost. | YesInventory updates from forwarded invoices, photographed delivery dockets or a connected POS, down to the recipes that use each item; live inventory tracking on Pro.[4] |
| Orders worked out for you | YesOrders drafted from forecast use less stock on hand and on order, rounded to packs and delivery days, one per supplier, sent by a person. Live to suppliers on Open Pantry, by email to any other supplier; text orders on request. | YesAutomated vendor ordering on the Pro plan, triggered by stock counts, schedules or menu demand, with orders and invoices kept in one place.[3] |
| Purchase approvals, budgets and spend limits | YesApproval rules by value, venue, supplier and category; a purchaser queue; weekly budgets per venue with mid-week projections; spending limits per person; a preferred supplier list that holds off-list orders. | NoPurchase approvals, approval chains, budgets, spending limits and purchaser roles are not described on its ordering, headquarters or pricing pages.[3] |
| Invoice matching and credit claims | YesInvoices photographed, uploaded or forwarded, matched three ways against the order and the delivery check-off, held with a reason before they reach your books, and credit requests drafted for a person to send. | PartialUnlimited AI invoice processing from a photo or email, with line items checked and synced to accounting. Three-way matching against the order and the delivery, and credit claims raised back to the supplier, are not described.[5] |
| Contract prices and supplier price changes | YesPrice trends from every delivery. Owners can switch on supplier price changes that wait for approval with their GP effect shown, contract prices checked on every order and invoice with the difference claimed, price-rise alerts and supplier scorecards. | PartialLive supplier pricing and price update approvals on every plan, with an alert when a recipe drifts outside its target. Contract prices checked on every invoice are not described.[1] |
| Supplier tenders and quotes | YesTenders built from 12 months of actual usage, sent to suppliers on Open Pantry or anyone by link, compared like for like per kilo, litre or each, awarded whole or split, with the winning prices loaded as contract prices. | NoTenders, requests for quotes and supplier quote comparison are not described on its ordering or pricing pages.[3] |
| Recipe costing and why GP moved | YesReads your recipes from menu costing; POS items matched to recipes with High, Check or Unsure confidence; actual against theoretical usage by item and location; GP movement split into price, mix, waste, yield and count error in dollars. | YesReal-time food costing on every plan: recipe costs update when supplier prices change, with margin alerts and price changes tracked over time; dynamic recipe costing on Pro. Actual against theoretical usage, and splitting a GP movement into price, mix, waste and yield, are not described.[2] |
| Forecasting and prep from bookings and functions | YesA sales forecast per day and dish from sales history, bookings and functions, driving suggested orders and prep lists by station. Bookings and functions come in by hand, CSV, calendar feed, forwarded email or Zapier and Make; direct connections on request. | PartialKitchen prep automation on Pro, and ordering that can be triggered by menu demand. A forecast built from bookings and functions is not described.[3] |
| Production kitchen | YesA production kitchen your venues order from like any supplier, planned from venue orders and the forecast, with batches, labels, lot tracing and recall, and internal invoices. An owner switches it on. | YesA Central Production Kitchen is listed on the Enterprise plan (custom pricing), with switching between venues and production kitchens from Headquarters.[1] |
| Head office and multi-venue control | YesHead-office recipes with versions, tested at one venue and rolled out, costed at each venue’s own prices; shared order lists; regions and area managers; roles with venue, category and money limits; group branding; a full change log. No single sign-on yet. | YesHeadquarters on the Enterprise plan: recipes tested in a sandbox and deployed with approved suppliers to venues, outlet permissions, group COGS and venue comparison. Regions and area managers are not described.[7] |
| Reporting and weekly emails | YesStock, cost, purchasing, sales and menu reports per venue, region and group, exported to CSV or Excel; a weekly email every Monday with a group summary; profit suggestions ranked in dollars a week. | PartialSmart Reports (limited on Essentials), a COGS snapshot, and advanced analytics and custom dashboards on Enterprise. A weekly emailed report and profit suggestions ranked in dollars are not described.[1] |
| AI assistant and drafting agents | YesAsk and a morning briefing over your own figures; AI helpers that draft orders and credit claims; High, Check or Unsure on every suggestion; drafts only, logged and undoable; and Connect your AI for Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini with each person’s own role. | YesAn AI Copilot on every plan, AI invoice processing and AI Smart Reports. AI that drafts orders or credit claims for approval, and connecting your own AI assistant, are not described.[1] |
| POS sales integration | YesConnects to your POS, whichever one you use; the day’s sales come in and are matched to your recipes, and a quiet feed is flagged rather than read as zero sales. | Yes39 named POS integrations, including Lightspeed, Square, Toast, H&L, OrderMate, Impos, Idealpos, SwiftPOS, Redcat, Oolio and Tyro.[6] |
| Labour cost and rostering | YesLabour cost from Deputy, Tanda or Planday on request, from a timesheet file from any system, or typed in; labour % and prime cost; a roster board and roster suggestions from the forecast. No payroll. | YesNo rostering of its own; labour data comes through integrations with Deputy, Employment Hero, 7 Shifts, Tanda, Connecteam and Droppah.[6] |
| Food safety, checklists and training | YesFood-safety checks and temperature logs switched on venue by venue, with fridge sensors on request; training lessons and certificates, team notices and a pre-shift briefing as owner switches; a kiosk mode for shared tablets. | YesChecklists for prep, opening, cleaning and training with completion tracked; step-by-step procedures; health and safety templates and records kept for inspections.[8] |
| Accounting integration | YesSupplier bills and a daily sales journal drafted for Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks. | YesXero, QuickBooks, MYOB, MYOB Acumatica, Microsoft Business Central and Restaurant365.[6] |
| Published pricing | YesPublished per venue, per month, for each country, on the restaurant pricing page. No contract. | YesPer site in Australian dollars ex GST: Essentials $111 a month billed annually or $139 monthly; Pro $175 or $219; Enterprise custom. Live inventory, ordering and multi-venue need Pro; Headquarters and the production kitchen need Enterprise. No set-up fees, no lock-in, free to try.[1] |
| Australian presence | YesBuilt and supported in Australia, sold per country in local currency. | YesAustralian dollar pricing and a deep bench of Australian POS integrations.[1] |
Restaurant AI Manager capabilities are from our own published plans and feature pages. Restoke capabilities are from its own published pages, read on 25 October 2026.
Everything Restaurant AI Manager runs
Restoke and Restaurant AI Manager overlap more than any other pair on this site, so here is exactly what Restaurant AI Manager does, with a page behind every line — hold it against Restoke’s own feature pages row by row.
On the floor
- Stock control and counts
- Phone counts in any pack mix, scanners, offline, and stock that deliveries and sales keep current.
- Demand forecasting and prep
- Orders and prep worked out from sales, bookings and functions.
- Delivery check-off
- Count it at the door; the received quantity becomes stock.
- Central kitchen
- A production kitchen your venues order from like any supplier.
Buying
- Ordering and suppliers
- Drafted orders to your own suppliers, tenders and price control.
- Purchase approvals and budgets
- Spend rules, weekly budgets and a purchaser queue.
- Supplier credit requests
- Shorts and price differences drafted as credit requests.
Money
- Food cost variance
- Why GP moved, in dollars that add up.
- Menu engineering
- Which dishes to promote, rework or drop.
- Reporting
- Stock, cost, purchasing and menu reports, and the Monday email.
- End-of-day reconciliation
- Close the day and draft the sales journal.
The group and the AI
- Multi-venue management
- Every venue side by side, every morning.
- Group head office
- Master recipes, shared lists, regions and roles.
- AI restaurant assistant
- A morning briefing and Ask, over your own figures.
- AI agents
- Drafted orders and credit claims you approve; connect your own AI.
Where each one is stronger
Neither product wins on every row, and a comparison that says otherwise is not worth reading.
Restaurant AI Manager is stronger at
- Spend control: approval rules, a purchaser queue, weekly budgets and per-person spending limits, so nothing reaches a supplier without the right sign-off.
- Supplier tools: tenders priced on your own usage, contract prices checked on every order and invoice, and price changes approved with their GP effect shown.
- Closing the loop at the door: the delivery check-off becomes stock, the invoice is matched three ways, and the credit claim is drafted from the same evidence.
- Orders and prep from what you will sell — bookings, functions and the forecast — with counts that work offline, by voice and in any pack mix.
- GP explained in dollars — price, mix, waste, yield and count error — with a weekly email and profit suggestions ranked by dollars a week.
- AI that drafts the work for a person to approve, plus Connect your AI for Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini with each person’s own role.
- Both sides of the order: suppliers on Open Pantry keep your catalogue and prices current for you, and ordering from them stays free.
Restoke is stronger at
- A published list of 39 named POS integrations, including the Australian systems most venues run.
- Kitchen-team routines as a core product: checklists, step-by-step procedures, training tasks and health and safety templates.
- A cheaper way in for invoices and costing alone, on its Essentials plan.
What each one costs
Restaurant AI Manager
Restaurant AI Manager is priced per venue, per month, with no contract, and the price for your country is published on the restaurant pricing page. The AI helpers, the morning briefing and the reports are included. Ordering from your suppliers stays free for every venue, and Menu Profit Manager is still sold on its own.
Restoke
Published per site in Australian dollars ex GST, with about 20% off for annual billing: Essentials $111 a month billed annually or $139 monthly; Pro $175 annually or $219 monthly; Enterprise custom pricing for groups. Live inventory, automated ordering, prep and multi-venue start at Pro; Headquarters and the Central Production Kitchen are Enterprise. No set-up fees, no lock-in, free to try.
Source: Restoke — Pricing (plans, AUD ex GST, per-site rates, tier contents) · verified 25 October 2026
Switching from Restoke to Restaurant AI Manager
What the move actually involves. We do not promise a timeline — it depends on how many venues, suppliers and recipes you bring across.
- Connect the POS and add your venues. Sales start coming in and matching to your recipes straight away; anything unmatched is held, not lost.
- Bring your items and par levels across. Export them from your current system to a spreadsheet and import them — we will help map the columns.
- Load the invoices. Forward or photograph a month of supplier invoices so suppliers, pack sizes and the prices you actually pay are in from day one.
- Check your top dishes. Confirm the recipes behind the dishes that make up most of your sales; the rest can follow.
- Do the first count on phones, then run both systems side by side for a fortnight and compare the numbers before you switch the old one off.
Who uses Open Pantry
- Venues ordering through it
- 5,000+
- Suppliers on Open Pantry
- 600+
- Markets served
- AU & NZ
Restaurant AI Manager vs Restoke — common questions
What is the difference between Restaurant AI Manager and Restoke?
Both are Australian back-of-house platforms with invoices into costing, live stock, ordering and multi-venue reporting. Restoke is strongest on kitchen-team routines and publishes 39 named POS integrations. Restaurant AI Manager is stronger on buying and the numbers — approvals and budgets, supplier tenders, contract prices, three-way matching with drafted credit claims, orders from bookings and functions, and GP explained in dollars — with AI that drafts the work for people to approve.
Does Restoke have purchase approvals and spending limits like Restaurant AI Manager?
Not on the pages we read. Restoke describes automated ordering triggered by counts, schedules or menu demand, and price update approvals, but not approval chains, budgets or per-person spending limits — so ask them directly. Restaurant AI Manager has approval rules by value, venue, supplier and category, a purchaser queue, weekly budgets and spending limits per person.
Can Restoke run supplier tenders or hold suppliers to contract prices?
Neither is described on Restoke’s ordering or pricing pages. Restaurant AI Manager builds tenders from your own 12 months of usage, compares quotes like for like, loads the winning prices as contract prices and checks every order and invoice against them, drafting a claim for any difference.
Which one connects to more POS systems?
Restoke publishes a list of 39 named POS systems, including the main Australian ones. Restaurant AI Manager connects to your POS whichever one you use and matches the day’s sales to your recipes, but does not publish a named list — if seeing your till on a list decides it, Restoke has one.
Which is better for a restaurant group with several venues?
Both handle groups. Restoke’s Headquarters, on its Enterprise plan, deploys sandbox-tested recipes and approved suppliers to venues with outlet permissions and group COGS. Restaurant AI Manager adds regions and area managers, shared order lists, approval rules and budgets, transfers between venues and a production kitchen. Groups that need purchasing control will find more of it in Restaurant AI Manager.
Do they both have an AI assistant?
Yes. Restoke has an AI Copilot, AI invoice processing and AI Smart Reports. Restaurant AI Manager has Ask and a morning briefing over your own figures, AI helpers that draft orders and credit claims for a person to approve, and Connect your AI for Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini with each person’s own role.
How much do Restoke and Restaurant AI Manager cost?
Restoke publishes per-site pricing in Australian dollars ex GST: Essentials from $111 a month billed annually, Pro from $175, and Enterprise on application. Restaurant AI Manager is priced per venue, per month, with no contract, and the price for your country is on the Open Pantry restaurant pricing page.
Can I move from Restoke to Restaurant AI Manager?
Yes. Connect your POS, import your items and par levels from a spreadsheet export, forward a month of supplier invoices so prices are in from day one, confirm the recipes behind your top dishes, then run both side by side for a fortnight before you switch over.
How was this comparison checked?
Every Restoke claim comes from Restoke’s own published pages, read on the date shown at the top of this page, and is re-checked quarterly. “Not described” means we could not find it on the pages listed below — treat it as a question for Restoke, not a verdict. If something here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
Sources
Every Restoke claim on this page comes from one of these pages, read on 25 October 2026. Vendors change their products and their prices; if something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
- Restoke — Pricing (plans, AUD ex GST, per-site rates, tier contents) — https://www.restoke.ai/pricing (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Restoke — Food costing — https://www.restoke.ai/features/food-costing (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Restoke — Ordering — https://www.restoke.ai/features/ordering (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Restoke — Inventory — https://www.restoke.ai/features/inventory (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Restoke — Invoice management — https://www.restoke.ai/features/invoice-management (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Restoke — Integrations (POS, accounting, scheduling) — https://www.restoke.ai/integrations (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Restoke — Headquarters (multi-site command centre) — https://www.restoke.ai/features/headquarters (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Restoke — Team management (checklists, procedures, training) — https://www.restoke.ai/features/team-management (accessed 25 October 2026)
Try Restaurant AI Manager on a demo restaurant group
Sign in to Harbour & Vine, a three-venue demo group with weeks of sales, deliveries and counts, as the owner, head chef or operations manager — a guide shows you around, and there is nothing to sign up for.