Hospitality · AI inventory & ordering
Countertop
AI-first restaurant and hotel inventory: invoice import, mobile counts, vendor POs, recipe costing, and multi-location ops at countertop-app.com.
Client
Client overview
Countertop (countertop-app.com) is an AI-first hospitality SaaS platform for restaurant, bar, hotel, and café inventory — from invoice import through mobile counts, vendor purchase orders, and live food costing. Bits Bridge engineered the full product: web app, native mobile, AI document pipelines, and multi-location ops workflows.
Operators start with what they already have — distributor invoices, order guides, spreadsheets, or menu PDFs — and AI structures items, vendors, pack sizes, and prices into a working inventory catalog without weeks of manual data entry.
Teams count food, liquor, beer, wine, prep, and supplies on phones or tablets in walk-ins, bar backs, and storage rooms — then turn real counts into PAR-driven shopping lists and vendor-ready purchase orders emailed directly to existing suppliers.
Recipe and food costing connects menu items to actual purchased products so vendor price changes flow into plate costs — giving GMs and chefs a live picture of margin impact before menu changes hit the floor.
Delivery spanned AI extraction services, Rails API core, React web client, React Native mobile apps, and multi-tenant location scoping — with pilot rollout across independent restaurants before multi-outlet hospitality groups.
Live site: www.countertop-app.com/
Journey
Challenge & solution
The challenge
Restaurant and hotel teams ran inventory on clipboards and spreadsheets — disconnected from purchasing, vendor price history, and recipe costing when distributor invoices changed weekly.
- Manual item entry from invoices and order guides consumed hours before teams could run a useful count.
- Liquor, food, and prep lived in separate lists with no normalized pack-size or unit-price comparison across vendors.
- Counts produced totals on paper but not vendor-ready purchase orders tied to PAR levels and storage locations.
- Menu costing drifted from reality because ingredient prices were not synced from actual purchasing data.
- Multi-location groups needed shared vendor catalogs with per-store counts and consolidated reporting.
Our solution
Bits Bridge built an AI-first inventory platform where document import bootstraps the catalog, mobile counts drive purchasing decisions, and recipe costing stays wired to live vendor prices.
- AI pipelines extract line items, vendors, pack sizes, and prices from invoices, PDFs, spreadsheets, and photos — with human review queues for low-confidence matches.
- Mobile count flows with UPC scanning, reusable templates, PAR levels, and concurrent multi-user sessions across storage areas.
- Vendor intelligence layer normalizes equivalent products for pack-size-aware price comparison and purchase order generation.
- Menu import drafts editable recipes linked to inventory products; food cost recalculates when invoice prices update.
- Multi-location tenancy with per-store counts, shared vendor catalogs, and roll-up reporting for hospitality groups.
Delivery model
Delivery at a glance
Three lenses on this delivery — platform features shipped, engineering depth proven, and outcomes you can expect from a similar engagement with Bits Bridge.
Architecture choices were scored against time-to-market, total cost of ownership, and integration fit — not vendor hype or slide-deck promises.
What we built
Production hospitality inventory SaaS — AI import, mobile counts, vendor POs, recipe costing, and multi-location ops on web and native mobile.
- AI item import from invoices, order guides, spreadsheets, PDFs, and shelf photos
- Phone and tablet inventory counts with UPC scanning and reusable count templates
- PAR levels, shopping lists, and vendor purchase orders emailed to existing suppliers
- Vendor price comparison normalized for pack size and unit pricing across distributors
- Recipe book and food costing tied to actual purchased inventory and live vendor prices
- Multi-location support for restaurants, bars, hotel outlets, banquets, and café retail SKUs
- Unlimited users with role-based access for GMs, chefs, bar managers, and accounting
- Invoice AI extraction with price history, PO reconciliation, and COGS reporting
Technical capabilities demonstrated
AI document extraction, hospitality domain modeling, and mobile-first inventory UX — engineered for operators who count standing in a walk-in, not at a desk.
- LLM and OCR pipelines for invoice, menu, and order-guide extraction with confidence scoring and review workflows
- Product catalog model: items, categories, pack sizes, purchase units, vendors, storage locations, and equivalents
- React web app and React Native iOS/Android apps with offline-capable count sessions and real-time sync
- Rails API with PostgreSQL multi-tenant scoping, background jobs for AI processing and email PO delivery
- Vendor intelligence engine relating equivalent products and computing normalized unit prices for comparison
- Recipe graph connecting menu items to inventory ingredients with cascade recalculation on price changes
- AWS infrastructure: S3 document storage, Sidekiq workers, autoscaling web tier, and encrypted tenant isolation
- Audit trails on purchase orders — sent, opened, amended, replaced, voided — with invoice-to-PO matching
Outcomes & what we can do next
Live platform where hospitality teams replace clipboard inventory with AI-assisted counts, smarter purchasing, and food costs that track vendor reality — foundation for POS exports and accounting integrations.
- Operators bootstrap inventory from existing invoices instead of weeks of manual SKU entry
- Counts convert directly to vendor-ready purchase orders without spreadsheet handoffs
- Chefs and GMs see plate costs update when distributor prices change on new invoices
- Multi-outlet groups gain consistent purchasing visibility across restaurants, bars, and hotel kitchens
- Reference architecture for hospitality SaaS and AI document automation prospects
- Learn more about hospitality industry delivery, AI automation, and custom Rails platforms
Stack
Technology stack
Production stack and integrations that powered this case — maintained for observability, security patches, and peak-load readiness.
Risky integrations were spiked early in sandbox with recorded latency and failure behavior before dependent UI was built.
Outcomes
Proof & outcomes
Measurable outcomes and operational wins from this engagement — not vanity metrics, but signals ops and leadership tracked post-launch.
Post-go-live metrics were compared to baseline in a 30-day review to prioritize phase two investments with honest scope trade-offs.
AI bootstrap
Invoice-to-inventory in hours — Operators upload distributor invoices and order guides; AI structures items, vendors, and prices — cutting manual catalog setup from weeks to hours.
Mobile counts
Walk-in to purchase order — Teams count on phone or tablet with UPC scanning and PAR levels, then email vendor-ready POs without leaving the storage area.
Live food costing
Menu tied to purchasing — Recipe ingredients link to actual inventory products; vendor price changes from new invoices cascade into plate cost calculations.
Vendor intelligence
Pack-size-aware comparison — Equivalent products normalized across distributors so operators compare real unit prices before placing orders.
Depth
Capabilities demonstrated
Capability areas demonstrated on this build — reusable patterns Bits Bridge applies to similar commerce, EdTech, and travel CRM prospects.
The codebase included automated tests on critical paths to support future upgrades without fear of silent regressions.
AI & import
- Invoice OCR and extraction
- Menu and recipe draft import
- UPC and photo item import
- Confidence review queues
- POS export parsing
Inventory & counts
- Multi-location catalogs
- Count templates
- PAR levels
- Concurrent mobile counts
- COGS and period-end reporting
Purchasing & costing
- Vendor price comparison
- Purchase order email
- Invoice-to-PO matching
- Recipe food costing
- Price history by vendor
Next steps
What we can do next
Engagement models
Share your outlet count, vendor complexity, and integration needs. We map Countertop patterns to AI import pipelines, mobile inventory UX, and multi-location hospitality SaaS architecture.
- Hospitality inventory SaaS MVP (12–16 weeks)
- AI document extraction sprint (6–8 weeks)
- Retained hospitality product engineering
How we deliver
Weekly demos, written decision logs, and KPI reviews at 30/60/90 days — delivery craft since 2013.
- Discovery — journey maps, integration inventory, KPIs, and risk register
- Architecture — data models, API contracts, security review, sprint plan
- Iterative build — two-week sprints with staging demos and decision logs
- Hardening — load tests, payment webhook QA, UAT with real operators
- Launch & hypercare — phased rollout, monitoring, optional retainer
Reference Countertop patterns for your domain, stack, and timeline.
Contact form →Questions
Frequently asked questions
What did Bits Bridge build for Countertop?
The full AI-first hospitality inventory platform — web and mobile apps, invoice and menu AI import, mobile counts with UPC scanning, vendor POs, recipe costing, and multi-location support. Live at countertop-app.com.
How does AI inventory import work?
Operators upload invoices, order guides, spreadsheets, PDFs, or photos. AI extracts items, vendors, pack sizes, and prices into a structured catalog — with review queues for low-confidence matches before counts begin.
Can teams count inventory on their phones?
Yes. React Native iOS and Android apps plus responsive web support concurrent counts across walk-ins, bar backs, and storage rooms — with UPC scanning, templates, and PAR-driven purchase suggestions.
How does food costing stay current?
Recipes link ingredients to actual inventory products. When new invoices update vendor prices, plate costs recalculate automatically — giving chefs and GMs live margin visibility.
Does Countertop work for hotels and multi-location groups?
Yes. Per-store counts roll up across hotel restaurants, bars, banquets, and outlets — with shared vendor catalogs and consolidated purchasing reports.
Can operators use their existing vendors?
Yes. Purchase orders email directly to any vendor — no portal or marketplace required. PO audit trails track sent, amended, voided, and completed orders.
What tech stack powers Countertop?
Ruby on Rails API, PostgreSQL multi-tenant data, React web client, React Native mobile, Sidekiq background workers, LLM/OCR document pipelines, and AWS for storage and compute.
How do we start a similar hospitality SaaS project?
Email hello@bitsbridge.in with outlet count, inventory complexity, AI import needs, and launch timeline. Mention Countertop for faster alignment on hospitality domain patterns.