Written by: JJ Tan, Founder, Jelly | Last updated: 22 June 2026
Key Takeaways for UK Restaurant Teams
- Menu-profitability reporting combines live ePOS sales data with automated invoice capture to show real-time gross profit for every dish.
- UK food inflation remains a pressure point, with 2.2% recorded in May 2026 and forecasts of at least 9% by year-end, so accurate costing matters.
- Most operators still spend 10–20 hours each week on manual costing and invoice entry, which pulls time away from front-of-house operations.
- Automated tools can recover thousands in supplier credits and add two percentage points to gross margin within the first three months of use.
- Independent and single-site operators can reach these gains quickly with Jelly, which shows live dish costing on your own menu within the week.
Best for independents and single-site pubs: Jelly
Pricing: £129/site/month, flat rate, with no per-user fees and no hidden tiers.
Jelly connects natively to Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed, and Toast through a real-time API. Setup across any of those systems takes roughly five minutes. You open Jelly, click Integrations, sign in to your ePOS, grant permissions, and select which categories to sync. From that point, every completed transaction pushes item-level sales data directly into Jelly’s margin calculations.
Invoices arrive by email or photo. Jelly scans every line item, including quantity, SKU, price, and tax, then feeds those costs straight into your dish recipes. When a supplier raises a price mid-month, the Price Alert feature flags it immediately and gives you hard data to negotiate credits or switch suppliers before margin damage compounds. Those updated costs flow into the Flash Report, which delivers a daily, weekly, or monthly gross-profit view without manual assembly. After you review the figures, a one-click Xero push eliminates duplicate bookkeeping entry by sending finalised, coded invoice data straight to your accounting system.
The results are measurable. Amber, a Mediterranean restaurant in East London, saves £3,000–£4,000 per month and achieves approximately 68× ROI using Jelly’s invoice automation and real-time costing. Across Jelly’s customer base, operators consistently add 2 percentage points to gross margin within the first three months. That uplift is meaningful at any revenue level, especially when a food cost percentage shift from 28% to 34% can erase a venue’s entire net profit.
Onboarding delivers value in the first week. Price alerts and spending insights go live as soon as suppliers send invoices to a dedicated Jelly email address, or within 24 hours of photographing invoices into the app.
See Jelly against your own menu and get live dish costing within the week.
Best for growing 2–5-site groups needing central control: Access Group
Access Hospitality sits within the broader Access Group ERP ecosystem, so it fits operators who already use Access for payroll or HR and want a single vendor relationship. Its reporting suite covers labour scheduling alongside food cost, which helps finance managers consolidate multiple cost lines into one dashboard. Onboarding usually involves a scoping call and data migration support. You can expect several weeks before live reporting becomes available. Pricing is quote-based and scales with module count, which makes total cost harder to predict at the outset. UK ePOS depth is reasonable for operators on mainstream systems, although the integration catalogue is narrower than platforms built API-first.
Best for inventory-heavy multi-venue operations: MarketMan
MarketMan automatically updates recipe costs in real time when supplier prices change and connects recipes directly to live inventory and purchasing data. This structure suits operations where stock control and ordering matter as much as margin reporting. The platform handles purchase orders, delivery reconciliation, and waste tracking alongside dish costing. The trade-off is complexity. MarketMan is feature-rich, and operators without a dedicated back-office administrator may find setup and ongoing maintenance demanding. Pricing is tiered by location count and feature set. UK-specific ePOS integrations are available but vary by plan.
Best for AI-driven forecasting across sites: Tenzo
Tenzo integrates with ePOS systems to deliver near real-time, item-level sales breakdowns. These breakdowns power demand forecasting and labour planning alongside menu-mix analysis. Its AI layer predicts covers and revenue by day-part, which helps multi-site operators align prep volumes with expected demand and reduce waste. For operators whose primary pain is forecasting rather than invoice automation, Tenzo adds clear value. The platform focuses less on the invoice-capture-to-dish-costing workflow that drives live GP figures, so operators who need both forecasting and automated costing may combine Tenzo with a separate invoice tool.
Best for chef-led teams wanting simple live costing: Nory
Nory presents itself as an all-in-one operations platform that covers scheduling, inventory, and menu costing in a single interface. The chef-facing UI is clean, and the recipe-building workflow feels approachable for kitchen teams without finance backgrounds. Live costing updates as ingredient prices change, and the platform connects to several ePOS systems. As a broader platform, onboarding covers more ground than a costing-only tool, so time-to-first-insight is longer. Pricing reflects the wider feature set, and operators who only need margin reporting may pay for scheduling and HR modules they do not use.
Best for larger legacy chains with dedicated office teams: Kitchen Cut
Kitchen Cut is one of the longer-established names in UK recipe management and menu costing. It carries a comprehensive feature set built for large, structured operations. Multi-site recipe standardisation, allergen management, and nutritional analysis sit alongside cost reporting. The platform suits operators with a dedicated back-office or development-chef function who can invest time in configuration and ongoing management. Real-time price updates and ePOS integration exist, although they sit less centrally in the product’s architecture than in newer API-first tools. Implementation timelines and pricing reflect the enterprise positioning.
Best for smaller operators consolidating into one platform: Grafterr
Grafterr combines ePOS, online ordering, and back-of-house management in a single subscription aimed at independent operators who want fewer vendor relationships. For operators not yet on a dedicated ePOS, the bundled approach removes an integration step entirely. The reporting layer covers sales and basic cost tracking. Operators who already have an established ePOS they like may see less incremental value in switching, and the menu-profitability depth is lighter than dedicated costing platforms.
Decision matrix: Match tools to your ePOS and site count
Use this decision framework to filter the seven tools by your current ePOS system and number of sites. Each recommendation assumes you prioritise speed-to-value and margin visibility over broader operational features.
If you are a single-site or two-site operator running Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed, or Toast, Jelly is the fastest path to live gross-profit data. The five-minute native API connection means you are not waiting on an implementation team, and the flat £129/site pricing keeps the cost predictable from day one. The Price Alert feature alone usually pays for several months of subscription in recovered credits within the first quarter.
If you operate three to five sites and already use Access Group for HR or payroll, Access Hospitality consolidates vendor relationships and adds labour cost to the margin picture. This combination is worth evaluating when the broader ERP fit matters to your finance team.
If your operation is inventory-intensive, with high-volume purchasing, multiple storage locations, and complex ordering workflows, MarketMan’s depth in stock control justifies the additional setup investment. The platform particularly suits groups with a dedicated purchasing manager.
If demand forecasting and labour scheduling sit alongside food cost as pressing issues, Tenzo’s AI layer adds value that pure costing tools do not offer. You can pair it with an invoice-automation tool when live dish GP is also a priority.
If your kitchen team will be the primary users and chef buy-in is the main adoption risk, Nory’s interface reduces friction. If you run a large chain with a structured back-office function, Kitchen Cut’s legacy depth and allergen management may justify its complexity. If you are a smaller independent looking to consolidate ePOS and basic back-of-house into one bill, Grafterr simplifies the vendor landscape.
Talk through your setup with the Jelly team and narrow your shortlist in one call.
Frequently Asked Questions
The following questions cover the most common technical and timing concerns operators raise when they compare these tools, especially around integration compatibility and how quickly they see useful data.
What ePOS and accounting software work with Jelly?
Jelly connects natively to Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed, and Toast via real-time API, with each integration taking approximately five minutes to complete. For accounting, Jelly pushes finalised, coded invoice data directly into Xero with a single click and removes manual re-entry. Sage integration is in development. If you are on one of the four supported ePOS systems and use Xero, Jelly fits into your existing stack without replacing anything you already rely on.
How many locations does Jelly support effectively?
Jelly is priced at a flat £129 per site per month with no per-user fees, so the cost stays straightforward whether you operate one site or five. Multi-site operators benefit from centralised reporting across all locations. The Flash Report and Sales Mix data aggregate at group level, which lets a finance manager or owner compare GP performance across sites without manually compiling figures from each kitchen.
How quickly will I see live gross-profit figures?
Most operators see meaningful data within the first week. Price alerts and spending insights go live as soon as suppliers begin sending invoices to your dedicated Jelly email address, or within 24 hours of photographing invoices into the app. Full dish-level GP figures, which combine invoice costs with ePOS sales, appear once the ePOS integration is connected and dishes are mapped to POS items. That mapping only surfaces items sold after activation, so you avoid legacy menu clutter.
Will Jelly work with my existing Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed, or Toast system?
Yes. Jelly has real-time API integrations with all four systems, and each delivers item-level sales data the moment a transaction completes. The setup process is identical across all four systems and requires only admin access to your ePOS account. The only common friction point is missing admin access, so Jelly flags this requirement upfront so you can resolve it before setup begins. Jelly is listed on the Lightspeed marketplace, and the Square, EPOS Now, and Toast integrations follow the same technical approach.
Conclusion: Stop margin leakage this quarter
Operational leakage can cost UK hospitality businesses 5% or more of revenue. At £500k turnover, that figure equals £25,000 a year leaving through gaps that automated reporting closes. Manual spreadsheets and delayed monthly reports do not save money. They create risk in a year when food inflation is forecast to reach at least 9%.
Jelly removes the spreadsheet burden entirely. It connects to your existing Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed, or Toast system in minutes, scans every supplier invoice automatically, and delivers live dish-level gross-profit figures from the first week. At £129 per site per month, it is the fastest-to-value option on this list and the only one built specifically for the independent and growing UK operator who cannot spare a six-week implementation.
See your real margins in the first week and start closing the gap today.