The well-designed connected ERP forfoodservice chains
Equip yourself with a modern tool to optimize a multi-site organization.
Replace your expensive system with a Melba copy or a single annual payment!
A dedicated offer for large groups
As you scale from one site to dozens or even hundreds, the organization has to evolve.
Every function is put under pressure and each department needs to professionalize. Operations management is critical and requires software. Until now, no satisfactory solution existed: before Melba, the trade-off was between costly bespoke development and rigid off-the-shelf tools that allow no customization.
A Melba copy or a single annual payment
To reconcile the need for custom development with the need to move fast, Melba can be purchased as a copy:
Alternatively, the customer can keep using the version hosted on Melba's servers
To get more details, get in touch.
Centralize operational know-how to ease training, sharing and profitability
In a multi-site organization, process compliance across team members is a profitability guarantee, and is at the very core of the franchise model.
With Melba, manage multiple points of sale and production sites from a single interface.
Drive productivity gains across transactional operations
Melba helps steer operations across every site so productivity goes up
Run a central kitchen / production lab
Set up a central kitchen to gain economies of scale on production. The central kitchen becomes one of the suppliers of every point of sale
Cut costs with a buying group
Set up a buying group operation to improve purchasing power with suppliers
Leverage the API to capture even more value
The API exposes every data point captured in the platform across many contexts, including the user interface. This lifts every limitation found in legacy software
White paper: improving restaurant chain management with Melba
Discover the key topics to improve kitchen operations across sites and how Melba helps deliver them.
How to get started?
Our shared goal is to save you time and money.
Here are the steps to move forward:
With Melba, no need for 3 months of setup. In under 2 weeks, your teams can have everything up and running while retaining a high level of control over every element.
What breaks when you go from one site to ten
The four costliest divergences
- The recipe reference — same dish, different weights. The costliest divergence, because it invalidates every margin comparison between sites.
- Purchasing terms — each site negotiates alone and nobody knows the consolidated volume. The supplier does, and prices accordingly.
- Stock-taking practices — different frequencies and units make variances unusable at group level.
- The indicators — three definitions of food cost in one group produce three truths and no decision.
Tools that work for a single restaurant rarely fail outright across several sites: they degrade. Each location ends up holding its own version of the recipes, its own prices negotiated on the side, and its own tracking spreadsheet. Head office receives figures that do not compare, and arbitrates on averages that mean nothing.
The problem is not volume, it is divergence. Two sites producing the same recipe from two different cards cannot be compared on food cost — the gap measured is the gap between the cards, not between performances.
What centralises, and what stays local
At group level
At site level
- Reference recipes — one definition per recipe, adaptable locally where a site has its own constraint, but never reinvented. See the recipe reference.
- The catalogue and negotiated prices — central purchasing references once, sites order from it. That is what turns group volume into negotiating power, covered in supplier orders.
- The definition of indicators — one formula for food cost, margin and turnover across the group, otherwise site dashboards do not add up.
- Production and scheduling — volumes, sections and slots depend on the room, the team and the equipment. Nobody at head office can usefully arbitrate them.
- Counts and variances — counted on site, used on site, consolidated afterwards. Consolidation does not replace local analysis, it complements it.
- Sales and the POS — each site keeps its menu and its payment system; only the analysis structure is shared. See sales management.
A useful group ERP is not the one centralising everything — it is the one centralising what must be and leaving the site what belongs to its craft. The dividing line is almost always the same, and it runs between the reference and the execution.
Comparing sites that are not alike
Comparisons that earn their keep
- The same dish, site to site — cost gap on an identical recipe. It points at a purchasing or yield problem, never at local fate.
- Relative stock variance — as a percentage of revenue rather than in currency, otherwise the biggest site tops the table every time.
- Dispersion, not the average — the group average hides the extremes. It is the gap between best and worst site that shows the harmonisation potential.
A homogeneous group is the exception. The rule is an estate mixing formats, catchment areas and team sizes, where raw comparison means nothing: the most profitable site in absolute terms is often simply the biggest.
What compares is ratios and gaps against the group reference: food cost by family, stock variance as a share of revenue, waste rate, turnover. A small site at 28 % food cost is doing better than a large one at 33 %, whatever the volume difference.
Frequently asked questions about multi-site management
Do all sites have to start at once?
How is a central kitchen producing for the others handled?
Can franchisees keep their autonomy?
What if a site already has its own tools?
No, and it is rarely desirable. A pilot site lets you settle the reference and the conventions before rolling out. Later sites inherit a proven base instead of co-building one under pressure.
As a site in its own right, with its own purchasing and production, delivering the others. Allocation and transfers are traced between entities — see central kitchen management.
Yes: the reference and purchasing terms are shared, operations stay with the franchisee. The franchisor sees consolidated indicators without running the day-to-day, which is generally the only arrangement acceptable to both sides.
Existing POS and systems stay in place; it is the analysis layer that is shared. Imposing a full replacement is what sinks most group rollouts.