MarginGuard — tracking real menu margins without spreadsheets

Hey everyone 👋

I’ve been talking to a lot of small restaurant owners lately, and one thing kept coming up:

Most of them are still using spreadsheets to track food costs… and they’re almost always outdated.

Ingredient prices change constantly, but recipes don’t get updated. So margins slowly shrink without anyone really noticing.

I’m working on MarginGuard to solve that.

The idea is simple:

• Track ingredient price changes

• Automatically update recipe costs

• Show which dishes are actually profitable

• Alert when something goes over target food cost

No POS replacement, no bloated system — just helping you understand your margins in real time.

Still early, but I’d love to learn from others here.

If you’ve worked in restaurants (or built for them):
what’s been your biggest headache with food cost tracking?