The spreadsheet, the consultant and us.
Anyone pricing a menu today already uses something: the manager spreadsheet, or a consultancy hired once in a while. This page says where each one beats us, where it cannot keep up, and when it is worth using both together.
The manager spreadsheet
Where it wins. It is yours. It fits exactly the restaurant you have, with the columns you invented, the dish nicknames only your kitchen uses and that side calculation nobody else understands but that is right. It costs no subscription, asks nobody for permission and does not disappear if the internet drops. To know what a dish costs in ingredients, a well-built spreadsheet is unbeatable — and if you already have one, keep it.
Where it cannot keep up. The spreadsheet knows everything about your kitchen and nothing about the street. It tells you your picanha costs R$ 31 in ingredients; it does not tell you that the twenty-six places serving picanha within three kilometres charge between R$ 68 and R$ 94, and that yours sits at R$ 59. That number is in no spreadsheet because it does not live inside your restaurant — it lives outside, and someone has to go get it every month.
Spreadsheet and Match Sous answer different questions: what it costs me and what my area charges. A good decision needs both.
The hired consultancy
Where it wins, and wins big. A good consultant sits in your restaurant, tastes the food, watches the floor at peak hour, talks to your team and understands what is identity and what is a mistake. They know that the low-margin dish is the one your grandmother used to make, and that pulling it from the menu would cost more than keeping it. They negotiate with suppliers by phone, train the kitchen the following week and answer for the result. We do none of that, and there is no point pretending otherwise.
Where it cannot keep up. It is a snapshot. It happens once, costs what it costs, and ends in a document — already out of date the next month, when the supplier raises prices and three neighbours move theirs. The method is good; the frequency is what does not work. Keeping someone of that calibre looking at your restaurant every month would cost more than most places can pay.
That is why Match Sous exists: to take the standard you could only hire once a year and turn it into something that runs whenever you want, at the price of software — for the restaurant that never had access to this kind of reading.
Where we win
In one thing only, and it is the one nobody else does: comparing every dish on your menu with what your area actually charges, with measured places, median and range — and crossing that with the margin each dish leaves. It is the answer to "can I raise this price?" backed by a number, not by instinct.
And we win on frequency. What used to happen once a year now happens every time you upload your menu — no system integration, no staff training, no waiting for rollout.
What we do not do
- We do not visit your restaurant, taste the food or know your team.
- We do not negotiate with suppliers or train kitchens.
- We do not set prices for you: we show where each dish sits and what changes if you move it. The decision is yours, and stays yours.
- We are not a point-of-sale, inventory, scheduling or payroll system.
When our base does not yet have enough places to compare your dish, we say so on screen instead of showing a fragile number. A reading without a sample is a guess dressed as a measurement, and that we do not deliver.
So which one to pick?
Most places do not choose. They keep the spreadsheet for cost, call the consultant when the problem is operational — and use Match Sous for the question neither can answer every month: where each of my dishes sits against my area, and what it leaves after cost.
If you want to see what your area charges before any conversation, you can do it right now on the home page: type your neighbourhood and the reading appears. We do not ask for sign-up for that.