Shared kitchen management software has to run a business that sells time and space to other businesses: a booking calendar for kitchen stations, member records with their licenses and insurance certificates, billing for hours, shelves and fees, often door access, and a record of whose goods are on which shelf in the walk-in. Few single tools do all of it well, so most kitchens combine a booking and billing tool with something that keeps the inventory side straight. In the example below, a shared kitchen with 30 members, 700 booked hours and 90 rented shelves a month works through what its software has to handle in one month. Below is what the software has to do, the month, a test month for any trial, and where TaroStack fits, and where it doesn't.
The short version
- Booking: stations by the hour, member rules, cancellations, recurring slots.
- Members: their licenses, food handler certificates and insurance certificates, with expiry dates.
- Billing: plans, extra hours, shelves, fees and credits, every month.
- Access: door codes or cards tied to bookings, for kitchens open overnight.
- Members' goods: what each member keeps on which shelf, counted, kept apart from the kitchen's stock.
- Logs: cooler temperatures, cleaning, incidents.
- TaroStack does the members' goods, counts and statements, not booking or door access. More below.
What shared kitchen software has to do
| Job | Why it matters for a shared kitchen |
|---|---|
| A booking calendar | Hours are what the kitchen sells; double bookings lose members |
| Member records and documents | An expired insurance certificate is the kitchen's risk |
| Billing plans, hours, shelves and fees | Every unbilled hour or shelf is rent the kitchen pays |
| Door access | Overnight members need to get in without a key handover |
| Members' goods on shelves | Whose food is where, and what was there when a member left |
| The kitchen's own supplies | Sanitizer, gloves and labels on a reorder list |
| Logs | Temperatures and cleaning for the health department |
What a shared kitchen charges for each of those is in commissary kitchen cost.
A month, worked through
Shenandoah Commons Kitchen, a made-up shared kitchen in Harrisonburg, Virginia, I use in these examples, has 30 members:
| In one month | What the software has to handle |
|---|---|
| 700 kitchen hours booked across three stations | Calendar, recurring slots, 2 late cancellations charged |
| 30 members on 5 plans | 30 bills, 11 with extra hours, 1 with a cleaning fee, 1 with a credit |
| 90 shelves rented in dry storage, cooler and freezer | Which member has which shelf; 2 members over their shelves |
| 3 insurance certificates expiring | Reminders before the next booking |
| 1 member leaving | Their goods counted and released within 7 days |
| Daily cooler and freezer checks | 60 temperature entries, 1 out of range |
| The kitchen's own supplies | Gloves and sanitizer reordered twice |
A booking tool handles the first three rows well; the shelves, the member who left and the supplies are where kitchens fall back on a clipboard.
A test month for any trial
Before choosing software, run one real month of your kitchen through each trial:
- Book a week of recurring slots for three members, with one late cancellation.
- Bill one member's month: plan, extra hours, two shelves, a fee and a credit.
- Record a member's goods arriving, being used, and being taken away when they leave.
- Count the walk-in, member by member, and see what's over and under.
- Find which members' certificates expire in the next 30 days.
- Reorder the kitchen's gloves and sanitizer when they fall below par.
Whatever a tool can't do in that test, you'll do by hand every month. How a count of the walk-in is laid out is in inventory count sheet example.
Where this stops working
A booking calendar knows who's in the kitchen on Tuesday night; it doesn't know what thirty members keep in the walk-in, what's out of date, or what a member who stopped paying left behind. That part is an inventory, and on a clipboard it's always a week behind.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the inventory side: members' goods, counts, releases, monthly statements, and the kitchen's own supplies. It isn't a booking calendar and doesn't run door access or store members' certificates; a booking tool does those.
Members' goods as theirs. With We make or keep goods for clients turned on, each member is a client and their goods are their own: received at no cost to the kitchen, kept apart from its stock and out of its stock value, counted on a phone where they sit, and released when they take them.
Statements and charges. Each member's monthly statement shows their goods you hold and how each moved, by lot, with the month's charges typed onto their order, so a member using four shelves while paying for two shows up.
The kitchen's own supplies. Gloves, sanitizer and labels come up on the reorder list in days of cover, with reorder points suggested from how fast they're used. How offline counting works is in offline inventory software for small businesses.
| The job | A booking tool | TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Booking stations | Yes | No |
| Door access and certificates | Often | No |
| Members' goods on shelves | Rarely | Yes, as each member's own |
| Counting the walk-in by member | Rarely | Yes, on a phone, offline |
| A member leaving with their goods | No | A release, with their statement |
| The kitchen's own supplies | No | Reorder list and alerts |
Keeping members' goods, with releases and monthly statements, is on Standard at $99 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.