At the high end, the margin lives in precision — expensive proteins, exacting specs, tasting menus where one course quietly reshapes the whole cost. A point of drift on a $46 plate is real money. Lowboy is a sous-chef for the back of house: it costs every plate to the gram from your real invoices, ranks your menu by true contribution, and flags the dishes that slipped the day a protein moved.
Fine dining is about the craft and the guest experience. Let Lowboy handle the costing quietly in the background so your attention stays on the plate and the room.
You already handle the paper — Lowboy just reads it. Snap the purveyor invoice, the tasting-menu card, a station recipe, the night's sales. Nothing about how the kitchen runs has to change; it simply adds a smart layer on top that turns a chef's judgment into exact numbers.
Then it works like a sous-chef who's already run the math: computed from your data, never guessed. "Tuna landed at $28/lb, up 21% — the crudo dropped to 41% cost, re-plate at 3.5 oz or move to $32." "The scallop course is your top seller and your quiet loss-leader — feature the duck instead." Real invoices, real sales, real specs, turned into the two things a fine-dining kitchen protects hardest: margin and hours.
Fine dining is costed to the gram, with yield loss, sub-recipes and multi-course menus that all move together — Lowboy costs it the way you plate it.
Every component costed from real invoice prices — proteins with trim and yield loss, sauces and garnishes as sub-recipes — so the plate cost is exact, not an estimate.
real marginDishes ranked by true contribution margin and how they actually sell — your stars and your quiet money-losers, so you feature, re-plate or re-price with numbers.
a sharper menuA tasting menu costed as the sum of its courses — see the full cost and margin at its price, and how one swapped course changes the whole number.
menu built rightRibeye, tuna, foie — when a costly input moves, Lowboy flags the exact dishes that dropped below target, with the re-price or supplier swap that restores it.
catch creepEvery dish costed, spec'd and shareable to each station — so a plate leaves the pass identical whether you're on the line or not.
consistencyMise and prep sized to your real covers by night, netted against what's on hand — so the walk-in isn't full of prepped garnish that won't get fired.
less wasteLowboy's suggestions come from how your kitchen actually runs — your invoices, your sales, your specs — so they protect both the margin and the pass.
Most plate cost and menu engineering tools ask a chef to key ingredients into a form and trust that last month's prices still hold. Lowboy computes your real number from your actual invoices and sales — the tuna you actually paid $28 a pound for, the courses that actually sold last service. In fine dining that precision is the whole game: ingredient costs are high and volatile, portions are exact, and a single point of drift on an expensive plate is meaningful money multiplied across a full book.
Costing is done the way you plate — to the gram, with yield loss on proteins, sauces and garnishes as sub-recipes, and tasting menus costed as the sum of their courses so one swap re-costs the whole menu. On top of that sits real menu engineering: dishes ranked by true contribution margin and how they actually sell, so you can feature the stars and quietly retire the loss-leaders. When a costly protein moves, every affected plate re-costs and Lowboy surfaces the re-price or supplier swap that restores your margin — before the week leaks.
See it on your own menu in about three minutes with the free food-cost audit, or explore the free tools first. No account required.
Connect your POS and your menu and item-level sales auto-fill — the fuel for menu engineering. Not ready to connect? Snap a menu and a sales figure — Lowboy is POS-agnostic and works the same either way.
Add the hours back, too — no spreadsheet nights, no manual invoice entry, no rebuilding the prep list when the menu changes.
Less time on the back office, more time on the food, your crew, and the reason you opened.
Get your free audit →