Bud’s Chicken & Seafood has been serving Palm Beach County since 1957. What started as a local restaurant grew into a beloved community staple known for its fried chicken, seafood, and family recipes passed down through generations.

Today, the business is run by the third generation of the founding family and operates a central commissary along with seven restaurant locations.

With growth came complexity.

Managing purchasing, inventory, invoices, and food costs across multiple locations required better systems and stronger cost control processes.

That’s where NxtEdge restaurant inventory management software came in.

Bud’s Chicken owner Philip B. and Naomi Canning of NxtEdge have crossed paths in the restaurant industry for nearly twenty years.

When Naomi joined DiningEdge (now NxtEdge) eight years ago, Bud’s Chicken partnered with the platform to bring structure and automation to their commissary and multi-location operations.

The initial goal was simple:

Create better visibility and control over food costs flowing through the commissary and out to multiple restaurant locations.

Over time, Bud’s Chicken expanded their use of the platform to take advantage of additional features designed for restaurant cost control and operational efficiency.

Bud’s Chicken operates with a centralized commissary that distributes products to multiple restaurant locations. This structure allows them to maintain consistency across their menu and control purchasing at a centralized level.

Using NxtEdge, their team now manages the full purchasing and cost control workflow through one system.

Key operational processes include:

• Ordering from the commissary through the software
• Invoice automation and invoice coding
• Exporting invoices to accounting
• Daily inventory counts on high-value “hot items”
• Weekly full inventory counts across locations
• Menu recipe costing and cost variance tracking

This connected workflow gives management clear insight into how food costs move from purchasing to production to sales.

One of the biggest improvements came from implementing automated invoice processing.

Instead of manually entering invoices or updating product pricing by hand, incoming invoices are processed automatically and update product costs inside the system.

This creates real-time pricing visibility across the organization.

For a restaurant group operating a commissary model, accurate product pricing is critical because cost changes affect every location.

With invoice automation software built for restaurants, Bud’s Chicken can now:

• Capture invoices automatically
• Maintain accurate product pricing
• Reduce manual accounting work
• Ensure clean financial exports to their accounting system

The result is better financial accuracy and less back-office workload.

Bud’s Chicken also uses restaurant inventory management software to monitor both daily and weekly inventory activity.

Their process combines two levels of inventory tracking:

Daily Hot Item Counts

High-value products are counted daily to monitor cost variances and detect potential issues quickly.

Weekly Full Inventory Counts

A complete inventory is conducted weekly to maintain accurate food cost reporting across locations.

This structure allows their management team to stay proactive rather than reactive when it comes to cost control.

With recipe and menu costing tools built into NxtEdge, Bud’s Chicken can track the cost of their menu items and monitor variance on key ingredients.

By connecting:

• purchasing
• invoices
• inventory
• and menu recipes

the team gains real visibility into food cost performance.

This data helps them understand how ingredient price changes impact menu profitability across the entire operation.