Kaluz is a premier hospitality brand operating three upscale Kaluz locations plus the iconic Max’s Grille in South Florida.

Known for stunning waterfront views, elevated American cuisine, and a strong focus on guest experience, Kaluz has built its reputation on operational excellence—and smart systems behind the scenes.

A key part of their success?

Strong, scalable restaurant inventory management that kept pace as they expanded.

Seven years ago, Kaluz was operating a single flagship location on the Fort Lauderdale Intracoastal.
At the time, Shannon, their Director of Operations, recognized that running profitable, consistent operations would require more than passion—it would require tight inventory control.

Manual invoice entry, scattered spreadsheets, and no direct integration between purchasing, sales, and accounting made managing food and beverage costs challenging.

Shannon reconnected with Naomi—an industry partner from Kaluz’s early days when they launched with Aloha POS 12 years ago.

Now, Naomi was helping grow NxtEdge (formerly DiningEdge Technology), and Shannon saw an opportunity to put a real system in place.

Starting with their Fort Lauderdale location, Shannon and her team adopted NxtEdge’s modular restaurant inventory management platform, implementing:

✅ Weekly bar inventory counts for tighter beverage control
✅ Bi-monthly food inventory counts to protect margins
✅ Full invoice automation to eliminate manual entry errors
✅ QuickBooks integration to streamline accounting
✅ Aloha POS integration for real-time recipe depletion and cost tracking

As Kaluz expanded to additional locations—including a second and third Kaluz—and most recently acquired Max’s Grille in Boca Raton, they continued to grow with NxtEdge.

In fact, Shannon was thrilled to find that Max’s Grille was already using NxtEdge when they took ownership, making the integration even easier.

Today, across three Kaluz restaurants and Max’s Grille, Shannon and her team rely on centralized food and beverage inventory management to maintain consistency and control.

Three years ago, Kaluz moved from manual uploads to NxtEdge’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology for invoice automation.

Instead of keying in invoices by hand, vendor documents are scanned and automatically processed by AI—cutting administrative time dramatically and reducing human error.

Every invoice flows seamlessly:

• Into NxtEdge for real-time inventory and purchasing control
• Into QuickBooks for faster accounting
• Into Aloha POS for live inventory depletion linked to sales

This shift unlocked massive efficiency gains across all four locations, giving Shannon’s team more time to focus on operations and guest service.

Thanks to their investment in restaurant inventory management, Kaluz Restaurant Group has achieved:

• 8–10% tighter control on food and beverage costs
• Faster inventory counts — weekly bar counts now completed in under 90 minutes
• Vendor price transparency — early detection of price fluctuations
• Streamlined accounting and ordering across all locations
• Reduced waste, better portion control, and stronger margins

“Honestly, I don’t know how we would run our business without NxtEdge,” says Shannon.

Their ability to maintain operational discipline while expanding to four high-volume restaurants shows the power of starting early with the right inventory systems.

Kaluz’s journey proves what many growing hospitality groups learn the hard way:
Without strong food and beverage inventory control, scaling only magnifies problems.

But with systems like NxtEdge in place, operators can:

✅ Protect profitability at every location
✅ Improve purchasing accuracy
✅ Reduce food and liquor waste
✅ Catch vendor pricing issues early
✅ Connect accounting, POS, and inventory systems seamlessly
✅ Make smarter, faster business decisions