1System
8Steps
5Problems
Most restaurants don't outgrow their food. They outgrow their systems.
One branch can run on a till, a stock sheet and an accountant who gets everything at the end of the month. Open a second or third branch and the cracks start to show: stock that doesn't match, food costs nobody can see, and a shift close that depends on one person and a spreadsheet.
In August, our founder, Khun Kitti, joined Odoo APAC's live session with Benz, Odoo's Partner Manager, to show what running a multi-branch F&B business on one system actually looks like. He opened with Food Smith, an imported-beef brand whose website, online shop and payments run on Odoo, then walked through a full restaurant demo. Here are the five problems he started with, and how each one plays out in Odoo.
Watch the full session
Innovation
How ideas come to life
Focus
Building connections
22%
Reaching new heights
+12
Mark the difference
What it looks like in practice
Recipes and true food cost
In the demo, a 250 g chicken steak sells for 390 THB, and its ingredients cost 67.80 THB. Because the recipe is set up in Odoo (as a bill of materials), every sale deducts the right ingredients, and Odoo can tell you how many more steaks each branch can make from the stock it has.
Four ways guests order.
Staff take the order at the table. Set menus apply their promotions automatically. Guests scan a QR code at the table and order from their own phone. And a table booked on the restaurant's website shows up on the floor plan, ready for check-in.
Kitchen and bar screens.
Food goes to the kitchen screen and drinks to the bar, automatically. Each order moves from received, to preparing, to done.
Paying.
Cash, PromptPay QR, cards and gift cards. Split the bill, split the payment, apply a coupon code, and issue an abbreviated or full tax invoice in the Thai format we set up for our clients. Foreign tourists can also request a VAT refund straight from the POS, through a connection we built.
Closing the shift without Excel.
Count the cash, check the QR totals, close. Every sale has already deducted its ingredients and posted to accounting, tagged by branch, so the entries are waiting when the shift ends.
Restocking.
When an ingredient falls below its minimum, Odoo drafts a request for quotation with a suggested quantity. The buyer checks it, confirms the order, and the delivery is received by scanning barcodes on a phone or a handheld scanner.
Every branch in one view.
Stock by branch, dashboards for revenue, top products and best tables, and a profit and loss statement for each branch, in real time.
What owners asked
Can my staff use it in Thai?
Yes. Odoo supports many languages, and each user can work in their own.
Can PromptPay payments be confirmed without checking slips?
Yes, once bank integration is set up.
What about Grab and LINE MAN?
Grab connects with Odoo, and LINE MAN orders come in through a connection we built.
Do the tax invoices meet Revenue Department requirements?
Yes. Odoo has handled Thai tax requirements for years, and we set up the Thai invoice format for each client.
How long does switching take?
Kitti's honest answer: about two to three months, if the business is ready. One month is rarely realistic, because your team needs time to learn a new way of working.
A real example
One well-known restaurant company we work with ran into exactly these problems as it opened more branches. Separate front-of-house, stock and accounting systems meant errors, rising costs and a daily close that kept running late. The fix was to centralize: POS sales linked straight to inventory, food cost tracked by deducting ingredients through recipes, and each day's sales flowing directly into accounting.
How we approach it
- Understand the business first. We map how you work before we configure anything.
- Stay close to standard Odoo. We customize only where it's needed, so upgrades stay simple.
- Take data seriously. Clean, well-organized product and customer data is what makes everything else work, so migration is a project in its own right.
- Connect what can't move yet. Where something can't run in Odoo today, we integrate it.
- Build for the next branch. The setup should still work when you open your next location, not just this one.
As our motto puts it: "Nothing is perfect or the best, so we will never stop developing and delivering to support our customer's needs."
Watch the full session