How to use Retal

Every tool.
Step by step.

A complete guide to running your kitchen with Retal, from your first forecast to a fully optimised operation.

🔮 Forecasts📊 Covers🍽️ Menu👨‍🍳 Staff📅 Rota🏠 Venues📈 Analytics🎁 Referrals
Service Forecasts

Know tonight before
the first ticket drops.

Retal combines your historical footfall data with live weather and event intelligence from Perplexity, then feeds everything to Claude to generate a complete service brief.

1
Choose your date and daypart
Select tonight's date and daypart type, Lunch, Dinner, or Late Night. Add any service notes (private event, holiday menu, etc.).
2
Hit generate
Retal searches live weather and local events via Perplexity, pulls your historical averages, and sends everything to Claude.
3
Review your brief
In under 3 minutes, you get predicted footfall, projected revenue, food and labour cost estimates, a position plan, and meal predictions.
4
Share with your team
Every brief has a unique link you can send to your assistant manager, area manager, or owner, no account needed to view.
Saturday Dinner · High Confidence
Service Brief
Predicted footfall187
Projected revenue$9,340
Food cost31%
Labour cost28%
Weather22°C, clear, ideal patio
EventsTown Hall concert, 500 expected
Powered by Perplexity + Claude
Perplexity searches real-time weather, local events, holidays, and disruptions. Claude synthesises that with your data to produce the forecast. No guessing.
Covers & Sales History

The data that makes
every forecast smarter.

Your footfall history is how Retal learns your restaurant's patterns. Three ways to get your data in, pick whatever suits your workflow.

🔗
POS Auto-Sync
Connect Square, Toast, or Lightspeed. After every service, footfall and revenue log automatically via webhook. Zero manual work.
SquareToastLightspeed
📄
CSV / XLSX Upload
Export from your POS and drop the file into Retal. Claude reads it, whatever format, and extracts footfall, revenue, and dish-level sales.
CSVXLSXXLS
✍️
Manual Entry
Log each service by hand, date, daypart, footfall, revenue, and notes. Simple and effective for getting started or filling gaps.
Quick logBackfill
The more you log, the smarter Retal gets
Start with your last 10-15 services for a decent baseline. At 30+ matching services for a given day and daypart, forecasts become highly accurate. Retal uses same-day, same-daypart historical averages, not generic patterns.
Staff Management

Your team, their titles,
their capacity.

Add your staff with the position titles your kitchen actually uses. Retal learns each person's role, rate, and limits.

📋
Real position titles
Till, floor, stockroom, fitting rooms, whatever your shop calls them. No generic categories.
📊
Max footfall per daypart
Set each person's throughput limit. Retal uses this for position plans, "Jess handles up to 90 on grill."
💰
Hourly rates
Track cost per person. Forecasts and the rota calculate labour cost automatically from these rates.
⭐
Experience levels
Junior, mid, senior. Retal factors experience into position recommendations for busy nights.
📤
Upload your roster
Drop a CSV or PDF. Claude reads names, titles, and rates, no formatting required.
👥
Named position plans
Forecasts recommend specific people for specific stations: "Marco on sauté, Jess on grill."
Rota Builder

Schedule by position,
not by headcount.

A visual weekly schedule that calculates your labour cost in real time and shows it as a percentage of forecasted revenue.

1
Click to assign shifts
A grid of days and staff. Click any cell to toggle Lunch, Dinner, or Late Night shifts on or off.
2
Set hours per daypart
Customise how many hours each daypart type runs. The rota calculates cost from hours × hourly rate.
3
See labour cost live
Weekly total, daily breakdown, and labour as a percentage of predicted revenue, all update as you build.
4
Compare to AI recommendations
For days with forecasts, expand the AI position plan to see Retal's recommended staffing side by side.
The cut-time strategy
Smart restaurants don't just schedule start times, they schedule cut times. Retal's position plan includes suggested cut times for each station, so you know exactly when to release staff if footfall come in below forecast.
Weekly labour cost calculated instantly
Labour % of forecasted revenue
AI position plan comparison per day
Cut-time recommendations per station
Venues & Team Access

Multi-location,
one platform.

Manage multiple restaurants from one account. Each venue has its own footfall, menu, staff, and forecasts. Invite your team with Manager or Viewer access.

🏠
Separate data per venue
Each location has its own footfall history, menu, staff roster, rota, and forecast briefs.
📍
Location-aware forecasts
Set each venue's location. Retal searches weather and events specific to that address.
👥
Team invites
Invite your assistant manager or area manager with Manager (full edit) or Viewer (read-only) permissions.
🔗
POS per venue
Each venue gets its own webhook URL. Connect different POS systems to different locations.
🕐
Operating hours
Set opening and closing times. Helps Retal understand your service windows.
🪑
Seating capacity
Total capacity across all spaces. Forecasts use this to calculate occupancy percentages.
Site Analytics

See who's visiting
and how they found you.

Lightweight, privacy-friendly analytics built into your account. No cookies, no third-party scripts, just clear data about your Retal usage.

1
Views and visitors
Total page views, unique visitors, and daily averages, with a visual chart over your selected time period.
2
Top pages
See which parts of Retal your team uses most, forecasts, footfall, menu, rota, ranked by visit count.
3
Device and browser breakdown
Know whether your team accesses Retal from desktop, tablet, or phone, useful for training.
4
Referrer tracking
See where visits come from, direct, Google, shared links, or your POS integration.
Period selector
Toggle between Today, 7 days, 30 days, or All time. Every chart and stat updates instantly.
Today7 days30 daysAll time
Built-in tracking means no Google Analytics setup needed. Your data stays in your database, not a third party's.
Referral Program

Earn credits by
sharing Retal.

Every account gets a unique referral link. When someone signs up through your link and buys a Growth or Pro plan, you both earn 5 bonus forecast credits.

1
Copy your referral link
Find it on the Refer & Earn page, every account has a unique code and shareable link.
2
Send it to another shop
Text a store manager, email an owner, tell the shop next door. They sign up for free.
3
They purchase Growth or Pro
When they buy a $59+ credit pack, the bonus triggers automatically.
4
You both get 5 credits
Instantly added to both accounts. No limit on referrals, keep sharing, keep earning.
Why Growth or Pro only?
The Starter plan ($29) doesn't trigger referral bonuses. This ensures that the person you referred genuinely finds value in Retal before either of you earn credits. It also prevents gaming.
No limit on referrals
Credits never expire
Both parties earn equally
Track everything on your referrals dashboard

Ready to run a smarter kitchen?

Set up your venue and generate your first forecast in under 10 minutes.

Get started →