Talk to us about your F&B software project.
Tell us your production environment, your certification requirements, and where your current systems create risk or overhead. We'll scope the right platform and give you a fixed cost.
Custom software for F&B manufacturers and processors who need recipe management, ingredient traceability, production planning, and food safety compliance connected in one system -- not managed across paper records, spreadsheets, and a generic ERP that doesn't understand food manufacturing.
Built around your production environment. Batch sizes, yield calculations, allergen declarations, shelf-life management, and the traceability requirements of your retail or foodservice customers are all configured to your specific operation.
Recipe and formula management with version control, cost calculation, and approved specification control
Lot-level ingredient traceability from goods receipt through production to finished goods despatch
Production planning linked to recipe requirements, inventory, and line capacity
Food safety and quality management covering HACCP, allergen control, and audit documentation
Food and beverage software development covers recipe and formula management with version control, ingredient traceability from goods receipt to despatch, production planning and scheduling, food safety compliance (HACCP, BRC, SQF), allergen management, quality management, and supplier approval workflows -- connected in one system rather than managed across paper records and spreadsheets. RaftLabs builds custom F&B software for food manufacturers, processors, and distributors. Most projects deliver in 12 to 18 weeks at a fixed, agreed cost.
Food manufacturers face a combination of regulatory compliance requirements and customer audit standards -- BRC, SQF, FSSC 22000, retailer-specific codes of practice -- that require documented evidence for every ingredient used, every process step completed, and every quality check performed. Meeting those requirements with paper records is possible but inefficient and fragile. One illegible batch record, one missing sign-off, one recipe version discrepancy is enough to fail an audit or trigger a corrective action that consumes days of management time.
Custom F&B software gives you the structured data capture that makes compliance documentation a byproduct of normal production activity rather than a separate exercise. Recipes are controlled. Lot numbers are tracked from intake to despatch. Quality checks are recorded at the point of completion. A recall simulation that takes hours with paper records takes minutes with a system that can trace every batch.
A food safety authority or retailer audit that requires a forward or backward trace within two hours cannot be satisfied by a team manually searching paper batch folders across three production lines. The data exists -- it is just not connected. A traceability system that links goods receipt lot numbers through every production stage to finished goods despatch makes a recall query a 10-minute exercise rather than a half-day search.
When a recipe lives in a shared spreadsheet that anyone can edit, there is no reliable way to confirm that the production team is working from the current approved formula. A change made without a sign-off workflow reaches production without anyone realising. Version-controlled recipe management with approval gates ensures the formula on the line is the formula the quality team approved -- and creates the audit trail to prove it.
A food safety audit requires complete, attributable, contemporaneous records for every critical control point check performed. Records assembled from paper sheets the day before an audit are neither contemporaneous nor reliably complete. When CCP monitoring is captured digitally at the point of production, the audit documentation is a report generated from live data -- not a manual compilation exercise.
Scheduling allergen-containing products and allergen-free products on the same line without a validated clean between them is a food safety incident waiting to happen. When the allergen matrix and the production schedule are managed separately, cross-contamination risk is assessed informally by whoever is scheduling the line. Connecting allergen management to the production schedule makes the conflict visible before it becomes a recall.
Recipe register with version control showing the current approved specification for every product, full revision history, and the sign-off workflow required before a new version is released to production. Ingredient quantities with unit of measure conversion, yield factors, and loss percentages. Allergen declaration automatically generated from the ingredient list with cross-contamination flags for shared-line allergens. Cost calculation showing the standard material cost per batch and per unit based on current ingredient purchase prices. Scaling calculation for any batch size with quantity adjustments and packaging requirement recalculation. The recipe management that replaces the spreadsheet and ensures production always works from the current approved formula.
Lot-level traceability from goods receipt through every production stage to finished goods despatch. Goods in recording capturing supplier name, delivery date, lot number, best-before date, and quantity received against each ingredient delivery. Production batch records linking the ingredient lot numbers consumed to the finished goods lot produced, including any rework incorporated. Finished goods despatch recording the customer, delivery date, and lot numbers shipped. Forward trace showing every customer who received product containing a specific ingredient lot. Backward trace showing every ingredient lot that went into a specific finished goods lot. The traceability data that makes a mock recall a 10-minute exercise rather than a half-day search through paper records.
Production plan generation based on customer orders or demand forecast, recipe requirements, current stock levels, and line capacity. Materials requirements calculation showing the quantity of each ingredient needed for the plan, checked against current stock and open purchase orders. Line scheduling with shift allocation and changeover time management. Work order generation from the production plan with the approved recipe, required quantities, and lot number assignment. Production progress tracking against the work order with actual yield recorded at completion. Variance reporting showing the difference between standard and actual yield by product and by production run.
HACCP critical control point monitoring with configured limits, recorded checks, and out-of-limit alert workflow. Cleaning and sanitation schedule management with completion records and sign-off. Pest control log and corrective action tracking. Calibration schedule for measuring equipment with certificate storage and overdue alerts. Supplier approval workflow requiring quality documentation before a supplier is approved for production use. Non-conformance recording and corrective action management for quality deviations. The food safety documentation that an auditor can review without the site manager spending a day preparing a paper evidence pack.
Incoming goods inspection with configurable checks by product category, pass/fail criteria, and quarantine workflow for rejected deliveries. In-process quality checks at defined production stages with the check type, frequency, and acceptance criteria configured by product. Finished product release with final quality check sign-off before the goods are released to despatch. Customer complaint management from initial receipt through investigation, root cause analysis, and corrective action closure. Product hold and release workflow for stock that needs to be quarantined pending a quality decision. Shelf-life management with best-before date allocation and stock rotation reporting.
Allergen matrix showing the presence of the 14 major allergens in every ingredient and every finished product, automatically updated when a recipe is changed. Shared-line allergen management with cross-contamination risk assessment and cleaning validation records. Label specification management showing the approved label content for each product including the allergen declaration, ingredient list, and nutritional information. Label change workflow requiring sign-off before a new label specification is released for print. The allergen controls that protect your customers and protect the business from the reputational damage of an undeclared allergen incident.
We map your production environment -- the product mix, batch sizes, line configurations, certification scheme, and the traceability and quality requirements of your retail or foodservice customers. We identify where paper records or disconnected systems create the most compliance risk or operational overhead, and agree on the scope that delivers the most value first. You receive a fixed-price specification before development begins.
We design the data model around your actual production structure -- lot number schema, recipe version control, CCP monitoring configuration, and the supplier and allergen relationships that must be traceable end to end. The compliance documentation requirements of your specific certification scheme -- BRC, SQF, FSSC 22000 -- are designed into the data architecture at this stage.
Development runs in two-week sprints with working software shown at each checkpoint. Recipe management, traceability, production planning, and quality management modules are built in parallel where dependencies allow. ERP integrations for stock movements and purchase orders are built and tested against your live system during this phase.
Go-live is phased to avoid disruption during peak production periods. We provide onboarding for production supervisors, quality managers, and procurement teams. Post-launch support covers adjustments from real production use, with handover to your team or an ongoing arrangement before the next planned audit.
Frequently asked questions
Multi-site operations need a central recipe library with site-specific production parameters -- the batch sizes, the line assignments, and the packaging specifications may differ by site even when the core formula is the same. We build recipe management with site-level variants so the approved formula is controlled centrally while site-specific parameters are maintained locally. Traceability is maintained across sites for products that move between them -- raw material intake at one site, processing at a second, despatch from a third -- with the lot linkage preserved throughout.
Yes. The system's structured data capture is designed so the documentation an auditor requires -- HACCP records, traceability data, cleaning schedules, supplier approvals, calibration records -- is produced as a byproduct of normal production activity. Report generation and export cover the specific document formats that BRC, SQF, and FSSC 22000 audits require. The specific compliance standard and its documentation requirements are identified during discovery so the system is configured to your certification scheme.
Yes. Common integrations include SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, and specialist food manufacturing ERPs. The integration typically covers stock movements (goods in, production consumption, despatch) flowing to the ERP's inventory module, and purchase orders flowing from the ERP into the goods receipt workflow. We scope the integration during discovery based on the APIs or data exchange formats your current system supports.
A platform covering recipe management, lot traceability, and basic quality records typically runs $40,000 to $85,000. A more complete system adding production planning, HACCP compliance management, supplier approval, and allergen management typically runs $85,000 to $170,000. Fixed cost agreed before development starts.
Version-controlled formulas, allergen declarations, cost calculation
Lot-level traceability, mock recall, forward and backward trace
MRP, line scheduling, work orders, yield tracking
HACCP monitoring, BRC/SQF documentation, supplier approval
What clients say
Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.

RaftLabs elevated my ideas and brought them to life when everything seemed impossible.
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Tell us your production environment, your certification requirements, and where your current systems create risk or overhead. We'll scope the right platform and give you a fixed cost.