Honest comparison

FrillPick vs Kitchify vs spreadsheets vs a done-for-you audit

July 24, 2026 · by the Candor team — operators auditing real restaurant invoices

If you're trying to stop overpaying your distributors, you have four real options: a price-sheet comparison tool, a vendor-catalog platform, the midnight spreadsheet, or a done-for-you audit. We sell one of these, so read accordingly — but we'll describe all four the way we'd want them described to us. They solve different problems.

What does FrillPick actually do?

FrillPick (~$29/mo) compares vendor price sheets you upload — Sysco vs US Foods vs a local vendor — matches the products, and builds a pick list. It's a genuinely useful tool if you have current price sheets from multiple vendors and the discipline to keep uploading them. That's also its boundary: it compares the quotes your vendors chose to give you. If both quotes are high, the comparison is between two high numbers.

Choose it if: you actively maintain relationships with 2+ distributors and want a faster way to shop your own quotes.

What does Kitchify actually do?

Kitchify (~$99/mo) compares prices across your own vendors' catalogs and streamlines ordering. Operators in restaurant communities speak well of it — "worth the price," in one owner's words, after the setup effort of loading items. Like FrillPick, it works within your existing vendor set: it optimizes the hand you're holding, not the table.

Choose it if: you want ordering workflow plus visibility across the vendors you already use.

What about the big suites — MarginEdge, MarketMan?

The invoice-and-inventory suites ($200–$600/mo depending on plan) are strong at telling you what you spent — invoice capture, COGS, recipe costing. Cross-distributor price benchmarking isn't their job: they're accounting-grade rearview mirrors, priced accordingly. If you need inventory management anyway, they earn their keep on that alone.

Choose one if: your problem is cost tracking, not price benchmarking.

The spreadsheet (respect where due)

The most common real solution we've seen, verbatim from an independent operator on r/restaurateur: "Ended up just building an elaborate Google sheets project that tells me who to purchase everything from using vlookup formulas… saves me a lot of money." It works. The cost is the part nobody bills: your midnight hours, forever, and the sheet dies the month you get busy.

What does Candor do differently?

Candor answers a different question: what are operators across town actually paying for the same case? FrillPick and Kitchify compare quotes your own vendors gave you; the suites track what you spent — that's the job each of them advertises, and they do it well. You email your last 3 distributor invoices. Within 48 hours you get your top 3 overpaying items benchmarked against real invoice data — free. The full audit ($99, credited if you join the founding cohort) covers every line item and ends with a word-for-word negotiation script for your next rep call, because the script only works loaded. Every finding cites your own invoice lines — invoice #, date, SKU. If the audit finds nothing, you don't pay.

The honest boundaries, stated plainly: it's a concierge service in pilot, done by hand by operators, capped at 20 founding spots — not an app you log into today. If you want software you drive yourself, the tools above are real options. If you want the answer without the third shift, that's the 48-hour audit.

The one-table version