Cucinovo

Overview

Cucinovo connects recipe records to food costing, shopping, and meal or catering plans for home cooks and restaurant teams. It suits kitchens that need quantities and costs to carry through from recipes to planned service; households focused only on storing recipes may not need its paid features.

Key features

Costs can be calculated per portion and batch, with nested sub-recipes included in the roll-up. That is useful when a dish depends on prepared components, rather than a flat list of ingredients. Yield scaling, ingredient price updates, and menu profitability add cost-control tools, though the plan breakdown does not assign each to a particular tier.

Shopping lists combine ingredients and quantities across recipes, so planning several dishes need not produce repeated entries. Weekly meal planning and catering event planning adjust quantities and costs for the planned servings. Bulk CSV import and export can ease moving recipe and ingredient data; users can also export a machine-readable JSON copy of their supplied data.

Restaurant plans include unlimited team members and role-based access for Owner, Admin, Manager, Chef, and Viewer roles. An optional Gmail connection sends email through a user's own inbox. Cucinovo says OAuth tokens are encrypted with AES-256-GCM; its stated safeguards also include TLS in transit, encryption at rest, bcrypt password hashing, HTTP-only JWT cookies, CSRF protection, and CSP nonces. It says it complies with GDPR and describes EU-region hosting, including production workloads in Frankfurt and Helsinki. Users can delete accounts, although some records may be retained where legally required.

Pricing

The free plan costs nothing and is billed Free forever. It covers one household and one user, with unlimited recipes, ingredients, and categories, plus shopping lists, sub-recipes, grocery lists, and import/export. That is a substantial starting point for an individual household, but it lacks the meal planner and cost-per-portion tools shown on Plus.

Plus costs €7/month (billed annually); the monthly option is €9/mo. It allows five users and adds meal planning, cost per portion, a loss calculator, and family sharing. It is the household choice for shared planning and cost awareness, but it is not a restaurant operations plan.

Starter costs €24/month (billed annually), or €29/mo. It covers one restaurant location, unlimited team members, and unlimited recipes, ingredients, and categories. That makes it the lower-cost restaurant entry point for teams that need shared recipe management, but its stated inclusions do not include Pro's purchase orders or event planning.

Pro costs €66/month (billed annually), or €79/mo. One location is included, with up to five additional locations at €29/mo each. Alongside unlimited team members, it includes purchase orders, event planning, supplier information, a loss calculator, labor cost and time, and import/export. It is better suited to restaurants coordinating purchasing or events, and to small groups adding locations, though location charges can raise the total.

Enterprise has custom pricing and offers unlimited locations by contract, unlimited team members, cooking mode, and recipe approvals. Restaurant plans include a 14-day trial with full Pro access and no credit card required; after it ends, customers choose Starter or Pro to continue.

Platforms

Cucinovo runs on the web. The product invites users to contact its team about product questions, spreadsheet migration, and kitchen operations.

Who it's for

Choose Free for a single household that needs a recipe collection and shopping lists, and Plus when up to five household users also want meal planning and per-portion costing. Restaurant teams should consider Starter for shared recipes at one location, or Pro when event planning, purchasing, supplier information, or additional locations matter. Enterprise is aimed at multi-location groups that need contracted location capacity, cooking mode, or approvals. Cucinovo is a weaker fit for anyone seeking only a basic recipe archive or a restaurant plan without a substantial monthly commitment.

Pros and cons

• Pro: Nested sub-recipes feed into portion and batch costing, which is valuable for kitchens using prepared components.
• Pro: Consolidated shopping and automatically adjusted meal or event quantities connect planning to ingredient requirements.
• Pro: Unlimited restaurant team members and role-based access support differentiated responsibilities without per-seat limits.
• Con: The free household plan is limited to one user, while family sharing and meal planning require Plus.
• Con: Restaurant features such as purchase orders and event planning are reserved for Pro, at a much higher price than household plans.
• Con: Extra Pro locations cost €29/mo each, and Enterprise has custom pricing.

Alternatives

Restaurant Recipe Costing Software and Restaurant Recipe Management Software are useful starting points for comparing category options. Consider Freecost if a free Android or web option with multiple kitchens and no per-seat pricing suits you better. Chefy offers a free core plan for a first venue, including costing, recipes, bulk product import, wastage recording, real-time costing updates, and team access. Dishboard is a web alternative described as free to use with unlimited menu items, ingredients, supplies, prep recipes, and delivery partners. DishCost may suit someone looking for free costing and nutrition tools, though most Pro features are read-only on its account tier. Enplace offers free access for one restaurant through selectively approved private beta. Ratatool starts with a free trial limited to four recipes and 15 ingredients, while its Premium price is 41 € per month, billed annually. RistoBrain is another option, with a Base plan at €19/month for one location and food-cost analytics. Galley may be preferable for teams seeking broader platform coverage, with plans spanning web, mobile, desktop, and API access.

Verdict

Cucinovo is a strong fit for home cooks who want shared meal planning and portion costing, and for restaurant teams that need recipes tied to service quantities, costs, and purchasing. Its main advantage is that connection between recipe components and operational planning; look elsewhere if you need restaurant features at a lower price or a household plan for multiple users at no charge.