Short answer. Choco is a free app for sending orders to your distributors and chatting with your reps. RestaurantMate is free for your first 60 days, then $99 a month per location. Before you order, it shows which of your vendors is cheaper for each item, priced on the same unit. After you pay, it reads the invoice and keeps track of your food cost. If you mostly order by text and you are happy with the prices you pay, Choco may be all you need. Facts about Choco below come from Choco's own pages, checked on 2026-10-09.
What Choco is
For restaurants, Choco is an ordering app. You keep a list of what you buy from each distributor (the companies that deliver most of your food), fill in quantities and send the order from your phone or computer. Choco describes it as a way to "order and chat with your distributors in one intuitive and free app" (choco.com/us/restaurants, as of 2026-10-09).
Today the company's focus is distributors. Its US home page describes "a dedicated AI platform built for food & beverage wholesalers that automates order processing" (choco.com/us, as of 2026-10-09). Its FAQ centers on distributors who invite restaurants to the app (choco.com/us/faq, as of 2026-10-09).
The restaurant page also lists order reminders, delivery confirmation, tracking orders across several restaurants, and reporting missing items when an order arrives.
On prices, the restaurant page does not describe showing or comparing them. We found nothing on Choco's public pages about putting two vendors' prices for the same item side by side.
What Choco does well
- It is free for restaurants. In Choco's words: "Choco is free for restaurants. No catches. No hidden fees."
- It is quick to start. Setup effort is very low.
- It suits teams that order by text now. Your reps and your staff sit in one chat-style app, and every line carries a product ID and a unit, so the rep gets fewer vague orders
- People who use it rate it well. The iPhone app has 4.4 out of 5 from 85 ratings (App Store, as of 2026-10-09).
If your vendors and prices are settled and the pain is a mess of texts and order sheets, Choco fixes that for free.
RestaurantMate vs Choco at a glance
| RestaurantMate | Choco | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 60 days free, then $99 a month per location. $300 refundable device deposit | Free for restaurants |
| Shows which vendor is cheaper for each item, per lb or per each | Yes, before you order | Not advertised |
| Website vendors | Fills each vendor's online cart and checks every line. You check out | Sends your order to the distributor from the app |
| Vendors who take orders only by email, text or phone | Can't send these orders. The cart says "This vendor has to be ordered by hand" | Not checked. Choco's FAQ centers on distributors who invite you |
| Chat with your reps | Not offered | Yes |
| Reads every invoice | Yes | Not advertised |
| Problems on delivery | Mark items damaged, short or wrong, per item | Report missing items |
| Counts, recipes and food cost | Yes | Not advertised |
| Sales and labor | Toast and SpotOn sales today; 7shifts and Homebase labor | Not advertised |
| Setup | $0, done with you. The RestaurantMate device plugs into your router | Download the app |
"Not advertised" means we found nothing about it on Choco's public pages on 2026-10-09. It does not prove the feature is missing.
Where RestaurantMate is different
1. You see which vendor is cheaper before you order
Choco sends the order you already decided on. RestaurantMate helps you make that decision. The RestaurantMate device, a small computer in your restaurant, signs in to each of your website vendors overnight with your own login and checks the price your account gets for each item you buy. Those are your prices, including any contract pricing. Your vendors don't sign up for anything, because RestaurantMate uses the accounts you already have. Then RestaurantMate puts every price on the same unit, such as per pound or per each, using the pack size the vendor publishes.
That matters because vendors sell the same item in different packs. Here is an example with made-up vendors:
| Item | Vendor | Pack | Case price | Price per unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow onions | Valley Fresh Produce | 25 lb bag | $21.50 | $0.86 per lb |
| Yellow onions | Heartland Foodservice | 50 lb bag | $38.00 | $0.76 per lb |
| Hass avocados | Valley Fresh Produce | 48 count | $62.40 | $1.30 each |
| Hass avocados | Club Wholesale | 60 count | $72.00 | $1.20 each |
Divide the case price by what is in the case: $21.50 for 25 lb is $0.86 a pound. On case price alone, the 25 lb bag looks cheaper. Per pound, the 50 lb bag costs 10 cents less. Whether you can use 50 pounds of onions before they go soft is still your call, and now you can make it with the numbers in front of you. When a vendor doesn't publish the pack size, RestaurantMate shows "Missing unit" and asks you to type it once. It never guesses.
Then comes the order. Each location has one cart, split by vendor, with each vendor's minimum (the smallest order it will deliver) shown. Your staff can build the cart. Only the people you choose can send it. When you press Send all (or Send on one vendor's card), the device signs in to each vendor's website, fills that vendor's own online cart, reads the cart back and checks every line. You open the vendor's cart, review it and check out.
2. It reads every invoice, and you mark what came wrong
Choco lets you check an order when it arrives and report missing items. That covers part of receiving.
RestaurantMate reads every invoice, receipt and bill and keeps them in one list. Invoices from vendor websites are pulled daily. Vendors who email their invoices can send them to your RestaurantMate inbox (an address like yourname@mail.rmate.ai), or you can connect Gmail or Outlook read-only. Paper receipts come in as photos, up to 20 at a time, and our AI reads and tags them.
On any delivered line you can add a mark such as Damaged, Short, Wrong item or Missing, with how many and a note. When a vendor's own invoice shows a line shipped short, RestaurantMate flags it without anyone clicking. The marks are a record for you and your bookkeeper. RestaurantMate does not contact the vendor or request the credit for you.
3. It covers what happens after the delivery
- Counts. Staff count shelf by shelf, and the count is valued at the prices you paid on your invoices.
- Recipes and food cost. Send your recipes in any format (a photo, a PDF, a spreadsheet). RestaurantMate sets them up, clears the obvious ones and asks you only about the unclear ones. Cost per plate comes from your real invoice prices. Food cost, or COGS (cost of goods sold), is what the food on your plates cost you.
- Sales and labor. Sales from Toast and SpotOn today, and we add your POS on request. Labor from 7shifts and Homebase.
- A weekly report for each location, emailed as a PDF.
Choco's restaurant page doesn't advertise any of these. It is an ordering app, and ordering is the job it covers.
Where Choco is stronger: chat and vendors who already use it
RestaurantMate fills vendors' online carts. It cannot send an order to a vendor who only takes orders by email, text or phone. Those vendors show up in the cart with the note "This vendor has to be ordered by hand," and you place that order yourself.
Choco is built for sending orders to your distributors and chatting with them in the app. If your distributor already uses Choco, or invited you, that is the easier path, and RestaurantMate does not offer chat with your reps.
RestaurantMate still helps with those vendors once the order is placed. Their invoices and price sheets come in through the RestaurantMate inbox, so their prices land in the same comparison. Those prices are only as fresh as the last invoice or price sheet, because there is no website to check overnight.
"Choco is free. Why would I pay $99?"
Yes, Choco is free, and for sending orders it is hard to beat free. RestaurantMate does different work. It compares prices before you order and tracks food cost after you pay, and that is what the $99 a location pays for.
The full cost:
- 60 days free, and you don't need a card to start
- then $99 a month per location
- a $300 refundable deposit for the device, and one device covers up to two locations
- setup is $0 and done with you
- you can leave whenever you want
Whether it pays for itself depends on how you buy. Miguel runs two restaurants in Los Angeles. RestaurantMate has cut his food purchases by about 10%, and by 20 to 30% on some items where he switched vendors, and his manager gets back 4 to 5 hours a week. Your numbers will depend on your vendors and your menu.
Who should pick which
Choco is the better fit if:
- you already know which vendor you buy each item from, and the hard part is getting orders out cleanly
- many of your vendors take orders by text, email or phone, or already use Choco
- you want to start today, at no cost, with nothing to plug in at the restaurant
- your distributor invited you to Choco
RestaurantMate is the better fit if:
- most of your vendors have a website where you log in to order
- you buy the same items from two or more vendors and want to know who is cheaper this week, per pound or per each
- you want invoices, counts, recipe costs, sales and labor in one place
- you want staff to build the order while you decide who sends it
You can also use both. They don't connect to each other, so you would send orders through Choco for distributors on it and website orders through RestaurantMate. Invoices from both kinds of vendors can still come into RestaurantMate.
Switching from Choco
You keep your vendors and your reps. You list your vendors and add logins for the ones with a website, and the RestaurantMate team connects them, usually within a few days. The device arrives ready to plug into your router.
Common questions
Does RestaurantMate order without me? No. Nothing goes to a vendor until someone with full ordering access presses Send. After that, you check out on the vendor's website.
Is it safe to give RestaurantMate my vendor logins? Your logins are stored privately, used only to sign in to that vendor, and never shown back to anyone. The device signs in from your restaurant's own internet, because vendor websites block logins from cloud servers.
What if one of my vendors isn't connected yet? We connect to any vendor you buy from. If we haven't connected one yet, we build it for you, usually within days. For a vendor with no website, connecting means its invoices and price sheets come in through your inbox, and you still place its orders by hand.
See it for yourself
The live demo shows the price comparison and the cart with made-up vendors. When you're ready, the first 60 days are free.
Buttons: Get started (primary) and Try the live demo (secondary).
Sources
All checked on 2026-10-09:
- Choco for restaurants: choco.com/us/restaurants
- Choco home page: choco.com/us
- Choco FAQ: choco.com/us/faq
- Choco on the App Store: apps.apple.com
Prices and features checked October 2026 from each company's public website. Product names are trademarks of their owners. RestaurantMate is not affiliated with Choco. If something here is out of date, email us and we will fix it.