Case Studies / Nonna's Kitchen
A family restaurant cut six tools down to one bill — and stopped its Friday reconciliation.
Diego Alvarez has run Nonna's Kitchen for 18 years. The kitchen runs on his grandmother's recipes; the front of house ran, until 2024, on six software tools that disagreed with each other every Friday afternoon.
"My nonna gave us the recipes. She didn't give us six software tools. The day we cut down to one bill, my Friday afternoons came back."
The before.
Six tools, four invoices, and one Friday-afternoon spreadsheet that nobody was supposed to know about.
Combined: ~$760/month across Toast, Gloria Food, Constant Contact, OpenTable, and Yotpo. Plus 4 hours of his nephew's time every Friday afternoon doing reconciliation. Plus the dining-room manager keeping a paper backup of the OpenTable seating chart because the OpenTable iPad would crash on Saturday nights.
The breaking point was a Sunday in May 2024. A couple booked their 25th anniversary through OpenTable, ordered ahead through Gloria Food, and arrived to find Gloria Food had marked the order as "pickup" rather than "dine-in." Diego comped the meal. He called Rehost the next morning.
The after.
One Nonna's Kitchen app on the App Store and Google Play. One website. One bill. One number to call when something needs fixing.
What the app does
- · Reservations with table preferences (Diego's regulars get the booth they always sit in)
- · Pickup ordering with the kitchen-printer integration
- · Loyalty: every 10th meal, dessert on the house
- · Push notifications for the special pasta night every other Tuesday
- · Birthday and anniversary recognition baked in (no separate Yotpo)
- · The seating chart that doesn't crash on Saturday nights
What Diego's team does
- · Cooks. Plates. Greets.
- · Watches the seating chart on the dining-room iPad
- · Pulls weekly summaries that Rehost emails on Monday morning
- · Messages Rehost when the menu changes, holiday hours need updating, or a dish needs a new photo
- · No longer touches Toast loyalty, Gloria Food admin, Constant Contact, OpenTable backend, or Yotpo
The math.
| Line item | Before (monthly) | After (monthly) |
|---|---|---|
| Toast loyalty add-on | $75 | — |
| Gloria Food (pickup + delivery) | $249 | — |
| Constant Contact | $95 | — |
| OpenTable | $249 | — |
| Yotpo SMS | $89 | — |
| Friday reconciliation labor (~16 hrs/mo × $22/hr) | ~$352 | $0 |
| Rehost Business (app + website + loyalty + AI ops) | — | $850 |
| Total | $1,109/mo + 16hrs/mo of staff time | $850/mo, no staff time |
$259/month saved on the line items, plus 16 hours of his nephew's time freed up to wait tables. The Friday reconciliation went away. Diego stopped eating crow over double-bookings.
Related.
Playbook
LA County restaurant tech stack
The five-to-eight tool stack we typically replace for LA restaurants — Diego's setup was textbook.
FAQ
Restaurant loyalty questions
What LA restaurant operators ask before signing up.
Method
The Rehost Operating Layer
The principles behind why Diego's engagement was structured this way.