Spec

Every great cocktail tells a story, but the story behind the bar is often one of long hours, manual processes, and creative energy lost in spreadsheets. While guests enjoy seamless service, hospitality professionals juggle a chain of tasks—costing recipes, managing inventory, placing orders, training new staff, and reviewing performance metrics. What looks effortless to the customer can often feel chaotic to the people delivering the experience.

This was the reality Dave Krysl and his team knew well. Having worked in bars and restaurants to put himself through college, Krysl later moved to New York City and fell in love with elevated cocktail culture. The creativity, community, and connection formed over food and drink inspired him. At the same time, he saw how difficult the job could be for those behind the scenes—and how often that difficulty kept them from the parts of the job they truly enjoyed.

That understanding led to the creation of Spec, a hospitality operations platform designed to simplify the work that goes into running bars and restaurants. From recipe costing and inventory tracking to ordering, training, and reporting, Spec helps operators streamline their day-to-day tasks so they can spend more time focusing on creativity and guest experience—not just spreadsheets and back-office work.

“Good food and beverage experiences bring people together. They shape a community’s identity and create spaces where people can connect,” says Krysl, founder and CEO. “But behind that experience, the day-to-day for workers is often unnecessarily hard. We wanted to change that.”

Hospitality Tools That Actually Help

Spec began as a simple mobile app bartenders could use to reference classic cocktail recipes—a time-saving training tool. But when the team shared it with bartenders in Nashville, the feedback was clear: what they really needed was a robust platform to store, customize, and share their own menus and recipes. That insight sparked the evolution of Spec into a full-fledged operational solution.

Today, Spec helps hospitality teams manage recipes, cost analysis, inventory, ordering, training, and financial reporting. It was designed to eliminate redundancies—ensuring that one completed task can automatically support others. For example, adding a new cocktail recipe in Spec can instantly trigger cost calculations, update stock tracking, grant staff access to prep details, and support financial reporting.

The design reflects an understanding of how people grow in hospitality—from host to server, barback to bartender, manager to general manager. Each new role demands a different, often unrelated, skill set. Spec supports that learning curve by keeping operations intuitive and connected, so new responsibilities don’t come with unnecessary complexity.

Krysl emphasizes: “There’s a lot of creative energy in this industry. But people lose time and headspace to tasks that don’t inspire them. Spec gives them that time back—to innovate, to interact with guests, to do the parts of the job they actually love.”

Designed for Creators, Priced for All

One of Spec’s biggest differentiators is its ease of use. While many inventory systems are powerful, they often come with steep learning curves. Krysl recalls one user who said he felt like he needed a computer science degree to run his previous software. In contrast, Spec’s intuitive interface mirrors how hospitality teams think and work. With built-in tutorial videos and a clean, natural layout, staff can adopt it quickly and scale usage across locations.

Another defining choice was pricing. Many inventory platforms are out of reach for small operators. Spec deliberately set its subscription rates well below the industry average to ensure accessibility for independent bars and restaurants. “We didn’t want powerful software to be limited to big chains. We want to elevate the whole industry,” says Krysl.

The platform has already made a measurable difference for businesses like The Rosecomb in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Before using Spec, the team managed operations through Airtable and spreadsheets—a system that worked but was time-consuming and difficult to train new staff on. After adopting Spec, recipe storage, menu development, ordering, and financial reporting all moved into one unified system. The result was major time savings and better alignment across the team.

Spec’s growth has been largely organic, driven by word of mouth. Hospitality is a tight-knit industry, and when operators find tools that truly work, they recommend them. Spec is also popular among food and beverage directors, many of whom use it to build and archive their menus, infusions, and sub-recipes—essentially creating a living portfolio of their creative work.

Krysl points out that hospitality includes both career professionals and transitory workers. Spec supports both. For those in it for the long haul—mixologists, consultants, operators—it becomes a daily companion. For those passing through, it reduces stress, shortens training curves, and leaves a better experience behind.

From a basic cocktail reference app to a platform used by leading operators, Spec has grown by staying close to the people it serves. It brings technology into hospitality in a way that respects creativity, simplifies operations, and gives teams more time for what really matters: delighting guests and loving the work they do.