DeskPanther Launches Operations Software for Food and Beverage Shops, 200+ Waiting
DeskPanther's owner dashboard surfaces what needs attention first across every location: an urgent espresso bean shortage at Store 1, an equipment issue at Store 3, and out-of-stock items at two more shops.
The staff view on any phone: submit a count, report an out-of-stock item or a broken machine, log a cash drop, or leave a note for the next shift.
A repair reported from the floor arrives with a photo, the equipment model, whether the machine is still usable, and buttons to mark it seen, dispatched or fixed. Staff see the status update live.
Built and tested inside a Southern California coffee company, the software covers inventory counts, ordering, repairs and cash records across locations.
For independent coffee shops, ice cream shops and other food & beverage businesses, everything between those two systems lives in group texts, paper logs, sticky notes and the owner's memory: counts, ordering, out-of-stock items, repairs, cash drops, time corrections, announcements and shift handoffs. The tools that do exist were built and priced for chains, not for a two- or four-store operator.
DeskPanther, operations software for independent food & beverage businesses, launched publicly today. It was built not by a software company but by an operator. Founder Jade Valore co-founded Rad Coffee in 2015 and has run multi-location coffee shops ever since.
At its peak her workaround ran seven systems at once, including Google Sheets for par levels, Google Forms for repair requests reached through QR codes taped around the kitchen, and an SMS marketing platform repurposed to tell staff what the shop had run out of. None of it talked to each other. Eventually she built the system herself.
"I didn't go looking for a software idea. I was trying to run my shops," Valore said. "By 2020 I had QR codes taped around my kitchen so people could fill out a Google Form when something broke. I was paying for a text-message marketing platform to tell my own staff we were out of pumpkin. Nothing was built for a shop my size, so I built it."
Tested inside working stores first
DeskPanther has run every Rad Coffee store, every shift, since July 6, 2026, more than two months before it was offered to anyone outside the company. Shift leads put every count, order, repair request and cash drop through it.
At Rad Coffee, a weekly inventory-ordering workflow that took 60 to 90 minutes now typically takes under 20. Par levels get adjusted from the owner's phone based on what stores report running low on. Repairs arrive with a photo and a status instead of a comment in passing.
More than 200 businesses joined the pre-launch waitlist, including over 100 ice cream shops, a category outside Valore's own.
What it covers, and what it doesn't
Employees record conditions from the floor on any phone. Managers receive those records and act on them. Owners can view activity across locations.
DeskPanther is not a POS, does not connect to one, and is not a scheduler; Valore still runs Sling across her stores. It covers the operational work happening around the register.
"The person standing in front of the problem already knows it's a problem," Valore said. "I don't need technology to tell them the sink is leaking. I need to make it incredibly easy for them to tell the right person and get back to work."
"Low-stock requests are my favorite part," said Caringten Vargo, a manager at Rad Coffee. "The request shows when it was sent, who sent it, when management saw it and when it shipped. The guesswork is gone."
Pricing and company
DeskPanther is priced per location rather than per employee: $39 per location per month for a single shop, $34 at two or three locations and $29 at four or more, applied automatically across the account. Employee count does not affect the price. Mobile vendors, including trucks, carts and pop-ups, run on the same app.
The software is available to U.S. shops now and includes a 30-day trial. Shops set up their own locations, par levels and staff accounts from a phone or laptop.
The company is bootstrapped and self-funded by its founder, with no outside investors.
"I didn't build DeskPanther around what an investor thinks restaurant software should become," Valore said. "I built it around what I need on a Monday morning when I'm trying to understand what's happening across my stores."
About DeskPanther
DeskPanther is operations software for independent food & beverage businesses, built from the systems founder Jade Valore developed over more than a decade of operating shops. It consolidates counts, ordering, repairs, cash handling and shift communication. Valore co-founded and operates Rad Coffee, a multi-location Southern California coffee company, and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Food & Drink list in 2021. Her work at Rad Coffee has been covered by Yahoo Finance, TODAY and KTLA 5. DeskPanther is available to U.S. shops at deskpanther.com.
Jade Valore
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