Fourth
AI-powered workforce, scheduling and inventory management for restaurants, hospitality and retail operators.
By Fourth · 4.0/5 verified-buyer score
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- Multi-unit restaurant groups that want scheduling, time and attendance, payroll and inventory in one system
- Casual dining, QSR and fast-casual operators with large high-volume hourly workforces
- Hospitality and retail operators running locations across the US, EMEA and APAC
- Teams that want AI demand forecasting to align labour and food inventory with sales
- Enterprises consolidating labour, payroll and inventory data for above-store reporting
Ideal size: 100+ employees people · Multi-unit operator with central ops/HR and POS data already flowing
Not for
- Single-location independents with no admin or IT capacity for a platform rollout
- Businesses outside restaurant, hospitality or retail that have no hourly shift workforce
- Buyers who need published list pricing and self-serve signup for the full suite
- Operators unwilling to run an implementation project and connect POS data feeds
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
~2 months
~60 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$0/yr
Starts at $0 · Quote-based enterprise pricing via demo request; no public list price. A free HotSchedules workforce tier is advertised.
Implementation Friction
4/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Buyer Score
out of 5 · verified buyers
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
Not published; pricing scoped by number of locations and selected modules.
Add-on costs
- None
Company & support
Who is behind Fourth, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- 1999 · 27 yrs in business
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhonePlan not stated
- EmailNot listed
- Live chatPlan not stated
- Support portal / ticketsPlan not stated
- Community forumPlan not stated
- Help centre / docsPlan not stated
- Dedicated account managerNot listed
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Not stated
Contact page lists regional customer support phone lines (US/Canada, AU, UK) plus a Customer Success Portal offering self-help tools, chat, ticket submission and a community space. No hours, SLA or plan-tier detail is published.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Fourth sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Fourth
- Apicbase
- Restaurant365
- Nory
- Kojo
- Northbeam
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Fourth. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
No supported MCP path today, so it cannot be driven from an AI client.
AI & MCP readiness
What Fourth ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Sources describe AI Forecasting for demand and labour planning, AI-powered back-office tools and the Fourth iQ manager app that turns forecasts into in-store guidance. No source states which model providers are used, whether customers can bring their own keys, or whether any AI actions are logged.
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Not supported
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Industry verdicts
How Fourth speaks to each vertical it serves — same data, sector lens.
Restaurants & Food ServiceThinner margins demand tighter control.
Best for in Restaurants & Food Service
- Multi-unit casual dining, QSR and fast-casual brands
- Operators needing scheduling, labour compliance and tip management in one system
- Chains that want sales-driven forecasts to cut over- and under-staffing
Not for
- Single-unit independents with simple weekly rotas
- Concepts that refuse to connect their POS for demand data
Fourth's core market: HotSchedules scheduling, time and attendance, labour compliance, tipping and earned wage access sit alongside purchasing, recipe and inventory tools for restaurants. Case studies cite scheduling accuracy gains, labour cost savings and waste reduction. Most value depends on POS and sales data being integrated.
Hospitality & TravelFill rooms, keep guests coming back.
Best for in Hospitality & Travel
- Hotels and resorts with food and beverage outlets
- Multi-property groups needing enterprise inventory and purchasing control
- Operators with large hourly teams across shifts
Not for
- Small guesthouses with no food and beverage operation
- Properties needing only a simple room-booking stack
Fourth positions itself for hospitality as well as restaurants, and its enterprise suite and Adaco inventory product are aimed at larger food and beverage operations, including hotels and resorts. Scheduling, payroll, purchasing and recipe costing all apply to hotel outlets.
Retail & CommerceSell everywhere, stock nothing twice.
Best for in Retail & Commerce
- Convenience stores and food-led retail with hourly staff
- Chains needing labour forecasting plus inventory control
- Multi-site operators wanting above-store performance reporting
Not for
- Pure-play ecommerce retailers with no stores
- Retailers with no food service or perishable inventory
Fourth explicitly names retail alongside restaurant and hospitality, and its demo form includes retail and convenience store segments. Labour scheduling, demand forecasting and inventory management map onto food-led and convenience retail; the fit is weakest for retailers without hourly shift work or perishable stock.
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Fourth is a workforce and inventory management platform for restaurants, hospitality and retail, combining scheduling, time and attendance, payroll, recruiting, inventory and back-office analytics. Its AI Forecasting and Fourth iQ suite link sales forecasts to labour and food planning, and the platform is used across roughly 120,000 locations worldwide. Enterprise pricing is quote-based, with a free HotSchedules tier for basic scheduling. Best for multi-unit operators; a heavy lift for single sites.
Frequently asked questions
What does Fourth include?
Fourth bundles workforce management (scheduling, schedule scoring, task management, time and attendance, labour compliance, tipping and earned wage access), inventory management (purchasing, receiving, invoicing, recipe and menu engineering, production planning, cash operations), and restaurant data and analytics (business intelligence and AI forecasting). Products include HotSchedules, MacromatiX, Adaco and Red Book Solutions, sold as a restaurant operations suite for multi-unit and enterprise operators.
How is Fourth priced?
Fourth does not publish list pricing. The pricing page routes buyers to a demo and a sales contact form, and the site advertises that HotSchedules can be obtained free for basic workforce scheduling. Full-suite pricing appears to be quoted by number of locations and modules, so budget for a scoped commercial proposal rather than a self-serve checkout.
Which systems does Fourth integrate with?
The integrations page lists POS partners including Aloha, Digital Dining, Focus, HungerRush, Lightspeed U Series, Micros 3700, PAR/Brink, POSitouch, Restaurant Manager, Squirrel, Toast, Xpient, Xenial IRIS, QU, Revel, Simphony and the Simphony API, plus job boards (Indeed, CareerBuilder, Monster, Snagajob), food safety sensors (BlueCats, Cooper-Atkins, ITD) and distributors (Sysco, US Foods). Fourth also publishes API documentation for partners.
How long does implementation take?
Fourth does not publish an implementation timeline, and it lists Professional Services as a support offering, which indicates a guided rollout. As a multi-module platform with POS, payroll and inventory integrations, buyers should expect a project measured in weeks to a few months depending on the number of locations and data sources. No mandatory implementation fee is published.
Does Fourth offer AI, and how is it governed?
Fourth markets AI Forecasting for demand, labour and inventory planning, along with AI-powered back-office tooling and the Fourth iQ manager app. The vendor pages do not describe which model providers are used, whether customers can supply their own keys, or whether AI actions are individually logged or exportable, so AI governance detail is not currently public.