June 25, 2026
She Built the Software She Couldn't Find: A Founder's Honest Take on TrackItWeekly
By the TrackItWeekly Editorial Team · Published June 2026
Nik Gripton doesn't sound like most software founders. She doesn't talk about tech stacks or product-market fit. She talks about pour costs, shrinkage, and the Sunday-night dread of a clipboard inventory count. That's because before she built TrackItWeekly, she lived the problem — running 10 franchise units and tearing her hair out trying to find software that actually fit how operators work.
We sat down with Nik to talk about why she built TrackItWeekly, what she learned counting inventory the hard way, and the philosophy behind the 30-minute weekly count. This is her story, in her words.
The Origin Story
TrackItWeekly: Let's start at the beginning. What made you decide to build inventory software?
Nik Gripton: Honestly? Frustration. I was running 10 franchise units and every single one of them had the same problem — nobody could tell me what inventory we actually had. I'd ask a manager, "How much of X are we carrying?" and I'd get three different answers from three different people. One would check the POS, one would eyeball the shelf, one would look at the last delivery invoice. None of them were right.
I tried every tool on the market. The big restaurant platforms were built for 200-location chains with a dedicated inventory manager — overkill, expensive, and nobody on my team could learn them without a training session I didn't have time to run. The small apps were too simple — no multi-location, no audit logs, no way to see if a count was actually accurate or just someone's best guess. And spreadsheets? Spreadsheets are how you lose money slowly and don't notice until it's too late.
So I built what I needed: something a manager could learn in five minutes, that worked on a phone, that worked offline, and that gave me — the operator — a single view across every location. That was the starting point. Everything else grew from there.
TIW: Was there a specific moment where you said, "Okay, I'm doing this"?
Nik: Yeah. I was doing a Sunday count at one of my stores. Clipboard, pen, two hours, and at the end I realized the numbers didn't match the sales data. A case of high-margin product was just… gone. Not stolen, not spilled — just untracked. That was the week I stopped looking for a tool and started building one.
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Track My First Week Free →The Weekly Count Philosophy
TIW: TrackItWeekly is built around a weekly count. Why weekly, and not daily or monthly?
Nik: Daily is a fantasy. Nobody in food service, retail, or hospitality has time to do a full count every single day — and if they say they do, the count is garbage. You can't ask a manager closing a Friday night shift to then do a 200-item inventory count. It won't happen, or it'll happen badly.
Monthly is too slow. If you're counting once a month, you're finding out about shrinkage 30 days after it started. By then, the damage is done and you can't even figure out what week it happened in.
Weekly is the sweet spot. It's frequent enough that you catch problems fast — a leak, a theft pattern, a reorder issue — but it's infrequent enough that it actually fits into a manager's schedule. Thirty minutes, once a week. That's the whole philosophy. Count smart, not often.
TIW: And 30 minutes — is that realistic for a full inventory?
Nik: It is, once your items are set up. The first count takes longer because you're adding SKUs. But after that? You're just updating quantities. Scan a barcode or tap a number. The app does the math, flags items below par, and shows you the velocity report. The 30-minute number isn't marketing — it's what my managers actually reported back after the first month of using it.
Par Levels Explained
TIW: You mention "par levels" a lot. For people who aren't operators, what does that mean?
Nik: Par level is the minimum quantity of an item you need to have on hand to avoid running out before your next delivery. It's the floor. If you drop below par, you get an alert. Simple as that.
Here's why it matters: most small businesses reorder based on gut feeling or "we usually get two cases." That's how you end up over-ordering some items and running out of others. A par level takes the guesswork out. You look at your usage velocity — how fast an item moves in a typical week — and you set a par that's high enough to cover you until the next truck arrives, but not so high that you're sitting on cash tied up in excess stock.
In TrackItWeekly, you set a par for every item. When a count drops an item below par, it shows up red. You don't have to think about reordering — the app tells you. That one feature alone saved me thousands of dollars in lost sales from stockouts.
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Let the App Calculate My Pars →Inventory as a Financial Tool
TIW: You talk about inventory like it's a financial instrument, not just a logistics task. Why?
Nik: Because it is. Your inventory is cash sitting on a shelf. Every item in your backroom is money you've already spent that hasn't generated revenue yet. If you don't know what's there, you don't know what your money is doing.
Most operators look at their P&L at the end of the month and see a food cost percentage. But that number is only as good as the inventory count behind it. If your count is wrong — or worse, if there was no count — your food cost percentage is fiction. You're making pricing decisions, menu decisions, ordering decisions based on a number that doesn't reflect reality.
TrackItWeekly gives you the real number. Every week, you know your actual cost of goods as a percentage of revenue. You see the trend. If it's creeping up, you can investigate before it eats your margin. That's the difference between inventory as a chore and inventory as a financial tool.
TIW: So the weekly count isn't just about knowing what you have — it's about knowing what you're losing.
Nik: Exactly. Shrinkage — the gap between what you should have and what you actually have — is the silent killer of small business margins. It's theft, it's spoilage, it's over-pouring, it's waste. If you count weekly, you catch shrinkage fast. If you count monthly or never, shrinkage just becomes "the cost of doing business." It doesn't have to be.
The Operator Perspective
TIW: You're a woman in an industry — both food service and tech — that hasn't always been welcoming. Did that shape how you built TrackItWeekly?
Nik: It shaped everything. I'm a woman. I'm queer. I'm an operator, not a software engineer. Every one of those things made it harder to be taken seriously when I started. But they also gave me an advantage: I wasn't building software for a market research report. I was building it for me. For the version of me who was standing in a walk-in cooler at 11 PM trying to figure out why the numbers didn't add up.
Most inventory software is built by people who have never counted inventory. They build features that look good in a demo but fall apart when you're actually on the floor — too many taps, requires wifi in a building with bad signal, assumes you have a dedicated inventory person. I built TrackItWeekly for the manager who has five minutes between a lunch rush and a delivery truck. Everything is designed around that.
TIW: What's the response been from other operators?
Nik: Overwhelming. We're at 2,400+ businesses now — cafes, food trucks, gyms, bars, salons, retail shops. The message I get most often is, "This is the first inventory tool my team actually uses." That's the highest compliment. Software nobody uses is worthless, no matter how many features it has.
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Track My First Week Free →FAQ
Who is TrackItWeekly built for?
TrackItWeekly is built for small-to-mid-size businesses that need inventory tracking but don't have a dedicated inventory manager — cafes, food trucks, restaurants, bars, breweries, gyms, salons, barbershops, retail shops, and pool supply stores. If you count inventory yourself or assign it to a manager, TrackItWeekly is designed for you.
How long does a weekly count actually take?
Most operators finish in 30 minutes after their items are set up. The first count takes longer because you're adding SKUs. After that, each weekly count is just scanning barcodes or tapping quantities — the app handles the math, par-level alerts, and velocity reporting.
Does TrackItWeekly work without internet?
Yes. Full offline mode. You can count in a basement, a walk-in cooler, a food truck at a festival — anywhere with no signal. The app syncs automatically when you reconnect to wifi or cellular data.
Can I use TrackItWeekly across multiple locations?
Yes. Multi-location support is built in. The Growth plan supports up to 5 locations with a unified dashboard, and the Enterprise plan handles larger operators. You see every location's counts, shrinkage, and velocity from one account.
How much does TrackItWeekly cost?
Plans start at $19/month for the Starter plan, which includes one location, up to 500 SKUs, barcode scanning, and CSV export. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
What's a par level and why does it matter?
A par level is the minimum quantity of an item you need to avoid running out before your next delivery. TrackItWeekly lets you set a par for every item and alerts you when a count drops below it — so you reorder before you run out, not after.
Want to see TrackItWeekly in action? Start your free 14-day trial — no credit card needed. Or try the live demo first.
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