5-Out vs Cust (formerly AskToSell)

5-Out is a restaurant forecasting and operations platform that predicts guest counts, sales, and item-level demand from your POS history, menu mix, staffing data, weather, and local events. Forecasts run at hourly, daily, and weekly levels and feed prep lists, Smart Pars inventory targets, purchasing recommendations, labor schedules, and food cost tracking. It is built for operators who want automated operational outputs instead of dashboards that only explain past performance.

Most restaurant analytics tools report what already happened. 5-Out predicts what comes next and ties forecasts directly to prep amounts, ingredient orders, and labor needs so back-of-house teams act on numbers rather than intuition or static par sheets. The platform also centralizes recipe management with yields and conversions linked to menu item performance.

Quick service, fast casual, full-service, franchise groups, and specialty concepts like coffee shops, pizzerias, bakeries, and bars use 5-Out to cut over-prep waste, staff for forecasted peaks, and keep labor and food cost percentages aligned with projected sales. Kitchen managers run daily prep lists, inventory leads track variance, and multi-unit leaders compare store performance from one connected data layer.

Cust deploys AI Retention Agents that monitor your entire customer portfolio for churn risks and expansion signals. Each agent connects to your CRM, email, calendar, and data sources to deep-research accounts continuously. It drafts retention actions you can review and run in one click, from QBR briefs to renewal proposals. The product evolved from AskToSell, which originally focused on autonomous small-deal sales automation.

Where platforms like Gainsight and ChurnZero expect months of implementation and rigid if/else automation rules, Cust positions itself around adaptive, goal-based retention agents steered with plain language. The homepage contrasts legacy customer success platforms that need consultants and certification courses with one-click actions that go live the same day. You connect data and get a prioritized portfolio newsfeed rather than another dashboard with surface-level health scores.

Customer success managers and retention engineers who manage hundreds of accounts but can only give real attention to their top tier are the core audience. Cust targets teams trying to increase net revenue retention without hiring more CSMs per account. Plans scale from 100 protected customers on Foundation to 500 on Growth, with unlimited seats on every tier.