Managing your restaurant inventory
In the restaurant sector, food-related expenses are one of the most substantial cost items. Good stock management can help significantly boost your restaurant’s profits.
Careful monitoring of your food stock levels is also indispensable for:
- Optimising the purchase of raw materials
- Streamlining production costs and greatly reducing financial losses linked to wastage
- Limiting food hygiene and safety risks caused by the spoilage of perishable food
- Reducing the stress associated with stockouts, stock shortages or a lack of organisation when monitoring inventory.
Here are a few tips for managing your restaurant’s food inventory:
- Create recipe cards for each dish
- Be meticulous about stocktaking
- Maintain an annual inventory tracking table
- Make teams accountable, and train them
- Do not place orders too often.
Create recipe cards for each dish
If you want to avoid over or underestimating your actual raw material needs, recipe cards are a key tool for managing stock levels and for knowing how much each dish costs.
Recipe cards should include the following information:
- Name of the recipe and the chef who created it
- Dish description and preparation steps
- Dish serving size
- Dish prep time
- List of ingredients and weight/measurement of each ingredient
- Dish selling price
- Dish cost price.
Recipe cards can be invaluable for evaluating the profitability of a dish, calculating its margin and for planning orders accurately. They can also be used to provide technical instructions to kitchen staff.
Be meticulous about stocktaking
Stocktaking should be carried out on a regular basis. Some restaurant owners do a monthly stocktake, but a weekly stocktake is preferable: the objective is to account for all items in your inventory.
To save time and avoid errors, we recommend using inventory management software such as Koust, Easilys, Yokitup, Melba or Symbioz.
Stocktaking should disclose:
- Available inventory (the type and quantity of produce available)
- Stock depletion (the quantity of produce used daily)
- Inventory usage (the period necessary to use up an item in stock)
- Inventory variance (the difference between the cost of goods sold and the cost of inventory usage).
Stocktaking can also uncover any potential flaws or inconsistencies (staff error, theft, dishes offered free-of-charge to unsatisfied customers, spillages, lost produce, etc.).
Here are some examples of best practice for properly carrying out a food stocktake:
- Organise storage spaces by food category and expiry dates, and label each item.
- Designate a team responsible for food inventory and food deliveries.
- Be consistent: carry out the stocktake on the same day and at the same time.
- Build an inventory tracking sheet to monitor the quantities sold, used, wasted or lost, and the associated costs.
- Track sales on a daily basis and properly manage cash flow to replenish stocks accordingly.
