Commercial kitchens waste 4% - 10% of ingredients that they purchase. Many food items never reach the consumer's plate, and with soaring costs, it's more important than ever for restaurants to focus on inventory management.
Smart inventory management will help you:
- Keep ingredients in stock so that all menu items are always available
- Cut back on waste and respective food costs
- Run a leaner operation
If you don't have a strict inventory management system in place already, you can follow these tips to improve your processes.
7 Tips to Improve Your Restaurant Inventory Management
Sourcing and tracking your inventory requires knowing what every single ingredient costs and when it's used. Controlling food waste starts with having a strategic system in place, and software can track ingredients better than you can.
1. Invest in Good Inventory Management Software
A food inventory management system should be the first item to check off your list. You'll find dozens of software available for inventory management, including but not limited to:
- LightSpeed
- Restaurant365
- Toast
- Dozens of others
And the right solution for you will depend on your eatery's unique needs. Automatic inventory tracking in real-time, refill recommendations and food waste tracking are all features that will help you run a more efficient restaurant.
Many tools also automate recipe costing for you so that you can better price your dishes based on profitability.
Once you have a good inventory management system in place, you can move on to hiring and training your staff.
2. Hire and Train Your Staff for Smart Inventory Management
Your staff are enforcers of inventory management, and they often need a little help to get things right. Managers are typically put in charge of inventory management, but at busy eateries, the duty may fall to another associate.
A common mistake is to hire just anyone to handle inventory management. Your store's profitability relies on these individuals, so it's imperative that you choose someone that you fully trust.
The person who is in charge of inventory should be someone who offers:
- Strong attention to detail
- Above-average math skills
You can, and should, also train your staff on how to use your inventory management software.
3. Keep Your Food Storage Organized
Restaurant inventory management leans heavily on your food storage organization. If your product storage is in disarray, it will be much harder for you to track inventory properly. A quick refresh of your food storage will go a long way in helping you:
- Maintain healthy inventory levels
- Reduce inventory waste
You'll find a lot of tips to keep your food organized properly, but two that are easy to implement are:
- Group items: Store all of your inventory in categories by food item.
- Label: Add labels to all of your shelves. Color-coding areas for certain ingredients work exceptionally well.
If you struggle to keep your food storage neat and organized, assign someone to stock food properly. Your food stockers will be in charge of keeping items in their place, and it may even be a task that you add to your closing list.
Small changes to your food storage organization will help you make the most out of your inventory and reduce waste, too.
4. Learn From Your Inventory Data History
Inventory management systems - whether automated or manual - garner valuable data that you can learn from and use to improve your management.
After 6-12 months of using your system, you'll have greater insights into:
- Which ingredients are most popular
- Which dishes are generating the most profit
- Which ingredients are being wasted most often
The key most important thing, however, is to make sure that your data is up to date. If you're not consistently updating and reviewing your inventory, your data will be inaccurate and unreliable.
5. Monitor and Reduce Waste
One of the biggest advantages of inventory management is that it helps you reduce waste and save money over the long run.
In order to achieve that goal, you need to make waste reduction a part of your inventory management system.
When reviewing your stock inventory list, make it a point to identify high-waste items and track their sources.
Consider ways you can prevent or reduce this waste.
- Can you repurpose excess ingredients for other dishes?
- Can you use portion controls to avoid having excess ingredients?
Reducing waste can instantly improve your inventory management and ensure you're not overspending on ingredients.
6. Be Consistent with Inventory Tracking
To be effective, inventory tracking must be done on a regular and consistent basis. Most restaurants review their inventory every week, but if it's a particularly busy time of year, you may need to do nightly reviews.
It's recommended that you check your inventory on the same day every week to ensure consistency. Make sure that you're keeping an eye on your costs and waste, too.
7. Create a Backup System for Inventory Tracking
Inventory management software can save you so much time and keep things organized, but what happens if there's a problem with the system or something goes wrong?
Having a backup system in place will help ensure that you can continue tracking your inventory even if your software is down.
The simplest backup solution is to use a manual system of tracking. Create a food inventory template and print out inventory sheets on paper to track:
- The amount of every ingredient in your stock by weight or number
- Which ingredients you're running low on and need to be restocked
Make sure that your staff knows where to access your inventory sheets and how to use them.
Final Thoughts
Inventory management for restaurants can be challenging. Without an organized system, your restaurant can easily find itself spending more than necessary on ingredients or running out of items on busy days.
Software can help automate much of the management process, but it's important to have a backup system in place just in case something happens with your system.
Ensuring your staff is properly trained to use your inventory management software and backup system is key to keeping things running smoothly and that you're always stocked with just the right number of ingredients.