Restaurant inventory management: a simple system that actually gets done

Restaurant inventory management is counting what you have, knowing what you should have used, and acting on the difference. The difference between the two is where money disappears: waste, over-portioning, theft and supplier errors. A good system makes that gap visible every week, not once a year.

Step 1: count only what matters

Don't start by counting every napkin. Count the items that make up most of your food cost: proteins, dairy, coffee, alcohol and your top-selling ingredients. For most venues that's 20 to 40 lines, and it covers the bulk of the money.

• Weekly: high-value and fast-moving items (meat, seafood, coffee, dairy, spirits).
• Monthly: everything else, including dry goods and packaging.
• Same time, same order: count before delivery and before service, walking the storeroom in the order it's shelved.

Step 2: set par levels

A par level is the amount you want on hand before the next delivery. Work it out from usage:

Your order is then simply par minus what you counted. Ordering this way stops both stock-outs and the slow pile-up of things that expire.

Step 3: cost your recipes

Write down the ingredients and quantities for each dish, then price them from your latest supplier invoices. Now you know what each plate costs, and you can compare what you should have used (sales × recipes) with what you actually used (opening stock + purchases − closing stock).

• A gap of a few percent is normal. A gap that grows week after week is a problem worth chasing.
• Re-cost recipes when supplier prices move, especially for proteins and oil.
• Use the recipe cost to check menu prices. See how to calculate food cost percentage.

Step 4: record waste the moment it happens

Spoiled, dropped, over-produced and staff meals all belong in a waste log with a reason. Waste you don't record looks like theft or bad counting later, and you lose the chance to fix the cause (over-prepping on quiet days, poor rotation, a fridge running warm).

Step 5: check deliveries against the order

• Check quantities and weights against the purchase order, not just the invoice.
• Note shortages and substitutions before the driver leaves.
• Enter the invoice the same day so stock and costs stay current.

Spreadsheet or software?

A spreadsheet works for one small venue with disciplined counting. Move to software when you're re-typing the same invoice into three places, when the counts never match sales, or when you open a second location. The big win is stock that counts itself down as you sell, so your weekly count becomes a check rather than the only source of truth.

Where Wemu fits

In Wemu, each dish has a recipe, so every sale on the POS deducts its ingredients. You get low-stock alerts, suggested reorders and purchase orders to suppliers, and you can photograph a supplier invoice to add the stock and costs without retyping. Waste and stock removals are recorded with a reason, and stock counts show the gap between what the system expected and what's on the shelf. See how it fits restaurants and cafés.

Keep reading

• How to calculate food cost percentage
• The complete guide to café POS systems
• What is a kitchen display system?

Frequently asked questions