▶ Check out my gear on Kit: As a restaurant Chef for 15 years I could not tell you how many times I wanted to pawn off inventory on another staff member. Spending hours counting supplies (especially when you have a walk-in freezer) is mind-numbing.
But, it is one of the most important ways to ensure success in your restaurant operations.
If you do not count inventory, how in the world do you know where your money is going on a weekly, or monthly basis?
So this brings us to today's question:
#6: Do you adjust inventory on a weekly basis?
Managing your inventory is about maximizing your cash flow and minimizing theft, spoilage, and waste. Tracking and managing inventory on a weekly basis leads to better visibility into your costs by seeing Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).
Without an inventory count, you can’t see how much you have on hand.
Without knowing how much of each item is on hand, you can’t look up the price you paid for it.
And without the prices of your food, your accountant can’t calculate COGS.
Using COGS, your accountant will be able to see exactly where you’re overspending on food, if you’re over ordering, or if someone is stealing from you.
And when food costs are going up and profits are going down, you have no choice but to keep a close eye on your inventory costs.
More on managing your inventory:
To have a deep understanding of your business, the operations team will be doing some sort of inventory management on a weekly basis. This will allow you to manage your budgeting and cash flow better. Performing a count weekly is the best way to see your actual versus theoretical inventory as well.
As an operator, you want to compare your actual vs theoretical inventory on a weekly basis. So you know if you're losing money out of the back door.
To compare your actual to your theoretical inventory the operator would pull numbers of sales from the POS and then match them to the inventory count from the same time period. If the numbers do not match, you are losing money somewhere. We bought 36 bottles of beer, sold 12 and there are only 13 left in the cooler. Where did my 11 beers go?
The same principals are used for high ticket items like portioned steaks. Or even whole tenderloins.
Side note: I once had a cook who would hide whole, untrimmed tenderloins in his pants and walk out with them. Side note: I once had a cook who would hide whole, untrimmed tenderloins in his pants and walk out with them.
When you have a restaurant-specific accounting software in place, like Restaurant365 you will be able to have this information from all of your locations in one dashboard.
If you have a question, please contact me rparker@restaurant365.com
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