Top 5 Restaurant Inventory Management Tips

When it comes to running a restaurant, one of the biggest challenges lies in managing your inventory. Simply defined, inventory management is the process of tracking the ingredients coming in and out of your restaurant. Restaurant inventory management is the key to lowering costs, minimizing food waste and better allocating ingredients. But it can be time consuming and challenging to do well, so here are Cashmere’s top 5 restaurant inventory management tips to help you improve the financial health of your business.

1. Establish a Solid Stock Take Procedure

Performing a complete stocktake on a regular basis is absolutely essential for maintaining healthy inventory levels and minimizing any losses a restaurant may otherwise accrue. If you schedule your stocktake it will reduce the logistical impact on your restaurant or cafe’s operations. And if you can also create a clearly defined stocktaking process — that both employees and managers can follow, mistakes will be reduced and costs will be saved. Another more preferable option is investing in inventory management software, which can do all this stocktaking work for you automatically. 

2. Use Inventory Management Software 

Inventory management software is a means by which restaurant’s can leverage smart, data-driven tools to their advantage. For example, ordering alerts can be automatically issued, based on sitting inventory data, forecasting, sales and your restaurant’s budget. Food waste is dramatically reduced as a result, and costs are saved. 

3. Don’t Be Afraid of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) inventory management can also provide miraculous support to the restaurant industry. Machine learning algorithms, powered by AI, can plan, predict and model your whole supply chain. Overstocking and under stocking become issues of the past, as AI inventory management tools can transform inventory management data into timely actions. AI inventory management software can harness data relating to weather conditions, social media trends, and numerous other criteria to deliver accurate information about the management of a restaurant’s inventory.  

4. Reduce Inventory Waste 

Inventory waste costs your restaurant business valuable time, resources and profit. Staggeringly, American restaurants generate an estimated 22 to 33 billion pounds of food waste each year. And between 4-10% of food purchased by restaurants is wasted before even reaching the consumer. Restaurants that adopt inventory tracking and supply chain components of an ERP system to manage the acquisition, shelf life and distribution of their ingredients reduce food waste by as much as 50%, which leads to great savings and can also enable environmental sustainability.

5. Think About Storage

If you’re seeking inventory management efficiency, make sure you’re always storing food correctly. Are your fridges and freezers at the correct temperature and operating accurately? Are your foods stored correctly and clearly labelled? Also, keeping your stock room tidy is an important method to ensure an efficient inventory management methodology overall. 

If your restaurant, cafe or food and beverage company is looking to scale and grow via inventory management tools, ERP solutions, traceability and demand planing software, schedule a demo with Cashmere today!