Restaurant stock control: find where your food and drink go
In most restaurants the food and drink that go missing are not stolen in one go. They leave a little at a time: a heavy hand on the chips, a tot that is a bit more than a tot, a steak that was dropped and never written down. Stock control is how you see it.
Start with recipes
Give every dish and drink its recipe: 200 g of beef, 150 g of chips, 25 ml of spirit. Once the till knows the recipe, every sale takes those ingredients off stock, and you know what you should have used.
Count what matters most
You do not need to count the salt every night. Count the expensive and the easy to walk away with: meat, fish, cheese and every bottle behind the bar, daily or each shift. Count the rest weekly or monthly.
Compare sold with used
The count tells you what you actually used. The recipes and the sales tell you what you should have used. The gap is the variance, and it is where the money went.
- Small and steady: usually portioning. Weigh a few plates and show the kitchen what the recipe says.
- Sudden or on certain shifts: look at who was on, and at voids and comps on those shifts.
- On items that spoil: buying too much. Order smaller and more often.
Write down waste and staff meals
Food that is dropped, burnt, returned or eaten by staff is real usage. If nobody records it, it shows up in the variance and looks like theft. A simple waste sheet in the kitchen, entered at the end of the shift, keeps the numbers honest.
Receive deliveries properly
Weigh and count deliveries against the invoice before the driver leaves, and enter them as purchases. Stock that arrives short but is paid in full is the cheapest loss to stop.
Rotate and label
First in, first out: date-label what goes into the cold room and use the oldest first. Spoiled stock is money in the bin.
Order to a par level
Set how much of each item you want on hand for a normal week. Order the difference between the count and the par, and the cold room stops filling up with what you overbought last Friday.
With Syncro POS
Syncro POS takes ingredients off stock with every dish sold, records stock counts, purchase orders and suppliers, and shows takings per waiter, so what was sold, what was used and who sold it are in one place.