Restaurant Operations
Restaurant Inventory Management Basics
Restaurant inventory management means knowing what you have, what you will need, and what you lost on the way. In practice: count the items that matter on a fixed schedule, set a minimum level for each, link dishes to the ingredients they use, rotate stock so the oldest is used first, and record waste. Done well, it means fewer emergency orders, less thrown away, and no dish sold that the kitchen cannot make.
Count what matters, not everything
Start with the items that are expensive, that spoil quickly, or that stop service when they run out — proteins, dairy, fresh produce, coffee, the bottles behind the bar. Dry goods with a long life can be counted less often. A short list counted properly beats a long list counted badly.
Count on a schedule
- Same day, same time, ideally before a delivery or after closing, so the numbers are comparable.
- Same order every time: walk the storeroom shelf by shelf, then the fridges, then the bar.
- Same units: cases, bottles, kilos — whatever you order in.
- Fast movers more often than slow ones.
Set minimum and order-up-to levels
For each item, decide the lowest amount you are comfortable holding and the amount to order back up to. Base both on what you actually use between deliveries, plus a margin for a busy day. Review them when the menu or the season changes.
Link dishes to ingredients
A recipe card for each dish — which ingredients, how much of each — lets you work out what a dish really costs and how much of each ingredient a week of sales uses. It is also what lets a system lower ingredient stock automatically when a dish is sold.
Rotate and record waste
- Date everything on arrival and put new stock behind the old, so the oldest is used first.
- Write down what is thrown away and why: spoiled, dropped, overproduced, returned.
- Compare what you used with what you sold. A gap that keeps growing is worth investigating.
Connect stock to the menu
The guest-facing part of inventory is simple: never sell what you do not have. When a dish runs out, the menu — on the table, at the kiosk and online — should stop offering it straight away, and come back when it is restocked.
How to do that well is covered in how to mark menu items sold out without confusing guests.
Inventory in Thmenu
In Thmenu you can give a dish a stock count and a low-stock level. Each order from a table, the kiosk or staff lowers the count; when it reaches zero the dish is marked sold out on the menu and in the panel, and a cancelled order puts the stock back. With recipes, ingredient stock goes down as dishes sell and you see the food cost of each dish. Every change is listed as a stock movement. Thmenu emails the owner a daily summary of products at or below their low-stock level and of ingredients at or below their reorder point. The inventory page also shows a daily estimate of how many days each product will last, worked out from its average daily sales over the last 14 days.