How to Organize a Restaurant Inventory

Is your inventory a mess? Then know that it could be hurting your business!

In bars and restaurants, keeping everything in order is essential not only to make the operation more efficient and reduce losses, but also to ensure the safety and quality of the food served to your customers.

If you need to improve in this area, check out our tips below on how to organize a restaurant inventory!

how to organize a restaurant inventory: check out 15 tips

Organizing the restaurant's inventory has to be constant. Every ingredient should have its own storage spot, records need to be kept properly, the space must be clean and the control of what comes in and goes out must be efficient.

There are several actions that contribute to making the controle de estoque of your restaurant efficient, which brings many benefits: better purchase planning and savings on ingredients, fewer losses and less waste, and guaranteed food safety.

Leia também: 9 main mistakes in restaurant inventory management

Check out our tips below for keeping an organized inventory.

1 – Create product recipe cards

The recipe card is an essential tool for inventory control. With them you know exactly how much of each ingredient it takes to produce your restaurant's dishes and you can track outflows more precisely.

2 – Do the inventory count

O Stocktaking is the listing and counting of every item in your restaurant's inventory. It should be done regularly to keep information always up to date, check inventory accuracy and spot possible shrinkage problems.

3 – Analyze consumption patterns

Analyzing your customers' preferences is important to understand which ingredients turn over faster or slower in your inventory. That helps you plan purchases better and keep supply at the right level.

4 – Set minimum and maximum inventory levels

Determine the minimum and maximum inventory for each of your restaurant's ingredients to avoid shortages or excess product.

This way you make purchasing management easier, you know when to place a new order with your supplier and when you need to come up with strategies to move products faster.

5 – Classify your ingredients

Before organizing the physical space of your storeroom, classify every ingredient. That way you can divide the space according to the different types of products you need to store.

6 – Storage zones

Split your inventory into storage zones by food category, such as dry, refrigerated and frozen goods. Also, keep perishable foods at the right temperatures and in the right places, such as refrigerators, freezers and shelves.

7 – Labeling to identify products

Every product in your inventory should carry an identification label with essential information such as the date received, supplier, expiration date, barcode and more.

8 – Control of what comes in and goes out

Adopt an efficient system to control inventory inflows and outflows. Tenha um processo bem definido para evitar incongruências e desorganização. Os produtos devem ser rastreáveis para permitir a fácil localização e mapear movimentações. 

9 – Expiration Date Control

Besides labeling every product with its expiration date, you need to make sure they get used before they expire. To do that, flag items with expiration dates coming up and come up with strategies to move them faster, such as promotions or new dishes.

10 – Prioritizing products

An organized inventory should be functional and practical. Make sure the most-used products are easy to reach, near the exit area and clearly identified. That way your team can find and pull products faster.

11 – Use the FIFO principle

Use the FIFO principle – “First In, First Out” – to make sure older food gets used before newer food. Whenever you restock, place the new products below or behind the older ones.

Leia também: Inventory turnover: what it is, how to calculate and manage it

12 – Cleaning and pest control

Clean your storeroom frequently, sanitizing every space and storage container. Also put pest control measures in place to prevent infestations that could affect your inventory.

13 – Quality control

Have well-defined quality control processes for receiving products from suppliers. Run quality inspections to make sure everything arrives in perfect condition.

14 – Standardization

Standardized containers and shelves make it easier to stack products and stay organized. On top of that, setting a fixed spot for each type of ingredient makes it easy to see when something is out of place.

15 – Inventory control system

Use an inventory control system built for restaurants to automate processes — recipe cards, product registration, control of what comes in and goes out, purchasing and supplier management and so on — and gain far more efficiency.

Discover EPOC and gain efficiency in inventory control

Now that you've seen how to organize a restaurant inventory, how about getting to know a tool that will help you handle inventory control?

O EPOC is a complete solution to optimize your restaurant's operation end to end. Our POS is integrated with the back office, which includes inventory and purchasing control with all the features you need:

• Recipe cards
• product registration
• POS integration
• Registration of products or services
• Orders vs. NFe monitor
• Goods receiving
• Real-time inventory tracking
• Reports and visual charts

Discover our solution and see how it works in practice. Schedule a free demonstration now!