Good inventory management is essential for the success of any restaurant, café, or takeaway. It helps you keep track of the food and supplies you need to run the business, reduces waste, improves efficiency, and means you’re never spending more than you need to on stock.

Here are just three reasons why you should take inventory management seriously:

1. Control costs

One of the most important reasons for good inventory management is to control costs. If you’re able to keep accurate and up-to-date inventory records, you will be better able to manage your food and supply costs, reducing the risk of overordering or underordering.

With good inventory management, you can monitor stock levels, identify products that are not selling well, and adjust purchasing accordingly. You may also be able to take advantage of bulk purchasing discounts and negotiate better prices from suppliers. From our experience, taking the time to build a strong relationship with your suppliers can go a long way in securing better prices.

Get to know them personally, communicate regularly, and show appreciation for their business. This will help to establish trust and create a mutually beneficial partnership. Importantly, if a supplier is not willing to negotiate on price, be prepared to walk away. There may be other suppliers who are willing to offer better prices, and showing a willingness to explore other options can be a powerful negotiating tactic.

2. Minimise food waste

Good inventory management can help reduce food and supply waste. With proper inventory tracking, you can avoid overordering and ensure that they only purchase what you need.

In addition, it can also help you track expiration dates and rotate inventory to ensure that products are used before they go bad meaning you’ll rarely need to throw out expired or spoiled products which is also great news for the planet!

3. Improve efficiency

By keeping accurate inventory records, you can reduce the time and resources you need to manage stock.

This can help free up your time for more important tasks like making another batch of lemon drizzle twizzles (forgive us – we promised we wouldn’t mention that again!).

Good inventory management can also help you anticipate the needs of the business and ensure that you have the necessary supplies and ingredients on hand to meet demand. If you run a chicken restaurant, we assure you that nothing will annoy your customers more than if they show up and you’ve run out of chicken. We’re looking at you KFC!

To help, consider using inventory management software to streamline your inventory management processes. These software programs can help you track inventory levels, generate reports, and set up automatic reorder points.

Finally, ensure your staff are proper trained on inventory management procedures, including how to track inventory levels, how to properly store ingredients, and how to avoid waste and spoilage. Encourage your entire team to report any issues or discrepancies in inventory levels, and reward and recognise them for their efforts.

Want to start using inventory management software?

Would you like to easily keep track of what items you have in stock and view reports on how well items are selling? If so, then we can help recommend a solution that works for your business. Please get in touch so we can discuss what would be best for you.

Restaurants, cafes, and takeaways can benefit greatly from working with a specialist accountant. If you hadn’t noticed already, we are specialist accountants in Leeds for food service businesses, so unlike most accountants, we have years of experience working with businesses just like you. If you're interested in finding out more about how we can help your restaurant become more profitable, book a call with one of our accounting experts or call us on 0113 240 4100.