Inventory & Cost Controls

The total success of any restaurant may not be solely dependent on controlling costs, but the impact on the bottom line can be significant. Even more important is that many restaurants fail without cost controls as one management tool. How do the most successful restaurants maintain controls on their inventory? Without exception they use most of the tools below:

1. Is a daily running inventory maintained on your key products?
2. You should know what your food and beverage costs are every week?
3. When someone does the ordering, are the products, quantities and prices quoted, recorded and compared to what is actually received?
4. Do you have a scale and use it, at least occasionally, to weigh products sold by weight?
5. Do you cost out your entire menu at least once a year?
6. Are you purchasing over 50% of your food from one supplier?
7. Do you require blind cash counts on cash drawers occasionally?
8. Do you order using detailed specifications on every product?
9. Have you trained an hourly employee to check in most of your deliveries?
10. Are products immediately placed in the appropriate storage areas after being delivered and checked in?

11. Are storage rooms locked unless product is being received or issued?
12. Do you have and use standard recipes?

13. Does someone occasionally inspect the contents of your kitchen trash cans?
14. Do kitchen employees have and use appropriate portioning tools?
15. Are you using a point of sale system that electronically delivers the order to the kitchen?
16. Do you cost out your entire menu at least once a year?

These are just a few of the secrets the top restaurants use for maintaining inventories and controls.