There are some things that most restaurants do wrong all across the country and lots of these things are part of stock taking; it is essential that stock taking in your restaurant is treated with the respect it deserves because it is often down to poor stock management which can leave restaurants and pubs failing each week and having to close down.

We have put together a set of 7 blog posts to talk about the seven cardinal sins of the restaurant stocktaking procedure and in this blog post we will be starting with the sin of ignorance;

Here at Sterling Stock Auditors we know that when you’re working in the catering industry, you are working long hours and the last thing you want to do at the end of a long shift is check what is on your shelf, what’s missing, what you’re low on and what you have too much of – instead you want to turn off the lights, shut the front door and get home to bed.

While ignorance may be bliss in some cases, this is certainly not the case when it comes to stock taking; you could be missing out on extra cash for your business by avoiding a quick count up and checking the stock.

Did you know that a whopping 33% of your costs are tied into your foods?

This is a significant portion of your budget, so that extra 10-15 minutes you are taking to check your stock is a big part of successfully running your restaurant.

By checking what foods are on your shelves you are able to check which foods are expiring soon and put them at the front of the shelf (stock rotation is essential) or create a special promotion for them to help increase sales of that product before it needs to be disposed of.

Have a look at overstocked food items that you have too many of and take them off the order form for the next week or two while the excess stock is used up, maybe come up with a daily special using these overstocked ingredients and foods too.

An evening stock take also gives you a chance to check if any popular items are running low so you can place an order with your supplier to ensure you have them restocked as soon as possible; there isn’t much worse than telling a customer they can’t have their favourite meal because you’ve run out of it!

If you need help managing your stocktaking or keeping track of your stock then please feel free to contact us directly; we would be more than happy to help with your stocktaking processes and we also offer a  consultancy service that can enable you to increase profit and sales for your business – who knows what you could miss out on by not speaking to us?