From online ordering to direct integration with food delivery partners, the F&B industry has seen a significant expansion in how customers interact with their services. But with new ways to order come new challenges for restaurants, such as how well they can manage their inventory while having multiple ordering channels.
While offering multiple order channels can prove lucrative, without the proper inventory management tools and employee practices, having too many channels can quickly become overwhelming and eventually affect your bottom line.
So, to keep your restaurant on top of inventory management and order fulfilment, in this article, we'll look at the importance and benefits of multi-channel inventory management and how you can improve it by using restaurant POS systems and proper practices.
What Is Inventory Management?
There's more to running a restaurant than just good food and customer service. With food and ingredients playing an essential role in a restaurant, it's also critical to have a well-organised inventory management system to ensure your restaurant's continued success.
Inventory management tracks the food and ingredients that enter and leave your restaurant. With it, you can keep track of the number of ingredients you have available and have used over the course of a day’s operations. Restaurants can do this via manual data entry or a stock management POS.
By having effective inventory management, your restaurant will always have enough food and ingredients to meet customer demand, but not too much that you risk overstocking and leaving items to waste.
Benefits Of Better Inventory Management
Less Food/Ingredient Waste
With proper food inventory management, your restaurant will be less likely to overstock food and ingredients that go to waste before reaching the customer, significantly lowering your new food and ingredients costs.
Better Business Planning
By accurately tracking your food inventory, you can gain better insights into your restaurant's supply levels, allowing you to adjust your inventory purchases to meet customer demand or compensate for any potential inventory loss due to human error.
More Satisfied Customers
Having the right ingredients to make your customer's requested dish is essential for customer satisfaction. With inventory management, you can ensure that you always have the proper stock levels for the right ingredients, allowing you to fulfil your orders and delight your customers.
Higher Profits
Restaurant profit margins can be thin, and the total costs of goods sold can significantly determine net profits. With inventory management, you can reduce potential food waste, lower the costs of goods purchases, and ultimately increase profits.
How To Better Manage Restaurant Inventory Over Multiple Channels
Managing your restaurant's inventory while dealing with customers on-site can be challenging enough, but what happens if you start introducing more channels for your customers to order through?
Having multiple ordering channels for your restaurant to look after can bring about notable logistical challenges, especially if your inventory has yet to catch up with the new order volumes and the speed at which you go through food and ingredients.
To that end, we've created some guidelines for your restaurant to follow to manage your inventory across multiple channels better and keep your customer satisfaction levels high.
Leverage A POS System For Inventory Management
Implementing a restaurant POS system into your operations can provide numerous advantages for inventory management needs. With built-in solutions such as data forecasting, planning reports, and automated inventory tracking based on customer orders, a restaurant POS system can allow you to make informed decisions regarding inventory orders, reducing the chance of over-ordering or under-ordering items.
Furthermore, a POS system that directly supports online ordering and delivery partner integration allows you to have all your ordering channels filtered through a single platform, giving you a more centralised view of your restaurant and your inventory for better management.
Utilise A Food Waste Sheet
Consider implementing the use of a separate food waste sheet to track food and ingredients that have spoiled or have been wasted in other ways. Monitoring your food waste can help you find ways to resolve the loss, such as through better employee education or purchasing less of an under-used ingredient. A food waste sheet can also account for inventory loss due to human factors such as item expiration or inefficient ingredient use. Putting this method of tracking into practice can be a good addition to using your restaurant POS system for a more complete picture of your inventory.
Implementing Better Storage Organisation
To minimise food waste, organise your storage areas according to the "first in, first out" (FIFO) rule: new products should be placed behind existing ones to ensure older items are used first.
Another way to improve organisation is by diligently labelling items in your stock room, which helps you understand inventory levels at a glance and creates a more efficient system for ordering and restocking.
Audit Your Inventory On A Schedule
With a consistent food inventory audit schedule, you can more accurately understand how much (and how quickly) your ingredients and supplies are being used within a specific time, allowing you to adjust your inventory orders or menu offerings better when needed.
For consistency, ensure that your inventory audit schedules have a similar time frame between each of them.
Utilise The Same Staff Members To Take Inventory
Regarding multi-channel inventory management, you'll generally want the same staff members to take the lead. Designating the same members to take on inventory management will make identifying inconsistencies earlier. It will also allow them to understand and give you feedback on the nuances of your restaurant inventory directly.
Ensure you provide your employees with the appropriate inventory management training and consider offering them a bonus if they manage to utilise the food inventory in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
Higher Profits With Better Multi-Channel Inventory Management
By utilising better inventory management practices and the right tools and technology, you can have a more thorough understanding and insight of your restaurant inventory, allowing you to dictate your spending better and ultimately saving you a substantial amount of costs.
We hope this article has proven helpful in improving your restaurant's inventory management practices, whether multi-channel or otherwise.
