Restaurant inventory: a method that survives a busy month

Most restaurants do a full count once a month, take four hours over it and act on none of it. A shorter, more frequent count on fewer items produces decisions instead of a number.

Split the stock

• High-value or high-movement items: count weekly (proteins, alcohol, seafood)
• Stable dry goods: count monthly
• Everything else: count at period end only

Count the same way every time

Same order, same units, same two people, before service and never during. A count taken in different units from the purchase unit is the single most common source of impossible variance.

Reading the variance

1. Under 2% on a line: noise, ignore it.
2. 2–5%: portioning or prep loss — check the recipe yield.
3. Over 5%: process problem — receiving, waste recording or shrinkage.

Where automation helps

When sales come from the till and recipes carry real yields, theoretical stock updates itself daily. The count then becomes a verification instead of a reconstruction.