The Importance of Stock Control Software

An important part of the success of your hospitality business involves regular stock control in your kitchen. If your stock levels are too high, you are tying up valuable business capital. If the levels fall too low and you have no way of monitoring that, you face unnecessary losses. Most people in hospitality management understand the importance of stock control, but some people are unsure about how to put a good system into practice.

Although a workable system can take time to sort out, it is well worth the effort. You will need to allocate time to training staff in the process, and this can also be difficult to do in the busy hospitality environment. One option is to make use of some of the stock control software that is on the market, especially if it comes with appropriate staff training. With such a product, you can make sure that your stock is managed properly, profits are clear and variations are reduced.

As well as taking advantage of this specialised software, it is also important to understand the recipe costs of each menu item. When you do this, you will have a more cost efficient business which means less waste and greater profits. Training your staff to work out recipe costs will pay big dividends, but the process needs to be broken down into clear steps that are easy to manage. Staff members also need to be able to put their new learning into practice so the ideas can start to become new habits.

Stock control in the kitchen of a hospitality business is a matter of organisation, planning, training and implementation. It may seem hard to achieve, but the time and money spent getting a stock control system right will pay off in big dividends. The key is to take the process in slow steps.

The first step is to the work out the cost of each recipe ingredient, the amount of each ingredient that goes into each recipe and then work out the true cost of the meal. When you have worked out how much each meal costs, you will be able to do weekly or monthly stock takes of the items in your kitchen to find out whether the kitchen is using more (or less) stock than the menu was designed to cost. The more regular these reconciliations the more cost savings to your business giving you better cashflow, happier staff and customers and greater profits.