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A good way to make more profits and run your restaurant to success is by managing the controllable costs, such as food, labor and supplies. Of those, probably the toughest cost to control is food.

Simultaneously monitor portion sizes, prevent theft, watch waste and order efficiently should be done in order to manage food costs effectively.

Inventory software will be able to help you identify specifically where your food costs are out of line. With an inventory software, you’ll typically save 1 to 2 percent of sales, and could even same more. And it’s savings that adds directly to your bottom line as profit.

A POS-based inventory control system, operators would be able to easily spot and solve food cost hindrances clear by just simply focusing on portion control. And when your staff know that the system is carefully keeping track, it can prevent more waste as well as theft.

When experiencing food cost problems, a restaurateur will most likely to learn this lesson after a week of using inventory control software.

In his restaurant, he’s portion controlling, yield testing and doing a physical inventory, but it wasn’t until he began using inventory software that he realized his inventory was out by exactly 2 pounds of chicken every week; coincidentally, it’s the exact weight as a box. Knowing that, it was relatively easy to pinpoint the source of the problem: one of the prep cooks was helping himself to a box of goodies every Friday night.

Improving your bottom line

In a typical restaurant point of sale inventory control program, the operator sets up the software by first entering their recipes and product costs. The system then can track ideal usage based on those recipes and the restaurant’s actual sales.

The software also can track product usage in situations where some orders don’t conform to a standard recipe. The operator can then do a physical inventory and generate reports compare it with the calculated ideal usage to be able to spot their differences. The software can also be set up to track as many items as the operator chooses.

In a majority of restaurants, their top 10 items 80 percent of their food cost problem. Key items can also be scheduled in nightly, weekly or even monthly counts of some other items.

On one item, over-portioning by 1 ounce per order may cost a restaurant hundreds of dollars in a month. If an item is running .67 per pound, eliminating over-portioning on 100 orders per day for 30 days could add up to more than 0.00 in savings or 00.00 per year!

Reduce waste and free up cash for other things! A better tracking and control of stock can also help an operator reduce the amount of stock they keep on hand. Losses due to carrying too much extra inventory can add up to a loss of between 2% and 5 % on an average operator’s profit-and-loss statement.

We’ve assisted a client before who’s menu is fairly extensive and had lots of work for setting up, but after helping them program properly, we were able to drop their food cost by 2 to 4 percent – all of which went to their bottom-line profits.

So if you’re presently using a restaurant POS system or are deciding on a purchase make sure you understand the additional profits that you can obtain and the “how to’s” by learning and properly using the inventory module of the system.

 

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The author of this article writes for POS-For-Restaurants.com, with over 20  years experience in restaurant point of sale systems, helping restaurant owners nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits..

To learn on how our national POS network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times, visit POS-For-Restaurants.com.