According to Restaurant Hospitality, about 63 million tons of food is wasted every year in the US alone. In the restaurant industry, food waste amounts to a staggering cost of $25 billion each year.
What if your restaurant could find a food inventory solution that prevents that waste? By doing exactly that, there’s no doubt that your restaurant could drive profit growth. In fact, by working to prevent food waste a restaurant can cut its costs by around 2 to 6 percent.
When considering that the average restaurant spends between 20 and 40 percent of its entire revenue on food, that’s a significant amount of money to save.
So, with that in mind, are you interested in learning more about how your restaurant can reduce food waste and, as a result, drive profits? A food inventory management system is your best solution.
What is food inventory management software?
A food inventory management system, also known as a restaurant inventory management system or kitchen inventory management system, is a centralized platform that acts as a mechanism for your restaurant to manage, automate and strategize all aspects of your inventory management processes.
By providing you with the insightful data your restaurant needs to make more strategic decisions in the future, restaurant inventory management software helps your business to make better ordering decisions, design a more profitable menu, reduce food waste, as well as a huge range of other benefits.
How a food inventory management solution helps reduce waste in your restaurant
Food inventory management gives you complete control and visibility over your inventory management processes, showing your restaurant exactly how much it is losing from poor food inventory control and how to rectify those issues.
Here are just a few of the most important ways your restaurant can reduce food waste by leveraging an effective food inventory management system, as well as accessing industry expert help:
Complete visibility into your inventory levels
Food inventory management software centralizes and automates your entire inventory management processes and data. From sitting inventory, inventory usage, food cost percentage and a huge number of other insightful data and KPIs, your restaurant will have the visibility it needs to make strategic inventory decisions that drive profitable growth.
Detailed variance reports that reduce waste
Wasting product significantly cuts into your restaurant’s profitability, but without visibility into your inventory levels how is your restaurant supposed to know if, or where, you are experiencing food shrinkage? That’s where insightful variance reports help.
Variance is the difference between how much your restaurant spends on a product, compared to the usage amount cost. For example, if you spend $100 on raw chicken during a specific timeframe in which you count your inventory levels, but your point-of-sale (POS) system is only reporting $50 sold - then your variance is -$50.
This report gives your restaurant insight into which products are experiencing food waste. You can use this information to make internal changes that reduce waste for specific products.
Actionable insights that lead to smarter ordering and less food spoilage
One of the top reasons for food waste in the kitchen is over-ordering. If you order more inventory than is required to meet customer demand, there’s no doubt about it, your restaurant is going to experience food spoilage.
Food inventory management software will give you the data you need to understand exactly what inventory you need when you need it and how much of it you need to order. Through purchase reports and inventory usage data, you can find your restaurant’s period automatic replacement (PAR) level that leads to optimized ordering.
Want more information about how a food inventory management system can reduce your restaurant’s food waste and drive profit growth? Contact Sculpture Hospitality today. Our unique combination of inventory management technology and local inventory management experts has helped restaurants around the world grow their business.
