How to Take Food Inventory

For restaurant owners, keeping track of food inventory might be the most important task they should know how to do. Knowledge of how to take food inventory is the first line of defense against waste and employee theft. Fortunately, all you need to do is follow a few simple steps, and you will be able to easily track waste and guard against theft.

Determine per item ingredient amounts. For instance, if your restaurant sells burgers, estimate the amount of ketchup and mustard that is added to each burger. Do this for all ingredients.

Record the total beginning inventory as indicated by your food-delivery receipts. For instance, when your food inventory items are delivered, the delivery driver will give you a bill of lading that lists everything that was delivered. This is your beginning inventory.

Determine your acceptable window of variance. For instance, some restaurants accept a 1 percent variance for ingredient items and a .25 percent variance (one quarter of 1 percent) for major food items. Try to keep your major food item variance to less than half of 1 percent. Try to keep your ingredient items' variance to less than 2 percent.

Portion off the sections of your restaurant. For example, counting food in the entire restaurant can be overwhelming, so it's much easier to make accurate food and ingredient counts if you count individual sections of your store. Some individual areas might include the food preparation station, the walk-in cooler, dry-storage and condiment coolers.

Print off a nightly line item sales report from your register. The line item sales report will list how much of each food item you sold that day.

Conduct a nightly closing count of major food items. For instance, if your restaurant sells burgers, make a nightly count of burger patties, buns, bags of fries and any main side items.

Difficulty: Moderate