By Debbie Carson, Associate Editor
“Waste not, want not.” The age-old proverb is one that most restaurant operators cannot help but constantly mutter under their breaths.
Often operating as they do with razor-thin margins, restaurant operators need to minimize food waste, spoilage, theft, and over-production. They need to understand how adjustments to menus and recipes flow down to ingredients. They also need to track the variances between physical inventory and POS data to determine if there may be theft or portion measurement issues. None of this is easy.
The good news is that, like workforce management capabilities, inventory management capabilities are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Also, like employee management features, these capabilities are becoming an integrated component of next-generation restaurant management and POS systems. The result is a more frictionless process for both restaurants and suppliers. Increasingly, using a single unified interface, managers can track inventory depletion in a real-time manner to help reduce food waste, monitor inventory levels and increase profitability.