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

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

Inventory software will be able to aid you identify accurately where your food costs are out of line. With an inventory software, typically you’ll save 1% – 2% of sales, and could save you much more. And it’s savings that adds directly to your bottom line profits.

POS-based inventory control system operators can spot and solve food cost difficulties that might not become obvious by simply focusing on portion control. And when your staff know that the system is carefully keeping track, it will prevent more waste as well as theft.

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

In his restaurant, he was portion controlling, yield testing and making physical inventory, but it wasn’t until he began using inventory software that he observed his inventory was out by exactly 2 pounds of pork every week; coincidentally, it’s the same weight as a box. Upon knowing, it was relatively that easy to pinpoint where the problem originates: a prep cook who was helping himself to a box of shrimp every Monday morning.

Boosting 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 then can do a physical inventory and generate reports comparing that inventory with the calculated ideal usage in order to see variances. The software can be set up to track as many items as the operator chooses.

Mostly in restaurants, their top 10 items 80 percent of their food cost problem. And you can schedule nightly counts of key items and weekly or even monthly counts of some other items.

Even an ounce of over-portioning 1 item per order can cause a restaurant hundreds of dollars. Eliminating over-portioning on 100 orders per day for 30 days on a .67 per pound of a single item, may well add up to more than 0.00 in savings or 00.00 in twelve months!

Keeping a better track and control also helps an operator reduce the amount of stock they keep on hand, reducing waste and freeing up cash for other things. Carrying too much inventory can cause a loss of between 2 percent and 5 percent on an average operator’s profit-and-loss statement.

According to one of our clients it was a lot of effort to set up since they have a fairly extensive menu, but after helping them with proper programming, we were able to drop their food cost by 2 to 4 percent – it’s a big plus for their bottom line profits.

So if you currently have a restaurant POS system or are contemplating a purchase make sure you understand the additional profits that you can reap and the “how to’s” by learning and using the inventory module of the system correctly.

The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-Fof-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience in restaurant point of sale (POS) helping restaurants nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits.

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

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