Getting the most out of your inventory management!
It’s no secret that we love inventory management technology!
We’ve helped 100’s of hospitality businesses wrestle back control of their inventory costs, utilising the powerful tool our friends at MarketMan have developed, combined with our years of industry experience in restaurants and bars of all shapes and sizes.
For this article, we sat down with one of our chief cost control experts Yannis Papapostolou who shares his tips and insights into how you can get the most out of your inventory management technology and processes…
“Often the biggest barrier to adoption is simply an unwillingness to adapt to a new way of working…”
It can be a daunting prospect implementing technology to manage inventory - what’s your advice to those who want to do it? And what approach should they take?
It’s important to appreciate that each inventory system is built to do a different specific job really well. Some systems are optimised to be user friendly, some systems are optimised to have better integrations, some try to be the cheapest product on the market, or try to provide super analytical reporting. So depending on what kind of business you have, what tech skills your team have, try to ensure you are selecting the right platform that suits your individual needs.
In terms of advice for implementing an inventory management tool, the most important thing is to take your time with it! I’m not saying ‘go slow’, but just don’t try and implement everything at the same time, as you need to respect the steps of setting everything up correctly before you can really kick into full operation.
We’ve had quite a few clients in the past who have switched from one system to another just expecting everything to run and work the same, but the reality is you will need to overhaul quite a few operational processes as part of the implementation. Often the biggest barrier to adoption is simply an unwillingness to adapt to a new way of working…luckily for our clients, this is our bread and butter! We are there to guide them step by step, to ensure a (relatively!) seamless transition.
What advice would you give to restaurateurs who are looking to get more from their inventory management process?
Well first of all, and this is an obvious one, utilise the data available to you! And more specifically, let it help you with your purchasing negotiations. MarketMan is of course a great tool for this exact use case, and we’ve had clients really see the benefit of this kind of thing when trying to open suppliers eyes to how they compare against their competitors. But to do all of this you need data…no data…no comparisons can be made.
And building on this data theme, applying that to your menu itself. Identifying your highest selling menu item, and asking how we can improve its profitability? Or taking your most profitable menu item and working out ways of driving volume for that dish.
Lets talk MarketMan for a minute…we obviously think its a great tool…but what are some of the most commonly overlooked features of the platform which you think deserve more attention?
One of the most underused functions is the ability to set purchase goals in MarketMan, which is a hugely overlooked feature! Basically you can set up a budget of how much money you're spending based on your revenue with each individual supplier. Super useful to keep on top of how you are tracking with each of your suppliers over a certain period of time.
For me though the best feature, and often most underutilised, is the waste report. I know not everyone manages recorded waste as part of their standard operating procedure…but they should! The waste report not only gives you total waste recorded over a specific period (including the reason for the waste event), but it also gives you how much of that is a percentage against your total purchases. This is an incredible report to look at if you're an operator, because you will know at all times whether you’re wasting more than 1% of what you're buying, which is really the absolute maximum you should be allowing in your restaurant.
We helped a client of ours recently to build a custom consolidated waste report across their 25 sites. We customised it so they could see year to date for all their sites at once, and allowed them to compare that data to their purchases and sales, giving a much clearer indication of where they were leaving money on the table, and a clearer action plan of how to fix it!
“Any piece of restaurant technology, whether it be a labour platform or payroll system, is only as good as the data you feed into it and the actions you take within it.”
What are some really common challenges/blockers you see from people using technology to manage their inventory?
Not respecting that at the end of the day it's still a computer system! We see a lot of people switching from excel to something more sophisticated and they expect it to automatically act like a human stock controller, which unfortunately isn’t the case…yet…
Any piece of restaurant technology, whether it be a labour platform or payroll system, is only as good as the data you feed into it and the actions you take within it. Whilst there is an awful lot we can now automate, we are just not at a stage yet where you can ‘set and forget’ any inventory management platform.
In saying that though, it’s great to see is MarketMan’s new ‘Suggestive Ordering’ feature now being rolled out, which makes ordering recommendations based on current par levels and predictive analysis from past ordering and sales data. This can massively help forecast demand, and further automate your inventory management process! If utilised correctly, restaurant operators will be able to eliminate over-ordering and reduce food waste by only ordering what they need, when they need it…could be a real game changer…
If you’re finding yourself struggling with controlling your costs, or would like to take a closer look at the MarketMan platform and their new suggestive ordering function, please get in touch (info@twicebaked.uk).