Each site in your group orders what it will serve this week, and the waste shows up in money
For restaurant groups, hotels and café chains with several sites, a central kitchen or central purchasing. We cross the till sales with each dish’s recipe cost, forecast the week’s service from bookings and the calendar, and propose the order to every supplier. The gap between what should have been used and what was used appears site by site.
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Read-only connection · Tested on your own data first · Data hosted in the EU · Demos in English or Spanish
The short answer
Inventory management for a restaurant group crosses till sales with each dish’s recipe costing and shows the waste of every site in money: what should have been used against what was used. It forecasts the week’s service from bookings, the calendar and the weather, and proposes the order to each supplier. It suits restaurant groups, hotels and café chains with central purchasing or a central kitchen. Head chefs approve and correct the proposals.
By Manuel Gómez González, founder of Arume · Reviewed on
What it does
The weekly order to each supplier, per site
The drinks distributor calls on Tuesday, the meat supplier on Monday and Thursday, fish arrives every morning and dry goods once a week, each with its own cut-off day and minimum order. For every site and supplier we calculate what is needed until the next delivery, with what is in the cold room and what will be served, and leave it ready to send.
Theoretical use against actual use
With till sales and the costing of each dish and drink we know how much sirloin, oil or beer should have been used. With stock counts and purchases we know how much was. The difference is waste, and we report it per site, product and week, in money.
Next week, forecast with what you already know
Bookings, groups and events, public holidays, a match on television, hotel occupancy, the weather for the terrace. The model learns how each of these moves each site’s sales and forecasts the week’s covers. The order stops being “last week’s plus a bit”.
Expiry dates in the cold room
Dairy, vegetables, fish and whatever comes out of the central kitchen have days of life, not months. We know what came in and when, and warn about what will expire before it is used, so the head chef can put it on the daily special or move it to another site.
Drinks and food, each with its own rule
Drinks keep: a keg or a case of wine will not expire this week, the supplier is usually one and the minimum matters. Fresh food is the opposite: small quantities, often. Each family is treated with its own lead time, shelf life and supplier.
Central kitchen or warehouse that distributes
If you buy centrally and distribute, the supplier order should come from the sum of what each site will need. If one site has too much and another is short, we propose the transfer on tomorrow’s delivery run before buying.
Why does restaurant inventory control break at the second site?
In a bar or restaurant with the owner inside, inventory control sits in the head of whoever opens the cold room every morning. They know what is left, they know what will go on Saturday, and they order accordingly. For a single site, that works, and a decent recipe costing plus a monthly count is enough.
With a second and third site it breaks. Each head chef orders their own way, each bar manager has a favourite supplier, central purchasing receives orders over messaging apps, and the monthly count gives a single waste figure that nobody can split. The money lost sits in the sum of many small decisions that nobody sees together.
What is theoretical use, and how does it show waste?
Theoretical use is the quantity of each ingredient that sales should have consumed, given the recipe costing of each dish. Actual use is opening stock plus purchases minus closing stock. The difference between them is the waste you need to explain, and we show it per product, per site and per week.
Causes are many: trimmings, portions more generous than costed, spoilage, unrecorded comps, long pours. Most are normal up to a point. The useful part is the comparison across sites. If one site loses twice as much oil as the others with the same menu, something in how it works differs. If it loses in spirits but not in vegetables, the kitchen is not the problem. The system does not accuse anyone. It shows where to look.
- Sales by item and day, from each site’s till.
- Recipe costing of the dishes and drinks that sell most and of the most expensive products.
- Purchases by supplier, with date and destination site.
- Stock counts, even partial ones.
How do bookings, the calendar and the weather change the order?
The weekly order in hospitality is often made by looking at what was used last week and what is left. It works while weeks look alike, and in hospitality they rarely do: a bank holiday, a wedding, a conference in town, the first hot weekend with the terrace open or a rainy week change a site’s service a great deal.
We learn from each site’s till history how each factor moves its sales, and forecast the week with what is known: confirmed bookings, groups and events, holidays and hotel occupancy. A site in an office district and one in a nightlife district each get their own calendar.
How does a hotel differ?
In a hotel the best forecast already exists: the rooms occupied in the coming days. Breakfast, minibar and bar follow occupancy with a ratio learned from history, which differs between business guests on weekdays and tourists at weekends. Events and banquets are separate, with their own menu and a fixed number of covers.
We read forecast occupancy and the event calendar, calculate the consumption of each outlet in the hotel and propose the order to the storeroom and suppliers. The effect is clearest at the breakfast buffet: preparing the same quantity for a half-empty hotel as for a full one is the most repeated waste in hotels.
Which food-safety rule affects what you record?
Article 18 of Regulation (EC) 178/2002, the General Food Law, requires traceability of food at every stage of production, processing and distribution. Food business operators must be able to identify who supplied them with food or ingredients, and they must have systems to identify the businesses they supply, and make that information available to the authorities on request.
Article 19 adds that an operator who considers that a food it distributed does not meet food safety requirements must start withdrawing it and inform the competent authorities. A record of what came in, from which supplier, on which date and to which site helps you answer such a request quickly. The obligation is your company’s, and your food safety adviser should confirm what applies to you. The system helps you keep the record.
What data do you need, and when is it not worth it?
Sales by item and day from each till, purchases by supplier and site, the costings you have and the stock counts of recent months. If recipe costing is missing or old, we start with the dishes and drinks that weigh most in spend. A few dozen cover most of it.
It is not worth it for a single bar or restaurant: the owner sees the cold room, the order is small and waste can be controlled with good costing and a monthly spreadsheet count. It pays off with several sites, a central kitchen or warehouse, centralised purchasing, or a hotel with several outlets, where waste nobody sees and over-ordering in one site while another runs short add up.
How do you test it before signing?
We recalculate the orders of your last weeks without knowing the future and compare them with what you ordered: dishes off the menu, product thrown away and money in the cold room. Then one or two months in parallel, proposing every week while head chefs order as usual. If it convinces you, it goes live. Set-up takes three to six weeks, and the first step is a 30-minute video demo in English or Spanish.
Frequently asked questions
I have a single restaurant. Is this for me?
Honestly, probably not. In one site the person ordering sees the cold room and the bar every day. A well-made costing of your dishes and a monthly spreadsheet count will do more for you. This starts to pay from several sites, a central kitchen or centralised purchasing, when nobody sees everything any more.
Do we need recipe costings done first?
To measure waste, yes, at least for the dishes and drinks that sell most and the most expensive products. If you do not have them, we start there. For the weekly order, the system can work with purchases and stock counts in the meantime.
Where do sales come from?
From your till. Almost every hospitality till exports sales by item and day, and some have a direct connection. We check yours in the first demo. Purchases come from your management program, supplier invoices or the spreadsheet where you note them.
How often should a restaurant count stock?
Everything once a month is usually enough. Expensive items such as meat, fish, spirits and wine, and whatever has the most waste, every week. The system tells you what to count at each site each week so nobody counts the whole cold room, and uses those counts to correct its figures.
Can it send orders to suppliers?
It can leave each supplier’s order ready to send by email or in the format they ask for. Normally someone reviews it first, especially at the start. Sending automatically is possible for suppliers with stable orders, such as drinks.
Does it work for a hotel?
Yes, and occupancy is the best forecasting input a hotel has. Breakfast, minibar and bar follow the occupied rooms. With forecast occupancy and history we calculate the order of each outlet and warn about what will expire in the storeroom.