How to control ingredient stock and kitchen waste in a restaurant

In a kitchen, money leaves in small amounts: a pot of stew that went sour, chicken left out of the freezer during a light-off, a bag of rice that is lighter than it should be by Friday. None of it shows on the till, so many owners only notice when the month's profit is lower than the busy days suggested.

The fix is not counting everything every day. It is counting the right few things, at the same time each week, and comparing them with what you sold. All the numbers below are example figures.

Which ingredients should you count?

Count the ingredients that cost you the most money, not all of them. For most chop bars and restaurants that is a short list: rice, oil, chicken and fish, meat, gas, and every drink you buy in to resell. Salt and spices are not worth a weekly count.

A good rule is to list everything you buy, sort it by what you spend on it in a month, and count the top eight to ten. Those few items are usually most of your food spend.

How do you know what you should have used?

Work out what you actually used, then compare it with what your sales say you should have used. Actual usage is:

Opening stock + what you bought - closing stock = what you used

Expected usage comes from your sales report and your portions. If one plate of jollof uses 200 g of rice and you sold 520 plates that week, you should have used about 104 kg.

Worked example: rice for one week

• Should have used104 kg
• Written off as waste5 kg
• Unexplained11 kg

Source: Example figures

At GH₵25 a kilo, 16 kg is GH₵400 in one week. Some of it is honest: the burnt bottom of a pot, rice that went off in the heat. That is what the waste sheet is for. The rest, the unexplained part, is portions that are too big, plates that were never rung up, or stock that walked out.

Keep a waste sheet

A waste sheet is a page on the kitchen wall where staff write down anything thrown away, as it happens: the date, the item, the amount and why. Without it, every gap looks like theft. With it, you can see that most of the loss is the Sunday soup that nobody bought.

Keep it simple:

• One line per item: "Tue, light soup, half pot, soured after light-off".
• The cook or kitchen lead signs each line.
• Add it up each week, in kilos or in cedis.

The waste sheet also tells you what to change. If the same item is thrown away every week, you are making too much of it, storing it badly, or it needs to leave the menu.

How do you cut waste without running out?

Make and buy to what you actually sell. Your sales report shows how many plates of each dish sold on each day of the week, and the pattern is usually steady: Friday and Saturday busy, Monday slow, one dish that sells out by two o'clock and one that is always left over.

1. 1Count the top ingredients at the same time, before cooking starts
2. 2Add up what you bought this week from your supplier receipts
3. 3Work out what you used and what sales say you should have used
4. 4Add up the waste sheet
5. 5Look into the gap that is left over
6. 6Set next week's buying from the sales by day

Some practical habits that cut waste:

• First in, first out. Put new stock behind old stock, in the freezer and on the shelf, so the oldest is used first.
• Cook in smaller batches on slow days. A second smaller pot at noon wastes less than one large pot at seven in the morning.
• Plan for light-offs. Know which items cannot stand a long outage and do not overstock them.
• Portion with fixed tools. The same ladle and the same scoop for every plate. A bigger scoop is waste that nobody writes down.
• Use the leftovers properly. If yesterday's stew becomes today's staff meal, write it on the waste sheet so the count still makes sense.

Food safety comes before saving money. Food service establishments in Ghana need a Food Hygiene Permit from the Food and Drugs Authority, and FDA asks registered establishments to display it. Keep to FDA's hygiene rules on storage and leftovers, and when in doubt, throw it out and write it down.

What about drinks and bought-in items?

Treat drinks like a shop treats its stock. A crate of beer, a pack of Voltic or a carton of Malt is bought at a known price and sold one by one, so the count should match the sales exactly. If you bought 10 crates of 24 bottles, sold 230 bottles and have 10 bottles left, that is a clean week. If you have 2 left, eight bottles need an answer.

Drinks are also where the bar and the kitchen meet. If the bar has its own printer and its own staff, make sure every drink is rung up before it is poured or opened.

How does a POS help with stock and waste?

A POS gives you the "should have used" side of the sum: what sold, by day and by item. In MPOS you can keep your ingredients and supplies, such as rice, oil, gas and packs, alongside the drinks you resell, record purchases from each supplier, and get a low-stock warning before you run out. The stock value report shows what is sitting on your shelves and in your freezer.

For drinks and other items you sell as they are, a regular stock take shows exactly what is missing. And because every void and price change is in the activity log, you can rule out the till before you blame the kitchen. For more on the till side, read how to stop theft by waiters and cashiers. For pricing the plates themselves, read how to cost a plate and set menu prices.

The shop version of the same idea is in stop stock and cash leakage in your mini-mart, and the whole restaurant picture is in the complete guide to running a restaurant in Ghana. You can start a free trial and put your own ingredients in.