Stocktakes and waste in a New Zealand restaurant
In a restaurant, money rarely disappears in one go. It leaks away a few grams at a time. The gap between what the recipes say you should have used and what you actually used is the variance. This guide shows how to keep stock under control: the formula, a worked bar example, the kinds of waste to record and how often to count each area.
How to keep stock under control (short answer)
- Record every goods receipt with its quantity, price and batch, on the day it arrives.
- Keep a recipe card with weights for every dish, so you know what each sale uses.
- Log waste separately: write-offs, breakages, expiry, cancelled orders and staff meals.
- Count by area at different frequencies: bar weekly, perishables twice a week, dry store monthly.
- Compare actual and theoretical use each month, and investigate any variance you cannot explain.
Theoretical versus actual use
The formula for actual use is simple: opening stock + purchases − closing stock = actual use.
Theoretical use comes from multiplying every item sold by the weight on its recipe card. The gap between the two is the variance, the loss nobody sees.
Example at the bar: you start the month with 12 bottles of whisky at 0.7 L (8.4 L), receive 6 bottles (4.2 L) and finish with 5 bottles plus 0.3 L (3.8 L). Actual use is 8.4 + 4.2 − 3.8 = 8.8 L.
Count the servings sold: 168 servings of 50 ml is 8.4 L of theoretical use. The variance of 0.4 L is 8 lost servings. Multiply those by your selling price per serving to see what the gap is worth.
Table: how often to count, by area
Counting frequency by area, in a restaurant with a kitchen and a bar
| Area | Frequency | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bar (spirits, drinks) | Weekly | High value per unit and high variance |
| Perishables (meat, fish, dairy) | Twice a week | Risk of spoilage and of ordering the wrong amount |
| Dry store (flour, pasta, tins) | Monthly | Slow rotation, rare losses |
| Full stock count, valued | Monthly, plus a full count at balance date | The basis for the month's result, and what your accountant needs |
What the rules say
- Keep stock and purchase records that support your tax return. Closing stock affects your income tax, so check the valuation method with your accountant.
- Be able to name the supplier and batch of each ingredient you receive, in case of a recall.
- Under the Food Act 2014, a food control plan or national programme needs records that show you control food safety risks, such as temperatures and use-by dates.
- FEFO (first expired, first out) is the practical rule that keeps stock within its use-by dates.
- Stock figures for your GST and income tax returns come from your records, so keep them consistent. Check the detail with your accountant.
Common mistakes
- Counting the bar once a month. By the time you spot a variance, a month of evidence is gone.
- Not logging staff meals, so they show up as unexplained loss in the report.
- Counting open bottles as full or empty, instead of estimating what is left.
- Receiving goods without weighing them, then finding a shortfall at count that never happened in the venue.
- Comparing only the total stock value instead of use per product, so an 8% variance on one item disappears in the average.
How 4restaurants.net helps
- Ingredient stock levels sit in the same application as the recipe cards and the orders.
- Each dish has its own recipe, and the reports by dish show what was sold.
- Reports by day, by dish and by waiter show sales, so you can compare them with what left the stock.
- Ingredient stock levels help you decide what still needs buying.
- Supplier, batch and use-by details are kept in your own goods-receipt records, alongside your invoices.