Can Restaurant Inventory Management Software Simplify Your Back-Of-House?

Almost every person in the food and beverage business has just one wish - a simple back-of-house process. Sometimes it can feel that even with the perfect team, great plans and processes - things still go wrong. With a huge rise in the need to get ahead of ordering or delivery apps or third-party services, to-go is a strong source of sales. But with all the perks of off-premises ordering comes headaches too - as businesses balance in-house and ‘to go’ - and inventory management drifts down the list of essential tasks.

At the same time, staff are hard to find and take time to train. You need a way to get all your menu items broken down into lists of all ingredients, portions, allergens, cooking instructions - and a way to manage this at a higher level too - so you know that effort equals profit. That might be why a study from The National Restaurant Association revealed that the most wanted software for operators in the next two years was inventory management systems. We would suggest that the answer to a great business problem is all in great inventory management software.

But first - why is inventory management so important?

How software can help you get inventory right

At Orderly we know that the right inventory management software has real results in that it is proven to reduce waste and increase sales. Here are some average statistics from across our platform vs. incumbent restaurant inventory management solutions we have seen used.

• 55% reduction in stock take hours
• 12% increase in stock availability
• 17% decrease in waste
• 20% increase in credit requests to suppliers

But how can you get these benefits too? Here are some of the reasons you will love the right inventory software.

Run inventory counts whenever and wherever

Using a tool that works in the cloud, you can run inventory counts whenever and wherever on a tablet, laptop or even at home with your phone. In a 2022 study, 49% of respondents asked about their challenges in inventory management said ineffective recall management was their biggest risk.

Cloud-based tools open the gates for anyone to spot problems sooner and react faster, and ensure you are able to check in on inventory far more frequently. The results? You reduce stock outages or nasty shocks from supply chain hiccups.

Get eyes on all areas of your business

By using inventory management software, you can easily track waste, theft, and see what quality and quantity you have, all as it currently is, not what it was 2 days ago. We don’t need to tell you about the issues of stock checks that take hours to do, hours to report on and days to correct. With the right inventory management software, it’s sorted on the same day as it’s assessed.

Understand your weak spots

If you can analyse it, you can change it.  A 2022 McKinsey report has suggested that almost all workers will use data in their workflows by 2025 - and long may it continue. Actual v theoretical profit has long been a pinch point in many businesses, but the smart tech powered by AI can get a handle on almost any data set.If you want to understand your restaurant as a whole, it’s never about just purchasing one bit of kit and cracking on. It’s a whole ecosystem, and that’s why at Orderly, we ensure that our restaurant management software can be integrated with your current tools - and we offer a wealth of smart options as well!

Connect it to your POS, accounting, and reporting software, or use our functionality to tie into your CCTV cameras or offer predictive analytics based on competitors in your area. The idea is to make it easy to connect to all your suppliers, systems and processes in one place.

If you’ve spent hours jumping in and out of spreadsheets, calling supplier A who wants you to email Supplier B - you’ll love how simple it is when you use inventory management software. It’s all done with an open API- and if that’s all a bit foreign to you - relax, we can set it all up.

Use a system fuelled by AI to power up your insights

Not all inventory management software is built the same. We use AI to get our forecasting just right, so you get a deep analysis of historical sales data, guest counts and all the rich insights from your stock promotions and more. We can use trusted and true industry-specific insights from thousands and thousands of your unique data points to give you AI-powered solutions to your issues. That means you can start to engineer your menus based on what happens.

When you can see all your ingredients, individual recipes, and menus as well as their respective suppliers, package sizes, nutritional values, and allergen information that means a safer place to work and serve from, and a really great way to tailor menus in a snap, whatever the landscape looks like (we’re thinking food outages, driver delays, strikes and other issues). When it can all connect with your POS, this isn’t guess work, but a great way to calculate new profit margins as you make changes.Our customers save time, reduce waste, and increase profits when they use Orderly.

Are you ready to try it for yourself?

Inventory management software is the way forward and if you’d like to see how Orderly can work for you, now is the perfect time to take that demo.