How to Create an Easy-to-Use Order Guide

Editor's Note: This article is based on a RestaurantOwner.com webinar, which is available to our members. If you are not a RestaurantOwner.com member yet, feel free to browse the list of webinar titles at RestaurantOwner.com. Our webinars provide entertaining and useful operator education from your computer or mobile device.

A running inventory order guide is a multi-purpose system that serves as both an ordering tool and a perpetual inventory control for every product in a restaurant or bar. In short, "it's a bible, if you will, of everything we order and need to serve our guests", explains Joe Erickson, vice-president of RestaurantOwner.com, Restaurant Startup & Growth contributor and a 30-plus year veteran of the restaurant industry. "We want to be able to cover everything - whether it's grocery, produce, liquor, beer, wine - and it's the order guide for every kind of product and supplies we get in."

The order guide is a timeless hands-on tool for streamlining the ordering process, originally created by TGI Friday's in the seventies. "It's ideal for tracking key food items, liquor storage rooms, uniforms, linens, expensive cleaning supplies, smallwares, and merchandise," Erickson points out. "The most common way we track items is by using it on a clipboard. When you download the forms from RO.com you simply modify and print them out for use in your daily operations."

The benefits, Erickson continues, are obvious. "They help you avoid running out of product, which I think is key," he notes. "I think that was the number-one reason people want to have an order guide; they don't want to be out of the product they need." They also want to be able to track usage over a three to four-week period, something for which this form is extremely useful.