Increase Inventory Turnover, Lower Food Cost

Although there are very few "absolutes" in the restaurant business, if there is one this it is. Increasing inventory turnover means lower food cost. Period. Every time I've seen operators reduce their inventory levels, thereby increasing inventory turnover, their food cost goes down.

I know there is a limit to how far you can reduce food inventory but just consider for a moment the psychology of purchasing in foodservice. When ordering, your typical manager's primary objective is to buy enough to not "run out". The last thing they want to be doing at 7:30 on a busy night is scrambling for a key product.

As a result, it's a common practice for managers to order more food than what's really needed. This means many restaurants are carrying an excessive amount of product on the shelf much of the time and it's one of the most expensive things you can do in this business.

Carrying excess inventory, which lowers inventory turnover, ties up your valuable cash and leads to excessive food waste and spoilage. It results in over-portioning and misuse because employees become careless when the storage rooms are always full of product. Employees don't have to be all that concerned about using products sparingly because there's little risk of "running out" when there's always more product in storage. If you don't believe this I'll prove it to you.