Whether you run a take-away counter or a fine-dine restaurant, the amount of money you make depends to a sizable degree on how well you manage your food inventory. Food cost is often a restaurant’s largest single expense in the overall cost of running a restaurant.

It’s easy and, unfortunately, common for restaurants to lose money through poor inventory management. Beginners are particularly exposed to this cash drain, since they often do not have their financial control systems secured. But even the most well-managed, established restaurants have ongoing challenges in this area.

Now, as a restaurateur, consider the challenges of dealing with food. First, your inventory is not like peanut at a bar counter. Most of it is highly perishable. Your ingredients have a limited shelf life, much of it less than a week, some as short as just a day or two. Fail to use a product within this short time frame and off to the garbage it goes, along with some of your hard-earned profit. Second, you have a lot of people who handle your food inventory. From the time your products are ordered, received, stored, prepared and ultimately served to your customers, even a small restaurant can have more than 15-20 employees involved in the food production process.

The more people involved in taking “raw” inventory and converting it to the delivered product, the more difficult it is to control loss, waste and misuse of inventory. Remember, too many cook, spoils the food. Waste and theft become hidden problems, gradually nipping away at your gross margins like termites. And on the subject of theft, even a small eatery has dozens if not hundreds of raw and partially prepared food products in storage. You’re stocking lots of desirable products to which many people have access. Depending on your concept and recipes there’s a good chance that you’ll have between 200 and 500 different raw food products in your storage rooms that are of value to everyone. The more products you have, the more challenging it is to control their use. The more of anything you have, the less likely one or two items will be immediately missed.

FusionRetail provides you with a easy-to-use interface to record your physical inventory and tallying it with your computer inventory. It also allows you to adjust the inventory if there is any discrepancy. Smart ways to control and reduce inventory cost with variance report that forces you to focus on bird’s eye and helps you earn more.