Best Inventory Management Software For Bars and Restaurants

By: KEXY Team
January 8, 2024
News And Tips

What is Inventory Management Software?

Best Inventory management software is a modern type of software with business applications that record, manage, and organize the selling of products, storage, and orders made.

The software keeps track of what comes in, the pricing of the products, and the products available without using the manual way of managing the business.

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Therefore, like any other business, bars and restaurants need this kind of software to help them manage their available products and sell them with minimal workforce but with high orderliness levels.

Types of Best Inventory Management Software

Different inventories can be used to satisfy the customers’ demands. Even though there are many types of inventory, not all of them are applicable in bars and restaurants, but just a few are necessary.

The KEXY inventory and ordering software is the best inventory for bars and restaurants and the best thing is that it’s FREE.  The owners used to charge $99/month, but due to the COVID, they wanted to offer their application to all those within the food and beverage industry who have been affected by the pandemic.

Communication with Vendors

The KEXY inventory has the best features for making communication easier within your bar or restaurant.

Using this inventory, it is possible to send messages to the vendors and receive their messages within the app. The number of messages you send is not limited, but they can be as many as possible.

All information passed out and into the company is found in one place. Therefore, there will be an easy task to access the information you want.

The bar and restaurant inventory are effortless to separate the personal contacts and the business contacts within the app. This gives you an easier time to access the contact you want.

Through the inventory software, you will connect with many food and liquor industry sales reps to learn more about new products and deals.

It is easier to come across new brands of what you are using or selling within the bar or restaurant inventory.

Restaurant Inventory

Restaurant inventory is keeping track of what is happening in a restaurant in terms of business. Every restaurant should have an inventory that monitors its workers, products, and services. The most crucial inventory in a restaurant is food inventory.

Food inventory keeps track of what is coming in, what is going out, and what has remained in the restaurant as much as food consumption is concerned. Food inventory makes the big difference between an excellent mouthwatering dish and a spoiled dish.

Food inventory helps the restaurant to do it right than doing it wrong. This is because the restaurant becomes sure of what they will deliver than trying to do guesswork.

Keeping track of what you are gaining in a restaurant will help one know what measures to add to increase profit. Keeping track of what you are losing in a restaurant helps the management decide what to do to prevent loss.

You can capture all this information easily under a simple restaurant inventory sheet.

A Good Inventory Sheet

Create a table and divide it into five rows. The rows you create should be:

I. First row for items.
II. Second row for the unit of measure.
III. Third row for inventory amount.
IV. Forth row for the unit price.
V. Fifth row for the total cost.

Under the item’s row, list down all you have in your restaurant and all you use in the restaurant.

On the second row, add the unit measure of every item you have listed in the first row.

The number of units you listed lists the total number in the inventory amount to make your calculations standard and easy to calculate.

On the row of the unit prize, indicate the cost of what you had listed in the first row per single item.

In the last row, total the items and the cost of all the number of items, respectively.

Free restaurant inventory management software should be a priority for most restaurants. This is because it does not cost anything, and it provides the Rate Of Interest justification to bring it to implementation.

The free software also improves the customer experience as one has to offer. The software keeps track of all the inventories and alerts if a shortage occurs.

Bar Inventory

Bar inventory is the act of counting what is coming in and going out of the bar. In a bar setup, liquor inventory is done. Bar inventory helps one to determine how well or bad the bar is faring financially. It also becomes easier to effectively identify every beverage’s cost in the bar without exploiting customers and running losses.

By doing inventory, a bar can identify the most selling items in the bar and the most profit-giving items.

In calculating the bar inventory, it has to be done at the beginning of the use and the given period. This calculation will help the bar determine the amount of profit they have made through the goods brought in that given season.

There is a simple formula for calculating the inventory usage in a bar setup:

     

      [Starting Inventory + Liquor Purchase] _Ending Inventory=Usage

How to Take Liquor Inventory

The spreadsheet should have three columns: starting inventory, receiving inventory, and ending inventory.

There should also be rows that will help give identity to the alcohol, the brand name of the alcohol, the alcohol’s name, and the bottle size of the alcohol.

When you fill in the products in the spreadsheet, ensure they are well organized alphabetically to make work easier every time you want to fill in a new item.

Once your spreadsheet is complete, determine the inventory period you will use as you feel suitable or as the products come in the bar. Be consistent in your timing to get the correct information.

By the end of the period, you chose to do your inventory and repeat the same process to get your ending inventory counts.

It is necessary to have a bar inventory app in a bar. This app will help in reducing the errors that are made if done manually.

The bar app also manages the labor cost that would be applied if done manually because manual work requires many people to complete record-keeping.

With an inventory bar, it is easier to analyze business costs. The analysis given reduces the costs but in a positive way of improving customer services.

The bar inventory saves on time so much when you want to fill in the information or even when you want to inquire about something from your data. Doing your work manually will do your work to go slower because the workforce will quickly get tired.

Many useful bar inventory apps can serve well in the bar. Some of the few examples include:

I. BarDog
II. Partner
III. Bar Patrol
IV. Bar Cop
V. BevSpot
VI. WISK
VII. Barkeep
VIII. Beverage

Most of these apps do not require payment, or even those that charge are very much affordable for a bar to purchase.

Measures Both Liquor and Food

In both bars and restaurants, some measures have to be put in place to make your inventory easier and accurate.

One of the measures is ensuring that your shelves are clean and well organized. A poorly organized stockroom will lead to many mistakes. Your staff will be frustrated by the appearance of their place of work.

A double-counting mistake will also quickly occur because due to disorderliness, you can hardly tell what you have counted and what you have not. Ordering much more is also a mistake that can happen when a place is not organized, and this can cause costs that are not necessary this loss-making.

If you have a few shelves in your bar or restaurant, ensure you have ordered more shelves, and this will increase and utilize your space appropriately.

Ensure that you do stocking According to the category of food. By doing this, you can’t disorganize your place of stock when trying to find something but go directly to where it is.

Make labels for your rows and columns. However, these labels should be indicated correctly to avoid confusion.

Create a unique inventory ID and let it be easier for you to remember easily.

Ensure that there is a team assembly and in the assembly, assign some inventory duties to individuals. Have similar regular meetings and ensure you get information from them concerning the inventory tasks you assigned to them.

Inventory Management Software has been the most efficient way of running every grown and growing company globally. The inventory management system has been able to do all the necessary work, affordably easily, and very fast in every company that it has been used.

The inventory management system has many advantages to disadvantages that can hardly be seen. The inventory management system has replaced the old manual way of doing hardly reliable things.

Since bars and restaurants are among the busy work areas, the inventory management system has reduced the congestion of workers in the working place. It has also reduced the level of carelessness and theft that can lead to the making of losses.

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SCOTT GRAHAM

Co-Founder

FORREST YOUNG

Co-Founder
KEXY Bites is your go-to hub for all things food and beverage. Whether you're a retailer, supplier, or distributor, we deliver insightful content that ignites fresh thinking for your business.