Picture this:
You’ve got the menu for your care facility, school canteen, or childcare centre sorted. The meals and snacks are healthy, and your community is loving the variety. Your catering managers, cooks, and finance department, however, are not as pleased. It’s costing too much to implement the menu; no one’s quite sure how much they need to order, and it seems staple items are being bought every single week and food is going to waste.
This scenario is all too common in many smaller-scale commercial kitchens, like those in respite cottages, schools, and early learning centres.
The answer? An inventory system.
What is an Inventory System?
An inventory system is a way of keeping track of what you have on hand and how much of it you have. When it comes to catering, this means always knowing how much stock is available in the fridge, freezer, and dry store (aka pantry). It also means being aware of the minimum stock levels for each item, based on the menu you are providing. There are several benefits to organising ingredients and consumables in this way.
Benefit 1: Less Food Waste
Inventory systems allow you to build a shopping list or a food order based on what you actually need. They help staff take into account what is already available in the fridge, freezer, and pantry, thereby minimising ingredient double-ups. This is especially helpful when buying semi-perishable products that might be left over from one week to the next and are still perfectly safe to cook with, so long as they are not forgotten.
Benefit 2: Reduced Food Costs
As with reducing food waste, if you throw away less food, you also save money. Knowing what is already in the fridge, freezer, and pantry means you avoid spending money on something you already have.
Additionally, if you know your minimum stock levels and are keeping an eye on them, you can bulk-buy staple items and track them, which means you are spending less on buying a smaller pack every week. For example, the per-kilogram price of rice is much higher for a 1kg bag than for a 20kg bag. Without an inventory, you might find that food shopping or ordering is based only on that week’s menu, which means only the (smaller) weekly amount is bought. Or, in the rice example, perhaps the 20kg bag was bought, but even worse, the staff doing the ordering the next week didn’t know about it, so they kept buying more when there was already plenty available. In this way, the inventory reduces the risk of overspending.
Benefit 3: Required Ingredients are Always Available
With a well-managed inventory, the kitchen will never run out of something needed to make a recipe. Inventory systems streamline shopping list writing and food ordering, meaning nothing gets missed.
This is especially helpful for ingredients that can typically take a long time to run out, such as spices, and thus get forgotten about. It is also especially helpful for frozen and shelf-stable ingredients that are purchased specifically for specialty diets (e.g., coeliac disease).
Benefit 4: Clear Cross-employee Communication
Inventory systems make it easier to know what needs to be shopped for or ordered, even if staff vary across the week. This means that even if two or more people are involved in cooking/shopping, and even if these people don’t work the same shifts, there is a system of clear communication when it comes to what is available and what needs to be purchased.
In a Nutshell
Inventory systems, when used consistently and in conjunction with other meal delivery tools, are a great way to reduce food waste, save money, have what is needed on hand, and enable clearer communication in your kitchen.
Want to reap the benefits of an inventory system created especially for your menu? That’s where the Healthy Eating Hub’s tailored menu service comes in. Get in touch with us today for a quote.
