8 key points to optimise inventory management for your restaurant chain

Buy better to manage your inventory better

The multiplication of points of sale exponentially amplifies inventory management problems. The main difficulties identified are:

Critical stockouts: inexperienced teams underestimate needs, causing stockouts that directly impact customer service and brand image.

Explosion of food waste: without volume control, excessive orders of perishable products generate significant financial losses.

Logistical complexity: coordination between multiple points of sale, suppliers and delivery times becomes unmanageable without a centralised system.

Loss of financial control: invoicing errors and price discrepancies multiply, making it impossible to accurately calculate the cost price.

These problems worsen proportionally with increasing volumes. A methodical approach to inventory management is essential. Here are the 8 key points to put your energy in the right place:

1. Structure the purchases of your restaurant chain

Objective: Maximise economies of scale through negotiated contracts

Consolidating purchases via a central source significantly increases your negotiating power. This centralisation allows you to go from unit orders of 10 kg to consolidated volumes of 100 kg weekly, transforming your position vis-à-vis suppliers.

Consolidated analysis reveals imbalances: restaurants that over-order perishable ingredients, missed opportunities for more economical packaging, quality variations between establishments. Accurately map your needs before any negotiation. Analyse your technical sheets, your volumes by food category and your optimal delivery frequencies.

Then formalise with detailed supply contracts. This approach typically generates 5 to 15% savings on raw material purchases.

2. Centralise your supplies with a high-performance inventory management software

Objective: Avoid all emergency orders to respect the volumes negotiated with chosen suppliers and maintain quality in your restaurants.

Emergency orders at 2 p.m. to make up for a stockout cost on average 25% more than negotiated prices. These recurring situations destroy margins and compromise quality.

Using an inventory management tool like Inpulse allows you to centralise all your suppliers in one place, anticipate supply needs, easily order and monitor stock levels in real time. You will thus be able to remotely manage the supplies of each of your restaurants.

This centralisation guarantees compliance with negotiated volumes and eliminates quality variations between your establishments. Integration with your restaurant till automates sales tracking and optimises replenishment.

"With Inpulse, everything is integrated into a single software, which saves us a lot of time and allows us to monitor our stocks. It is a tool that has greatly facilitated our inventory, ordering and purchasing management process." Benjamin Attal, co-founder of Franks Hot Dog.

Standardise production for better control

3. Create your central kitchen to standardise production

Objective: Standardise production to control quality and reduce costs.

Are you tired of your burgers not tasting the same depending on the restaurant? The solution is the central kitchen. This production laboratory allows you to standardise your recipes, your culinary techniques and the training of your teams. This production standardisation allows for precise cost control and ensures consistent quality.

It facilitates rapid adaptation to market trends. Recipe modifications apply instantly to the entire network without additional training for local teams. You thus guarantee product homogeneity, constant quality and a reduction in preparation costs.

Result: consistent quality, more efficient staff, ingredient savings, simplified inventory management, and therefore reduced food waste.

This organisation also simplifies your food inventory management. Instead of managing 50 ingredients per restaurant, you only have 15 semi-finished products to track.

4. Automate your orders with artificial intelligence

Objective: Avoid ordering errors that lead to food waste, stockouts and unnecessary cash immobilization… and erode your margin on a large scale.

How many times have you had too many salads that end up in the bin on a Monday, then nothing left for the Friday rush? Ordering errors are the scourge of growing chains.

Ordering errors generate two types of losses: waste from over-ordering and loss of turnover from stockouts. Artificial intelligence reduces these dysfunctions.

Inpulse's artificial intelligence technology predicts future sales and automatically generates supplier orders to have just what is needed in stock. Our algorithms analyse sales history, integrate external variables (weather, school holidays, local events) and calculate optimal needs. This automated prediction adjusts orders according to real conditions. Inpulse allows restaurateurs to order what they need at the right time.

For example, the AI detects that a rainy period increases soup demand by 30% and reduces salad demand by 20%. Orders adjust automatically, minimising waste and stockouts. Without restaurant experience, your new managers achieve their food cost objectives from the first few months. No more stress from poorly calibrated orders and unbalanced stock levels.

Thanks to Inpulse's AI, order just what you need in stock and limit your losses.

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Master execution to limit losses

5. Strictly control compliance with your recipe sheets

Objective: Avoid raw material cost overruns that weigh down your margin

Uncontrolled portion deviations destroy profitability. An excess of 15g of cheese per pizza represents 30% less margin on this item. Portion control equipment (scales, graduated ladles, precise dispensers) standardises preparations. Portioning proteins upon receipt eliminates approximations.

Training and tools are a first step; you will then need to regularly check compliance with technical sheets. Inpulse allows you to analyse the performance gaps of each establishment to verify the difference between theoretical consumption and actual consumption of raw materials, which directly impact your raw material cost. If the theoretical consumption of grated cheese is 50g per pizza and the actual use is 65g, that's 30% less margin! The automatic alert allows for immediate correction.

6. Standardise your operations for reliable data

Objective: Gather accurate field data for effective management.

Implementing rigorous tracking procedures is necessary for efficient stock management. They minimise errors and ensure that essential information is collected for stock analysis.

You’ve duplicated your concept and your know-how—now it’s time to do the same with inventory best practices by standardising operations across your restaurants.

Three key stages of product reference management:

• Clear procedures for receiving goods: Check quantities, quality, and expiry dates to ensure the products received match your specifications and expected standards. Set up alerts for items nearing their expiration date. Report discrepancies and quality issues to suppliers to avoid losses caused by defective products or overbilling. Inpulse simplifies goods receipt control and automatically generates credit note requests to your suppliers.
• Regular, comprehensive inventory counts: Make sure inventories are done at the right time, without omissions, and in a consistent way across all your sites by defining the frequency and items to be counted.
  We recommend weekly inventory counts for your top 10 fastest-moving SKUs and a full inventory of all storage areas once a month. You can download the Inpulse checklists here to help brief your teams.
  The new Inpulse mobile app enables multiple users to perform an inventory simultaneously—even offline—thanks to an advanced offline mode.
  The integrated EAN barcode scanner speeds up product entry and reduces errors, making the process smoother, faster, and more reliable.
• Organisation of storage areas: Arrange your stockrooms by food category and expiration date. A misplaced item is an item forgotten—and often wasted.

This operational rigor allows you to accurately calculate stock turnover rates and optimise your replenishment policies. Without clear procedures, each restaurant improvises.

The result? It’s impossible to compare performance or identify best practices worth replicating.

Monitor performance and empower your teams

7. Manage your restaurants with real-time access to essential KPIs

Objective: Make decisions based on objective data.
Too many restaurateurs operate blindly, only discovering stock issues at the end of the month—when it’s too late to react. You need real-time management!

Real-time monitoring replaces reactive management. 

With software like Inpulse, you can collect and analyse two types of data:

• Procurement metrics:
  
  • Volume ordered by category and by restaurant
  • Price trends for raw materials
  • Frequency of credit note requests (supplier quality indicator)
  • Average delivery times by supplier
• Profitability indicators:
  
  • Gross margin per dish and per restaurant
  • Weekly food cost (target: stay below 30%)
  • Average stock/closing stock ratio to optimise cash flow
  • Stock turnover rate by ingredient category
    

With these insights, you can detect optimisation opportunities and address issues quickly.

Inpulse’s artificial intelligence helps you make informed decisions to improve internal processes, manage promotions, and maintain profitable recipe margins.

8. Train and empower your teams on financial awareness

Objective: Make staff aware of stock management and turn them into performance drivers.

Effective stock management requires everyone’s participation. Educating employees about the restaurant’s performance goals becomes much easier when performance indicators are shared.
It helps them see how their actions directly impact results and encourages active involvement in improving operations.

To achieve this, transparency is key—share your financial ratios and targets openly.
Some entrepreneurs even offer performance-based bonuses, motivating staff to go the extra mile and stay engaged.

• Share your goals: Explain that reducing food waste from 8% to 3% means £2,000 more margin per month. Suddenly, your teams understand why portion control matters, and this fosters accountability.
• Regular technical training: Topics such as stockroom organisation, reading expiry dates, and using management tools directly reduce costly mistakes.
• Reward good results: Some restaurateurs give bonuses when teams meet food cost targets. This works—when employees have a stake in the outcome, they become more attentive.
• The snowball effect: A well-trained manager passes on these best practices, becoming an ambassador for your methods and training new hires.
  

“Equipping teams with tools like Inpulse helps raise awareness. We use performance bonuses distributed to the entire staff when profitability targets are met.”
— Valentin Bauer, Founder of Tripletta Pizzerias

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At Inpulse, we’ve designed a solution specifically for growing restaurant networks to automate their inventory management operations.
It’s the first AI-powered platform built for restaurant chains that creates a virtuous feedback loop between onsite teams and headquarters through simplified operations and centralised KPIs.

To explore the full range of Inpulse’s features, get in touch with us for a tailored demo adapted to your concept and management setup.