Kitchen Stock-Taking: Par Levels, FIFO, and How Often to Count

Kitchen inventory is where a surprising amount of a restaurant's money sits, spoils, and disappears — and where the least attention usually goes. A disciplined stock-taking routine does three things at once: it stops you tying up cash in over-ordering, it stops you running out mid-service, and it makes the difference between what you *should* have used and what you *did* use visible enough to act on. None of it requires special equipment — just a system you actually follow.

Set par levels

A par level is the amount of an item you want to have on hand to cover normal demand until the next delivery, plus a small buffer. Once you set pars, ordering stops being guesswork: you count what you have, and you order up to par.

Setting them well means looking at how fast each item moves and how often you receive it. Fast-moving, cheap, shelf-stable items can carry a comfortable buffer. Expensive perishables should be kept tight — the buffer that protects you from a stock-out is the same buffer that spoils if demand dips. Pars are not permanent; revisit them as your menu and seasons change.

Rotate with FIFO

**First In, First Out** is the simplest, most important habit in any store or walk-in: use the oldest stock before the newer stock. In practice that means placing new deliveries *behind* existing stock, labelling with received or use-by dates, and training everyone to reach for the front. Most avoidable spoilage is not a demand problem — it is a rotation problem, where good stock expires behind newer stock that got used first.

Decide how often to count

Not everything needs the same cadence:

- **Daily** — a quick count of high-value or highly perishable items (proteins, seafood, dairy). These are where money and freshness are most at risk, and a daily eye catches problems fast.

- **Weekly** — key categories and anything with meaningful movement, to keep pars honest.

- **Monthly** — a full physical count of everything, which is what feeds your food cost calculation (opening + purchases − closing = what you consumed).

Count at consistent times — ideally before a delivery and outside of service — and always count the same way (same units, same order through the store) so the numbers are comparable.

Connect it to food cost

Stock-taking is not busywork; it is the input to the number that tells you whether the kitchen is profitable. Your monthly count produces the closing inventory that lets you calculate what you actually used, and comparing that against what your recipes say you *should* have used surfaces the variance — the portioning, waste, and unbilled food that a headline sales figure hides.

Keep it simple enough to sustain

The best stock-taking system is the one your team will actually do every week, not the elaborate one they abandon after a month. Start with pars on your top 20 items, a labelled FIFO rotation, and a fixed weekly count. Whether you record it on a clipboard or a system that deducts stock as dishes sell, the discipline is the same — and it is the discipline, not the tool, that protects the margin.