Restaurant Inventory Management

How Chef7 separates Warehouse and Kitchen stock

Many restaurants manage every ingredient as a single bag, which hides waste, lets expiries slip, and makes real cost-per-dish nearly impossible to calculate. Chef7 splits stock into two physical locations — Warehouse and Kitchen — kept in sync in real time.

The two-location model

• Warehouse (walk-in, freezer, dry store): where supplier deliveries arrive. The central hub for ingredients.
• Kitchen (prep stations, line fridge): the quantities at hand for service. Restocked from the warehouse as needed.

Every ingredient lives in both locations with distinct quantities. Move 500 g of cod from warehouse to kitchen and you log it on the tablet — warehouse drops, kitchen rises. Serving a dish auto-deducts from kitchen stock via the recipe card.

A typical day

1. Morning: invoices arrive. The lead logs the invoice line items and updates warehouse stock.
2. Pre-service: chef transfers what's needed from warehouse to kitchen.
3. Service: each plate auto-deducts kitchen ingredients per the recipe card.
4. End of day: variance report compares theoretical depletion with physical count. Small gaps = normal shrinkage; large gaps = something to investigate.

Automatic alerts

• Expiry: 7 days before a product expires.
• Low stock: when an ingredient drops to 20% of weekly rotation.
• Supplier orders: pre-filled from the last 7 days of rotation, ready to send with one click.

Industry statistics

According to the National Restaurant Association (State of the Restaurant Industry 2024), back-office automation typically reduces cost of goods sold by 3 to 5%. The magnitude depends on the starting point — the more manual the original workflow, the larger the gain.

Source: National Restaurant Association (2024).