Your first weekly restaurant inventory count: a practical checklist

Count after closing or before preparation begins, when ingredients are not moving between stations. Use the same point in the week so one count can be compared with the next.

Write the date and time on the sheet. If a delivery arrives during the count, keep it separate until you record it. If someone takes milk to the bar halfway through, note the movement. A count taken across a busy service needs that extra care to mean anything.

For your first attempt, allow enough time to measure properly. Speed comes from repeating the route, not from estimating everything.

Walk the storage route once: dry shelves, fridge, freezer, then the counter and prep stations. Put items on your sheet in that order. Use one familiar ingredient name everywhere.

For each item, leave room for location, unit, counted quantity, recorded quantity and a note. If cheese is kept in two fridges, count both locations separately and combine them once.

Include opened packs. Three sealed kilogram bags and an opened bag weighing 400 g give you 3.4 kg, not four bags. Weigh the contents without the container, or subtract the empty container weight. Keep food handling within your kitchen’s normal hygiene routine.

“Two boxes” is not useful if one box has twelve bottles and the other has six. Choose a counting unit that your team can reproduce: kilograms for cheese, litres for milk, or individual bottles when the bottle size is fixed.

Write the pack size alongside the ingredient. Four unopened 1-litre milk cartons plus 600 mL in an opened carton equal 4.6 litres. An estimate is acceptable as a clearly labelled estimate; it should not look like a measured figure.

Prepared dough needs its own rule. If you count it as prepared dough, do not also count its flour and oil as unused ingredients.

For the first pass, record what you can see without trying to make it match the expected number. Recount large differences with a second person. Check a second storage location before deciding anything is missing.

Suppose your sheet shows 8 kg of cheese, but the physical count is 6.8 kg. The difference is 1.2 kg short. Those teaching figures do not tell you why. Check whether a delivery was entered twice, a pack size changed, waste went unrecorded or the recipe uses a smaller portion than the kitchen serves.

A stock difference is a question to investigate. It is not proof of theft or waste.

Once you have checked the difference, record the confirmed quantity and explain the correction. “Weekly count, both fridges checked: 6.8 kg” is more useful than “fixed”. Keep the original count sheet so next week has a starting point.

Record known waste as waste when it happens. Do not enter the same loss again as a count correction. If 300 g was already recorded as spoiled, that should already be reflected in the stock record you compare.

Then decide what to buy. Look at the next service, delivery timing and storage space as well as today’s balance. A full shelf is not automatically a good purchasing decision.

• Choose a consistent quiet time and name the person responsible.
• Follow the same storage route and check every location.
• Count opened packs and use agreed units.
• Keep deliveries and movements visible during the count.
• Recount important differences before correcting anything.
• Save the quantity, date and explanation together.
• Use the result to plan the next order, then repeat next week.

On plans that include inventory, Simplrr shows ingredient stock and lets you record deliveries, waste and quantity adjustments. For a physical count, check the ingredient’s unit, enter the confirmed quantity and add a reason for the adjustment. Inventory needs an internet connection; keep your paper count if the connection drops.

Before relying on stock changes from orders, ask us to check your inventory setup and recipe coverage. A physical count still matters. Software cannot see an opened pack on the wrong shelf.

Try the Simplrr demo, or read the bakery POS overview. For the next habit, use our [food-waste tracking guide](/blog/track-restaurant-food-waste).

The US EPA’s food-waste prevention resources include inventorying supplies as a way to prevent over-purchasing. The counting routine here is a practical starting point to adapt to your own kitchen.