Countersign Food Inventory Made Easy

E signature food inventory

hello again Dave already the real bar man here from bar Patrol dotnet today I have a real gem for you I'm gonna help you with one of the most asked questions I get which is Dave how do I count my food inventory I feel like I'm all over the place and it's just not getting done correctly so today in this video I'm gonna break down the food inventory process show you exactly how to do it and for those of you who are bar managers and you're always complaining about having to do bar Venturi you have no idea food inventory is a I guarantee that your kitchen manager would gladly switch spots with you not only are they back in the kitchen where it's like 130 degrees and they're cooking back there but they get no glory right all the servers get to hear all the compliments on how good the food is and when it comes time to manage the ordering and the inventory for the food there are a lot more ingredients that go into the food than just beer liquor and wine right we got fruits vegetables meats breads grains pastas spices oils the list goes on forever so in this video I'm gonna show you the best way to count your food inventory so you can get an accurate and detailed count so your food cost percentage will be more precise if this is your first time here make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel so you and I can be huggy bears on a regular basis okay let's head to the computer so let's jump right into how to count your food inventory and this is whether you're using a spreadsheet or you have an inventory system I'm gonna show you a little bit how bar Patrol counts your foods super fast a lot of people don't know that bar Patrol can count food but it can count your food your bar your cleaning supplies your retail anything you can count so I'm gonna show you just a little bit how that works it makes it easier for you and like I said counting food is a different beast right there's so many different forms of food with sauces and vegetables and meats and flour and spices it's not like the bar the bar is very regimented everything comes in a similar container it's liquid and all you need to do is point count it all right unless you're weighing it here's a 750 milliliter bottle here's a 1 litre bottle these are the most common sizes and bars so there's not much confusion or ambiguity here some bars have the 1.75 liter alright it's just not as common wine comes in 750 milliliter bottles usually and then you have bottled beer which is like unit to unit counting that's like counting marbles if I have 20 beers I have 20 bottled beers that's very easy to count and then of course we have kegs and kegs come in different sizes as well but once again it's just a container with liquid inside it's very easy to count if we look at a partial bottle you can easily point out that we can say that's 0.6 or whatever you determine that to be and point counting is very difficult because my point six is different from your point six which is why we have the Bluetooth scale bar barrel it's super accurate so whether your point counting or weighing though the bar ends up being a lot more simple than counting food so then what is our main goal as we dive into food inventory well our main goal is to define what one unit equals for each of your food products all right in other words how am I going to count those units that might seem a little unclear right now but be patient little dove I'm going to explain it all to you so there are three ways in which we can count our food inventory number one we can count by the case we want to count by the case when anything inside the case is too small like grapes we're not gonna count in grapes individually or with the pulled pork or pulling pieces off we can't count that individually and we're gonna have to end up point counting the case I'm gonna give you examples of that in just a minute number two you may have guessed it we can count individually so there's bigger items inside the case maybe there's big cans of tomato sauce and you can count each can of tomato sauce and then point count the last one we can count individually I'm going to show you an example of that and then the last one is count by Wayne this is the most accurate but it also can become a little tedious we weigh the bottles in the bar because it's very accurate and very important to see how the bartender's are pouring you can weigh in the kitchen but it is optional alright so before we dive into that let's talk about unit to unit verse partial portion counting because they're very different unit two units very easy like in the example of bottled beer we're just counting one two three four five six partial portion is like the pulled pork and that is a little more difficult so let's dive into meat as an example so we have our steaks we have our chicken and once again in the example we have our pulled pork now these top two are unit to unit we're counting one state to state three steak you know five pieces of chicken with the pulled pork that's a partial portion that gets four ounces six ounces whenever you're putting on a sandwich or whatever you're putting on nachos that's a partial portion and when it comes to partial portion how do you count that we're gonna dive into that so let's start first by number one how to count by the case so for this example we're gonna use a case of limes now remember you need to go through each of your products and define how we're gonna count it are we gonna count each lime individually or are you gonna count out by the case well there's about two hundred and thirty limes on a common case so you're probably not going to go through each time and count each lime individually so in this case we're gonna define one unit as one case which means you're probably gonna have to point count it hopefully we keep all the limes in the box that it came in and then you can just point count it now let's say that a case costs around seventy dollars if we count by the case we're going to price it by the case we're not gonna price each lime individually to do that we go seventy dollars divided by two hundred and thirty limes and you get about 30 cents per lime but we're not pricing individually however you're counting it that's how you're gonna price it now let's say that we're taking inventory and we come along and we determined that the line is about there so we have about a half a case of limes so it's not going to be perfect and super accurate but we're in accounting all the food in your kitchen you have to be somewhat fast so we're gonna plant count this case which would be about thirty-five dollars now hopefully even if you're using a spreadsheet you have formulas built into the spreadsheet so it calculates your total cost at bar Patrol it does it for you let me show you really quick how that looks in bar patrol boom there we go we're just gonna go inside Evan Tori's really quick we're gonna start a new inventory and then add products down here at the bottom and then I'm going to search for the first few letters of limes there we go there's our limes and I'm gonna simply hit point five cases and if we hit this back over here we can see it calculates $35 automatically you need it to figure out Ematic aliy so it's super fast you don't need to grab your calculator and hit point five cases times seventy dollars to figure it should be doing it for you so there's your case example now let's talk about counting individually let's use some ground beef here as an example so we have five bags or logs or so whatever you want to call it and all of these came in a case so now once again we need to define how we're gonna count this Irene accounted by the case are we gonna count it individually all right so let's look at some of the metrics let's say that each of these is a five pound bag inside the case there's five of them so you're gonna have a total of 25 pounds per case and let's say that the case costs $50 okay so how are we gonna count this are we gonna count out by the case well how would you do that let's say that we use 7/10 of one bag and we have 4.3 bags how much of a case is that it can be done but it's much more complicated it's easier to count these individually and say we have 4.3 bags so we've defined this as one unit equals one bag okay so then how would we price it well once again I'm sure you guess the answer already we need to price it by the bag so let's look at these four logs again it's $50 per case we divide by five bags and we get $10 per bag so that's how we're gonna price it then if we're counting inventory and we have 4.3 bags it will cost 43 dollars now how would you count this by the case well like I said you can do it but you would have to go four point three bags divided by how many bags in a case to get point eight six cases that's how you would enter it you would still get 43 dollars but again much more complicated let me show you really quick how that would work inside bar patrol again there's our phone and I'm just gonna go back into the same inventory where we added limes I'm gonna add products I'm gonna start typing in ground beef G R oh there it is and you can see it's priced at $10 per bag I'm gonna hit 4.3 enter and if we go back and look at the inventory again there's our limes those are ground beef and it's at $43 so it does it automatically so is that simple enough so far is everyone on board and understanding okay so the next issue we run into is we don't always keep our products in the cases that came in or in the bag that came in we end up transferring a lot of that to another container for instance and our cooler we keep bus tubs clean bus tubs not ones we use for dishes and we throw all sorts of veggies in there we thought it meant and cucumbers and celery so we can just grab out of there so we're transferring items from the case into bins or in chicken Tanner's so the question is what container are you using for each of your products all right now you have to determine how much is in that container so let's use this example here let's say that we have a bag of again pulled-pork let's say that the pulled-pork a full bag of this is one unit all right if you keep the pulled pork in that bag again it's like well it's like the hamburger we can just point count it and say there's 0.7 bags left and that's very easy let's say we transfer it to a container you know a lot of us have seen these containers while all of us I would hope I've seen these containers on the line right they're all individually here and we put a lot of the products into these containers and then we have to decide how much is in there so let's say that we've put the pork into this container and then we try to point count it by how high the line is all right but if you can pull if you can put like a full unit of that pulled pork into the container and let's say that it reaches this level you can actually draw a line on this container this can be your pulled pork container and say that one full unit goes to there now you may not be able to do that you have to wash your containers maybe the line washes off but you should know about how full pulled pork goes into that container and you've decided that one unit goes to that line then when you're taking inventory let's say that little pulled pork sat the blue line you can see that that's about from the bottom up to the red line it's probably about point six and you can say we have point six of a bag of pulled pork so what you're determining no matter what container it is is what portion of a case do I have left in that container or what portion of the individual product do I have left that's what you're gonna have to figure out when you have these separate containers how much of that portion is in the individual or the case size by the unit that I'm counting does that make sense okay so I don't want to beat a dead horse but let me give you one more example just so you get the flow of what we're doing and get a feel for what you might do let's say that we have a stack of slices of American cheese so once again how are you going to count this are you gonna count the cheese slices individually you could but it would take a lot of time so we're gonna define this as one unit let's get rid of the slices of cheese okay and when you go to count your inventory hopefully you can keep the using nice stacks like this so let's say that you have a partial stack over here and you determine that's about 0.3 units okay so that would be the easiest way to count it let's look at the big picture let's say that we have four stacks in a case so one case equals four stacks once again we're gonna define one unit as one stack let's say that each case cost $53 so we have to price it accordingly one stack equals 1325 and if we go back to our 1.3 example you go 1.3 times 1325 and you're gonna get $17.22 that's how you would count cheese slices because we've determined and defined our unit and then the last thing we'll talk about is counting by weight now if you count by weight you need to have a spreadsheet that has formulas built in so we can enter how much it weighs it will calculate the cost for you or a good inventory system so let's say that we have a bag of flour it's a 10 pound bag let's say that this bag costs you $5.00 all right and you're taking inventory and you weigh it and you find out that it weighs 6.4 pounds you enter that end and it's gonna determine that you have three dollars and 20 cents of flour on hand and the math on that is 6.4 divided by 10 times the price of the bag equals three dollars and 20 cents again you should have the formula built in let me show you how that works in bar Patrol how we weigh food in bar Patrol so let's go inside our inventory we were working on and we're gonna hit add products again search for flour there it is and then you'll notice here it says perk egg which I seems kind of weird but you know Bar Patrol is originally just for the bar and then we added everything else if you weigh by the bottle which we do on the bar with the Bluetooth scale this will come up as ounces if you enter it by the keg and how you can weigh in pounds so all you need to do is switch to keg even though you're doing food seems a little weird but it works awesomely you'll also notice we have the full and empty weight we do that with the bottles in the bar with this bag of flour I'm assuming that the bag weighs zero you could enter a quarter of a pound or an eighth of a pound if you think it weighs something I think zero is fine the full weight is 10 pounds so if we switch this to pounds and enter 6.4 enter now we head back to the screen and you can once again it calculates that it's three dollars and 20 cents and then once you've completed your inventory you've done counting you can just head into your account here at Bar Patrol go to inventories find the inventory you counted and you can see it all right here but what we're gonna do is we're gonna go reports and hit export summary report and that's going to give you a list of everything you counted broken down by category you can see beverages bread condiments the wholesale value of each it's all calculated for you I'll keep scrolling down here you can see how much is in here how much detail you can get into by breaking it down by category this is all food and when I scroll down at the bottom here we'll get a total food number there's your total food number of city in inventory then we get into garnishes like I said we can do cleaning supplies dishware paper products to go products utensils anything you can count you can inventory here and then you have your total city and inventory down there right at the bottom you can do your profit loss numbers and so on and so forth bar Patrol also does ordering for you if you place your orders through bar Patrol you can hit place order it will email it off to all of your vendors to us foods or whoever you're using you don't have to contact them and you're all set and ready to go and that's it alright I hope that made sense for the most part if not you can send us an email at info at bar Patrol net and one of my staff will happily answer your questions if they don't know the answer they'll contact me and I will answer it so that's gonna do it for this episode I hope you enjoyed it if you want to learn more about how bar patrol can help professionally manage your bar and food inventory visit us at bar Patrol net or just click in the link below this video I appreciate you being here I'm gonna see you next time I'm out