Use case · café and food
Café: the order goes in tonight, the count happens now
A café's stock turns over in days, not months. The useful count is the one before the supplier order, done in ten minutes between services — not a monthly stocktake that arrives two weeks too late.
What is different about food stock
Three things. Deliveries arrive most days, so receiving has to be fast and repeatable. Waste is a real movement — a spoiled litre of milk is stock that left, not a number to fix later. And the consequence of being out is immediate: no oat milk means no flat white today, not a backorder next week.
A general inventory app does not manage recipes or production. It does manage what is in the fridge and the dry store, how much arrived, how much was used or thrown away, and what to order. That is the part that keeps a café running.
Receive the morning delivery in the aisle
The delivery arrives while someone is making coffee. Open the item, enter the quantity, choose Receive. It takes seconds per line, and the receipt carries the time and the person — useful when the invoice and the shelf disagree three days later. If the basement has no signal, the receipt queues and syncs when the phone is back upstairs.
Record what actually arrived, not what was ordered. A short delivery of 22 instead of 24 is normal; receiving 24 makes every later count wrong by two. If you use purchase orders on Pro, receive the short delivery against the order and leave it partial; the rest can be received later.
Count the fast movers before you order
You do not need to count the whole café every day. Count the twenty items that decide the order: milk, alternative milks, syrups, cups, lids, the pastries that sell out. Count blind, one location at a time — the fridge, the dry shelf, the counter — and let the review show the variance in each item's own unit.
The count before the order is the whole method. A count that happens after the order is a report; a count that happens before it is a decision.
For the items you count weekly rather than daily, the cycle-counting schedule keeps the book honest without an evening of work.
Record waste as a movement
Waste is the number cafés most often hide, because it feels like an admission. In the ledger it is just a movement with a reason: waste, 2 litres, spoiled. That record is what turns "we seem to be short on milk" into "we threw away two litres on Tuesday and did not record it". The count stays honest and the ordering gets better.
Adjustments (waste, correction, staff drink, return) are recorded with a reason. A sale can carry a price, which is useful if you record takeaway retail items as well as drinks.
Set minimums that match the delivery cycle
A café's minimum is not a monthly reorder point; it is "enough to get through until the next delivery, plus a margin". The reorder list suggests twice the minimum minus what is on hand and groups the list by supplier. Edit the quantity before sending; the suggestion is a starting point, not an order.
The reorder-point calculator is useful for the items with a longer lead time — packaging, printed cups, specialty syrups — where a week's delay is plausible.
What this product does not do
No recipes, no bill of materials, no automatic deduction when a flat white is sold, no batch, lot or expiry tracking, and no allergen or nutrition data. If you need stock to fall when a drink is rung up, that requires a POS integration we do not have yet. For a café, the honest workflow is: receive deliveries, count the fast movers, record waste, order from the list. That is enough to stop guessing, and it takes minutes a day.
A workable daily routine
- Morning: receive the delivery at the door, line by line.
- Mid-afternoon: count the ten fastest movers (five minutes) and note anything empty.
- Before the order: open the reorder list, edit quantities, send it.
- End of day: record waste and any staff drinks as adjustments.
- Sunday: count the dry store and the packaging, and review the week's variances.