Weekly Inventory Management Checklist

Export last week's ending inventory from MarginEdge or Restaurant365 as the count sheet for this week. Confirm units of measure match how the line actually counts (case vs. each, lb vs. oz) — mismatches are the most common source of variance noise.

Verify every Sysco, US Foods, PFG, and Restaurant Depot invoice from the week has been received and coded. Missing invoices throw theoretical food cost off and make variance unreadable.

Print or load tablet sheets split by walk-in, freezer, dry storage, bar, and beer cooler. Assign each section to a counter — sous covers BOH, bar manager covers bar, GM spot-checks high-value categories.

Walk-in must read 41°F or below; freezer 0°F or below. Log readings in the temp book. If a unit is out of range, pull the affected TCS items before counting so they aren't booked into next week's usable inventory.

Pull all time/temperature control for safety items (proteins, dairy, cut produce, cooked starch). Apply the 4-hour rule to anything that may have been in the danger zone; document discard weight for the waste log.

Call the refrigeration vendor and log the ticket number in the maintenance binder. Until the unit reads in range twice consecutively, do not restock that section.

Start with beef, seafood, and specialty items — these drive 60-70% of food cost variance. Weigh partial cases on the scale rather than estimating; eyeballed weights are the single biggest source of theoretical-vs-actual gap.

Work shelf-by-shelf in FIFO order so date-pulled items get caught. Count in-house prep (stocks, sauces, cut veg) at recipe yield, not bulk weight, so it ties back to plate cost.

Note partial cases of frozen proteins and bread. In dry storage, watch for pest evidence (droppings, gnaw marks, webbing) and flag for the pest log if found.

Reconcile the daily waste sheet against the count. Items that ran 86 mid-shift but aren't in the waste log are usually a portioning or theft signal worth digging into.

Count open bottles to the tenth (0.1, 0.2, etc.) by sight or with a bottle scale. Well brands, call brands, and premium each get counted separately so pour cost can be calculated by tier.

Weigh partial kegs on the keg scale and subtract tare. Note any line-cleaning loss from the week — that pour goes into variance, not theft.

For BTG, tenth-out open bottles same as liquor. Bottle list gets a full count against the wine spreadsheet — high-value bottles (>$100 retail) get a second counter sign-off.

Submit the count to push usage into the period close. Confirm the system pulled the latest invoices and POS sales — without those, the variance report is meaningless.

Compare theoretical vs. actual usage by item. Anything over a 3% variance on a high-volume item or $50 absolute dollars on any item gets investigated — recipe miscoding, portioning drift, or theft are the usual culprits.

For any item flagged in the variance report, write the suspected cause and corrective action. Log everything in one place so multi-week patterns surface — single-week variance is noise; recurring variance on the same SKU is signal.

Have a different team member recount the top 5 variance items. Half of all over-5% variances resolve on the recount because the original count had unit-of-measure errors.

In Toast or Square, run comp and void reports by employee for the count week. Disproportionate voids on items showing variance is the standard theft pattern — flag for the GM to review with the employee.

Sous chef weighs five plates of each high-variance item against the recipe spec. Drift of 0.5 oz on a steak across 200 covers wipes out the entire margin on that dish.

Order to par minus on-hand, adjusted for the week's forecasted covers. Check the reservations book in Resy or OpenTable and any private events on the books — large parties shift produce and protein needs significantly.

Bar manager builds the order against bar par and the cocktail menu's depletion rate. Flag any ABC-controlled items that need pre-order lead time so they don't run 86 over the weekend.

Send POs through the distributor portal or rep. Schedule deliveries between 8am-11am or other slow windows so receiving doesn't collide with prep or service.

If an item ran 86 mid-week or sat unused, adjust par up or down for next week. Stale pars set 6 months ago are a quiet driver of overstock and waste.

GM reviews food cost percentage, prime cost, and variance summary. Sign-off attaches accountability to the number — without it, food cost drifts week-over-week with no one owning the result.