Many restaurants and restaurant groups face stock management issues every day; such as stock going bad, stock running out, stock going missing and new stock being re-ordered when there is still stock available.
There are many systems out there that try to overcome these problems; some are better than others.
Due to the nature of the industry for these stock management systems to work properly they need full adoption and co-operation from the personnel involved; like ensuring that deliveries are managed properly, practising FIFO (First in First Out), using the right amounts of ingredients when preparing dishes and drinks, ensuring that the ingredients are stored properly, etc.
That notwithstanding there are still many different systems out there that can help restaurants to better manage stock, reduce wastage and work out exact costs. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses and which one you should choose depends entirely on your needs, the country you are in and your budget.
In order for any stock management systems to work properly they must be able to integrate the Point-of-Sales (POS) system so that each time an order is put through the stock will be deducted. So we will only consider platforms that can integrate with POS systems; secondly there seems to be a lot of people promoting the use of Excel spreadsheets for stock management and cost calculations – at the end of the last century this would have been quite advanced but today forget it. Any restaurants that are still doing things on Excel is seriously holding back the business.
Hereunder we will only cover platforms that are FREE to use:-
CartSmith
This is a completely new platform and seems to free to use. Launched in 2021 it has some interesting features such as stock auto-replenishment, cost calculations, API integration means with POS systems, etc.
Restaurants and Suppliers both signin to the same dashboard and any party can both be a supplier and buyer; so a restaurant can buy flour from a supplier and bake bread with it and then sell off the surplus bread on to other buyers on CartSmith.
The other interesting feature is the price negotiation feature between buyers and sellers whereby a seller can sell the same product to a 100 different buyers and agree on a different selling price with each one.
Restauranteurs and suppliers looking into the future should definitely sign up to CartSmith and try it out.
REKKI
Another stock management that is a platform for both buyers and suppliers to connect is REKKI; this one is also quite interesting because its features go beyond just a system for stock management REKKI is more of a platform facilitates the communication and connection between restauranteurs and suppliers.
Interestingly, the interface for the restaurants are only available on the Apple Appstore and it’s designed to be a POS system in addition to a stock management platform. The interface is optimised for tablets and if you try to use on your iPhone it will be difficult.
https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1216805389
Suppliers on the other hand can sign up and upload products and orders through the web and geographically the coverage is good for the United Kingdom and United States of America.
To sign up now users can go on https://www.rekki.com/
