Restaurant inventory and recipe management: how it works

Track ingredients, not just menu sales

Selling a burger and using beef are different events. Your menu records what the guest ordered; your stock records the ingredients used to make it. A recipe connects the two by defining how much of each ingredient one product consumes.

Start with a small group of high-value or frequently used ingredients. Give each one a fixed unit, a measured opening quantity and a reorder threshold. Keep pieces, grams and millilitres consistent; a box is not a useful quantity unless its contents are defined.

Example: what ten burgers should consume

This example uses one bun, 150 g of beef and 20 g of cheese per burger: ten burgers consume ten buns, 1.5 kg of beef and 200 g of cheese. It is a calculation example, not a customer result. Trace each movement to the order lines that caused it.

If the physical count is lower, look for waste, unrecorded deliveries, incorrect portions or a recipe that does not match preparation. A software balance cannot measure what is actually on the shelf.

When Rendo deducts ingredients

Rendo snapshots the recipe on submitted order lines. Counter and customer QR ingredients are consumed when payment is confirmed. Staff-managed table ingredients are consumed when each round is sent to preparation. Retrying the same operation does not create a second deduction.

Later recipe changes affect new lines, not historical usage. Products without a saved recipe do not consume stock. Current base recipes do not automatically calculate modifier-specific ingredients, and voiding a prepared item does not automatically put food back on the shelf.

Keep four kinds of movement separate

In Rendo, stock is scoped to a location. An owner can manage several venues from an organization workspace, but each location needs its own quantities and counts. Do not assume a shared menu creates a shared storeroom.

• Receiving: add the quantity actually delivered, using its actual unit cost where available.
• Recipe usage: deduct the ingredients linked to the sold or sent products.
• Waste: record discarded ingredients with a reason, separate from sales.
• Physical counts: correct the system to the counted quantity and explain the difference.

A useful first week of stock setup

The goal is a repeatable routine before a large catalogue. Stock & Recipes is an optional per-location module on Core, Flow and Pro. Supplier purchase orders and partial receiving require the Purchasing module as well. Accounting, invoice payment and batch expiry are separate requirements.

1. Count five to ten important ingredients before service begins.
2. Agree on the units with the person who receives deliveries and the kitchen team.
3. Add recipes for the menu products that use those ingredients.
4. Run a few real orders and inspect their stock movements.
5. Enter deliveries and waste throughout the week, then reconcile with a physical count.

Enable alerts for the right location

Low-stock alerts are useful when an ingredient’s remaining quantity crosses a meaningful minimum. Rendo shows ingredients at or below their minimum and, with Stock & Recipes, supports opt-in phone notifications for a location on supported devices. An alert tells you to review the stock; it does not place a supplier order.