Introduction
As an F&B business owner, controlling fresh inventory is your responsibility and you need to make sure they don’t go past their expiry dates. This is because, you will not want any perishable ingredients that have already been wasted to be kept inside your store forever. Therefore, you must track down all of your fresh inventory in order to avoid waste while managing fresh foods.
The Risks of Using Outdated Food & Beverage Systems
Manual data entry contributes to human errors
When tracking a large quantity of items in Excel, you’re more likely to make data entry mistakes.
You will waste a lot of time simply because you need to validate the figures in your workbook multiple times.
The worst thing that could happen is when minor inconsistencies in your spreadsheet lead to an inaccuracy.
Therefore, detecting errors caused by confusion and employee negligence will not be an easy task.
Limited users’ access
If you have multiple people working on inventory, only one person can modify the worksheet at a time. This limitation increases the likelihood of making mistakes.
Your team will not be able to view the complete inventory across all channels in Excel.
Therefore, you’ll have a hard time projecting sales or making purchases if you don’t have a clear image of your business’s overall expenses.
No real-time inventory updates
Your Excel worksheet could be out of sync with your actual inventory count at any point. If your inventory data haven’t been updated, what you see in Excel may not be accurate. It takes a lot of effort to precisely update a spreadsheet daily. Therefore, it could be a waste of time for your employees.
Why Should F&B Businesses Avoid Overstocking Their Inventory?
Many retailers are subjected to overstocking because they are afraid of stockouts (out of stocks).
However, this practice may do more harm than good, particularly to your revenue opportunity.
One of the top business priorities for F&B companies is learning to estimate demand for perishable goods.
Some of the reasons why food and beverage businesses should avoid restocking include:
Risk of product expiration and obsolescence
In this case, the opportunity to sell overstocked items is limited, and time is of the essence.
Furthermore, additional labour and personnel expenses, extra time spent repositioning products, the cost of goods transportation, and a loss of profit margin are all possible downstream effects of product expiration.
Locked-up capital
There is money invested in purchasing overstocked food products. But that money invested will not be repaid unless the food items are sold. If a business owner does not have the cash to replace overstocked items with fresh goods, new revenue opportunities are lost.
5 Shelf Management Tips for Keeping Track of Inventory Freshness
1. Periodically relook into your current process
Continuous evaluations should be carried out to address current processes strengths and flaws. Regular stock checks also make it easier to organize promotional activities, such as offering discounts on less popular products or bundling them with your best-selling products. You can manage transportation issues by coordinating production and logistics to avoid wasting time moving things from one location to another.
2. Use the FEFO (first-expire, first-out) inventory method
The FEFO inventory method should be used because food and beverage companies rely on perishable commodities. That suggests that the oldest food and supplies are consumed first. This method also makes it easier to access the oldest items in your storage facilities by locating them near the front.
3. Avoid overstocking
Restoring food stocks without performing an inventory is a very bad idea. To avoid shortages or out-of-stock situations, do not purchase more than is necessary. It is strongly advised that you only purchase the amount necessary to meet demand by performing accurate inventory forecasting.
4. Provide employees with the tools they need
You can reduce wait times by providing employees with the necessary tools. You only need a simple and easy automation process to reduce the time it takes employees to record stock levels. This allows them to easily automate decisions and approvals.
5. Keep the storage area clean
Keep in mind that the cleanliness of your storage area has an impact on the quality and longevity of your food inventory. Therefore, you must maintain the food inventory’s quality by keeping it at a suitable temperature and humidity.
How Important is Inventory Management in Ensuring Customer Satisfaction?
Inventory control ensures that order fulfilment times are kept to a minimum. For example, if you own a frozen food company, an inventory management system will help you assess product sales. You can keep your most popular items in stock and get ready to fulfil any customer’s order. Next, you may use a well-designed inventory management system to reduce the amount of time items sit on your shelves. If you don’t hold excess inventory for a long time, you can save more money. Therefore, the money you save can be passed on to your customers in the form of lower product selling prices. Finally, a solid inventory management system ensures that you always have an accurate inventory count. Even if your customer does not intend to make a purchase that day, providing correct information is an important part of providing good customer service. You boost your company’s image and add another element to customer retention by being able to provide precise inventory information to customers.
How is Enterpryze the Perfect Solution for F&B Companies?
Enterpryze offers multitude of powerful inventory management features for F&B companies such as the ability to ensure that you have fresh and quality products for your customers. Our solution allows you to track expiry dates of perishable goods to reduce waste and maximize the shelf life of your products. We also enable companies to avoid stock outs with a complete inventory control across multiple warehouses. When it comes to food safety, Enterpryze allows Batch Track and Trace capability for your company to track your items end-to-end with our Batch Traceability feature. This allows you to readily track and trace every product from field to fork to ease recalls. Enterpryze also provides Service and Delivery Mobile Application which enables you to make on-time delivery within your distribution network – with all your database centralized into a single system. In our browser mode, you can see real-time orders and schedule for delivery with an easy-to-use, drag and drop scheduler for reliable order management.
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