If you work in a restaurant, bar, winery, or any other establishment that handles food and beverages, chances are you spend quite a bit of time managing your inventory. Your business needs to have the right inventory available to keep operations running smoothly—which is exactly what Sortly can do for your inventory management process.
We’re proud to serve food and beverage businesses like yours. Here are seven different ways our food and beverage customers use Sortly’s inventory management app to streamline their inventory processes.
1. Creating a detailed inventory list
With Sortly, it’s easy to create a detail-rich, visual inventory list that identifies exactly what you have in stock, where it is, when it expires, and more. You can keep track of suppliers, value, purchase price, expiration dates, use-by dates, and other key information.
This is especially helpful if you are managing inventory across more than one location. For example, if you run two restaurants that share one central commissary, Sortly allows you to view what you have in each walk-in and on every shelf across all three units. You can view everything you have on hand, or you can zero in on what’s on one particular shelf in a given location. The choice is yours.
This “at-a-glance” inventory list can help your team place complete orders, understand when it’s time to run specials or use up certain products, think strategically about the weeks ahead, and so much more.
Related: How to Manage Inventory in a Restaurant
2. Organize your inventory however you see fit
Every business is different. So why would any two companies handle their inventory management in exactly the same way? With customizable folders, categories, and tags, your team can decide precisely how to label and catalog your inventory.
Many of our customers start by creating parent folders for different locations, then sub-folders for different storage areas. Next, they might create tags for seasonal items or highly-perishable goods. Some also create categories for different types of inventory, such as “alcohol” to “perishables” to “baking supplies.”
With Sortly, you can start by organizing your inventory system as it makes sense for your business—and easily refine and add organizational changes along the way.
3. Streamline ordering
Ordering is one of our customers’ biggest paint points, and rightfully so. After all, figuring out what your business needs for the days ahead is hard enough. With Sortly, you can streamline ordering in a variety of ways:
- Begin all inventory counts with a clear understanding of what needs to be tallied
- Know what items are purchased from which suppliers
- Review inventory records to better understand demand and usage over time
- Rely on low-stock alerts to remind you when you’re at risk of running out of an item
You can also use data from Sortly to help you calculate key formulas like safety stock, lead time, and more. These calculations can help you create a more thorough ordering system that lays the foundation for more complete, accurate orders and deliveries.
4. Reduce waste
Our customers who work with food and beverage are always toeing the line between running out of product and ordering too much it spoils. While other businesses might be able to get away with overstocking their shelves, most food and beverage professionals don’t have that luxury. Especially not when it comes to perishable goods.
By establishing solid inventory pars, creating an efficient inventory management system, and ensuring your inventory records are kept accurate day in and day out, you’ll naturally reduce waste. After all, it’s easier to practice meaningful inventory control when you have the data required to forecast demand properly. And Sortly helps its customers do just that.
5. Set up customized alerts
Even if you implement a perfect FIFO (first-in, first-out) system, eyeball expiration dates, and have a handle on your business’s typical inventory usage, Sortly’s automated alerts and reminders can still help your team time and time again.
These reminders, which can be sent via email or in-app notification whenever you see fit, remind our customers to use up expiring products, service that fancy espresso machine, or reorder more burrata before it’s too late.
6. Speed up annual audits
Chances are your business inventories perishables at least once a week, maybe more. But supplies and consumables (think glassware, silverware, napkins, paper cups, and cleaning supplies) and even equipment (like walk-in freezers, ovens, and espresso machines) need to be inventoried too. After all, you need to track the quantities, locations, and conditions of those items that keep your business running.
Our food and beverage customers often use Sortly to track such items. When the time comes to audit them, our customers simply generate a report, export it, print it out, and have their team ensure all items are where they should be, in good enough condition to continue using.
Customers looking to save even more time can use Sortly’s in-app barcode and QR code scanner to speed up this process.
Related: How to Manage Bar Inventory
7. Set up custom reporting
We’ve already touched on how easy Sortly makes it for you to generate detail-rich, customizable reports you need to make informed decisions about countless aspects of your business. Need a PDF report of every wine your restaurant has in the cellar, complete with photos? Sortly can do that. Want to know just how much beer you have in all those kegs downstairs? Sortly can pinpoint all of that in a spreadsheet with the click of a button. Need a list of all the cuts of meat you have in that freezer? That’s simple, too.Our customers don’t just use
Sortly to manage their food and beverage inventory. They rely on the app to help them make sense of their storage space, streamline their ordering, and transform their inventory processes.
Experience the simplest inventory management software.
Are you ready to transform how your business does inventory?
About Sortly
Sortly is a top-rated inventory management system perfect for professionals who track food, beverage, and other related inventory items and assets. With key features like low stock alerts, an easy-to-use interface, and the ability to track inventory across multiple locations, Sortly can help you get a handle on your inventory (and that walk-in refrigerator) sooner than you think.
Ready to get started? Claim your free, two-week trial of Sortly today.
