Guide · Inventory & suppliers
How to manage restaurant inventory and suppliers
A guest picks a dish, then finds out an ingredient has run out. The kitchen knew, but the menu never caught up. Zeat tracks availability for the items you sell, with quantities and status visible all through service. Below, you'll tie your deliveries and stock counts to your menu, so you stop promising dishes you can't serve.
Published
What changes when stock meets the menu
What you gain
Fewer orders you can't fill
Your floor team can remove or flag an unavailable item before a guest orders it.
What Zeat tracks
Menu item availability
Every menu item can carry a quantity, a low-stock threshold and a status, visible all through service.
If nothing changes
Guests find out at the table
Stock levels stay in a notebook or in someone's head, while the old menu keeps promising the dish.
A stock-out costs more than one missing item
When the kitchen finds out a dish can't be made, the server has to go back to the table, suggest something else and sometimes redo the whole order. Guests can lose trust in your menu. The problem isn't just how much you have in the walk-in. It's also how long it takes for that information to reach the person selling.
Zeat helps with the part guests see: a mobile menu that shows each item's availability. For that menu to be accurate, your team first has to know what was actually received, used and still on hand. Supplier tracking and stock counts are still the foundation.
86 it on the menu as soon as it runs out
Once a stock-out is confirmed, someone has to update the menu and tell the floor. Zeat shows quantities, low-stock thresholds and availability status for each item you sell. Ask us to show you, on your own menu, what guests and servers see when a dish is 86'd. If there's a substitute, approve what goes into it and its price before offering it.
Tracking menu items this way doesn't mean Zeat automatically calculates recipe ingredients, supplier orders or accounting inventory. Keep your receiving logs and stock counts for those. The real win with Zeat: accurate availability for guests and staff before anyone orders a dish the kitchen can't make.
Check every delivery against what you can actually serve
Compare the purchase order, what actually arrived and the packing slip or invoice. A case on the invoice doesn't mean everything in it is usable. Record the quantities you accepted, anything missing, damaged goods and returns. This quick check keeps you from planning dinner around a delivery that didn't show up as promised.
Use the same unit for each item every time: pounds, bottles or units. If a case moves from the storeroom to the bar, log the transfer. Otherwise, the team will think product went missing when it simply moved. These records can live in a notebook or a spreadsheet. To be clear, we're not presenting Zeat as a tool that automates supplier ordering.
Catch discrepancies before the next shift with a simple count
Expected stock is what you started with, plus accepted deliveries, minus what was used, wasted or returned. A purely hypothetical example: 12 lb of tomatoes at the start, 10 lb accepted on delivery, 8 lb used, 1 lb of logged waste and 2 lb returned gives you 11 lb expected. If you count 10.5 lb, the 0.5 lb difference is worth looking into.
A discrepancy doesn't automatically mean loss or wrongdoing. It can come from a weighing error, a transfer or a delivery that was logged incorrectly. Count at the same time and in the same place every time, then find the cause before you correct the number. The example below walks through the math without imposing an accounting method on your restaurant.
Do the math and spot the gap before you run out
Hypothetical example · Pounds
Same unit, math you can check
- Starting stock
- +12 lb
- Delivery accepted
- +10 lb
- Used in the kitchen
- −8 lb
- Logged waste
- −1 lb
- Returned to supplier
- −2 lb
Expected stock
12 + 10 − 8 − 1 − 2 = 11 lb
- Actual count
- 10.5 lb
- Variance to explain
- −0.5 lb
Check your logs, deliveries and transfers before drawing any conclusion from a variance.
Get ahead of your most-86'd items
Identify the ingredients and products that cause the most stock-outs. For each one, note how fast you use it, your supplier's usual lead time and who places the reorder. If you use about 4 lb a day, delivery takes two days and you want 3 lb of safety stock, a hypothetical reorder point would be 11 lb. Adjust it to your actual sales and lead times.
Compare suppliers on how much arrives usable, not just on the quoted price. A cheaper delivery that's often incomplete can force you to pull a dish from the menu. Your records help you decide sooner whether to change the delivery day, the order quantity or the supplier.
See Zeat in action
Out in the kitchen? Off the menu.
Pick an item that often runs out and show us how you track it today. In a demo, you'll see how to flag it on your mobile menu and what you'll still manage in your own records.
Frequently asked questions
Does Zeat replace my supplier tracking?
This page covers tracking the items on your menu. It doesn't show automated purchasing, supplier invoice management or ingredient-level inventory. Keep your own records for those tasks and check your needs with us during a demo.
Do I need to count everything every night?
Start with items that are expensive, perishable or often out of stock. To compare counts, record the location, the unit and the time of each one.
What should I do when a dish sells out mid-service?
The kitchen confirms the stock-out, the person in charge approves any substitute, then the floor team and the guest-facing menu are updated. Test this flow in Zeat with a real item.