Managing inventory is one of the most important, and challenging, tasks when you’re running a QSR.
It’s essential to have the right ingredients on hand, at the right time, in order to make the items your customers want to buy. You need to understand what stock you have at any given time – too little and you risk running out; too much and you’re tying up valuable working capital and running the risk of spoilage. You need to manage supplier orders and invoices, and crucially, you need to ensure that your pricing strategy reflects the actual cost of goods sold, so that your menu items are always profitable.
You need clear, up to date information in order to make the smart decisions that are the difference between success and failure in the fast-moving world of QSR.
At the same time that you’re juggling all of these balls, you’re striving to delight your customers with your food and your service and grow a thriving and profitable business.
You rely, of course, on your point of sale system (POS) to manage the front of house. You have back office software too. But are they integrated? Deeply integrated? Deep integration means that two software solutions work together effortlessly, exchanging and sharing data, with no need for human intervention. No need to enter data into one system that is already in the other; no need to reconcile information between the two; no need to pore over two separate reports. It’s not just running two software solutions side by side – deep integration is when the suppliers of those solutions have collaborated to make them work together as one.
One of the biggest efficiency boosts you can give your QSR business is a deep integration between inventory management/cost of goods sold (COGS) software and your POS. Here’s how embedding inventory management into your sales operations can save your QSR time and drive revenue and profit:
- Optimised stock levels – the challenge of managing stock is that too little means you risk running out of key items and losing sales; but too much ties up cash and risks spoilage and wasted money. Deep integration automatically updates inventory with every sale registered through your POS, to give you a real-time view of stock at all times. An accurate picture of stock levels, especially when combined with automated ordering, allows you to maintain stock at ‘Goldilocks’ levels – never too little, never too much, but just right. No lost sales, no wasted cash.
- Pricing for profit – knowing the accurate cost of the ingredients in each menu item is the key to setting prices that make a profit. Deep integration between your cost of goods sold (COGS) and pricing systems streamlines the process of price strategy and management to ensure you’re not inadvertently selling at a loss
- Staff efficiency – when you have separate systems, you need to take the data from one and manually enter it into another, or reconcile the information from two sources, such as orders and invoices. Maybe you’re spending a lot of staff time on stock-taking or on managing supplier invoices. Deep integration eliminates the human interface between systems, saving valuable staff time – time that you can use to focus on business growth and customer service.
- Informed decision making – QSR is a fast-moving business, where decisions often need to be made swiftly. Good decisions are based on accurate data – with deep integration between inventory and POS, you can generate reporting based on consolidated data - such as food cost, variances, most sold items and most profitable items. This detailed, reliable and 100% accurate data forms the basis for sound business decisions.
- Better customer experience – the ultimate effect of all these benefits is that your customers have a better experience. The items they want to buy are always available, and staff are free to focus on service. Happy customers return time and time again, and tell others about how great you are, ensuring that your QSR thrives and grows.
Inventory and COGS systems do an essential job in your business, as does your POS. Their value is magnified if they are deeply integrated, working seamlessly together. That’s where the magic of synergy really happens; saving you time, ensuring your business is profitable, and helping you to delight your customers for sustainable growth.
