Restaurant Inventory Management Software: A UK Guide

Food is usually a restaurant's second-biggest cost after staff, and it is the one that leaks most quietly. A portion that's a little too generous, a tray of prep that goes in the bin, a case of wine that never gets booked in: none of it shows up until the month's figures look worse than they should.

Inventory management is how you find those leaks. This guide explains what it involves in a restaurant, how far a spreadsheet can take you, what inventory software adds, and what to look for if you buy some. The worked examples use round numbers so you can follow the sums and swap in your own.

What restaurant inventory management means

In a restaurant, inventory management is four jobs:

1. Knowing what you have. Counting stock regularly: meat, fish, dairy, dry goods, drinks and packaging.
2. Knowing what each dish uses. A recipe for every dish, with the quantity of each ingredient in one portion.
3. Knowing what each dish costs. The ingredient costs added up, so you can see each dish's margin.
4. Knowing where the gap is. Comparing what you should have used, from sales and recipes, with what you really used, from your counts and deliveries.

The fourth job is where the money is. The difference between the two figures is waste, over-portioning, mistakes on deliveries or theft. You can't fix a gap you can't see.

Theoretical and actual food cost

Two figures tell you how your kitchen is doing.

Theoretical food cost is what your sales should have cost you in ingredients if every dish was made exactly to its recipe. You work it out from the number of each dish sold and each dish's recipe cost.

Actual food cost is what you really used:

Opening stock + purchases − closing stock = actual food cost

Here is a worked month for a restaurant taking £20,000 in food sales, excluding VAT:

• Theoretical food cost: £5,600 from recipes and sales, which is 28% of sales.
• Actual food cost: £3,000 opening stock + £6,400 of deliveries − £3,100 closing stock = £6,300, which is 31.5% of sales.

The gap is 3.5 percentage points, or £700 that month. Over a year that is about £8,400, enough to pay for a lot of software and still have most of it left. A gap of a point or two is normal. A bigger one tells you to look at portions, waste and deliveries.

Recipe costing: a worked example

Take a cheeseburger with fries, sold for £14 including VAT:

The price excluding 20% VAT is £11.67, so the food cost is £2.82 ÷ £11.67 = 24%, leaving a gross margin of about £8.85.

Now say beef goes up to £10.50 a kilo. The patty costs £1.89, the dish costs £3.09, and food cost rises to 26.5%. If you sell 400 burgers a month, that one price rise costs you £108 a month. If your recipe costs update when the delivery price changes, you see this the week it happens. With a spreadsheet you find out when someone next updates it.

For more on pricing dishes, read our guide to café profit margins, which uses the same method.

Waste: the cost you don't see

Waste is food you paid for and never sold: prep that went off, dishes sent back, over-ordering on fresh produce, and mistakes in the kitchen.

A simple example: if three portions of braised short rib at £4.20 each go in the bin every day, that is £12.60 a day, or about £378 a month. Nobody notices one portion. Everybody notices £378.

Record waste with a reason (out of date, dropped, returned, over-prepped) for two weeks and patterns appear quickly: too much prep on a Monday, a fish order that's too big for midweek, a dish that comes back more than it should. From 31 March 2027, small businesses in England with fewer than 10 employees also have to separate food waste for recycling, so measuring it now helps with that too.

Spreadsheets versus inventory software

Many restaurants start with a spreadsheet, and that is fine. Here is how the two compare:

A spreadsheet works well when you have a short menu, one site, and someone who enjoys keeping it up to date. It starts to struggle when the menu changes often, prices move every week, or more than one person counts stock. The biggest weakness is that a spreadsheet doesn't know what you sold, so every comparison depends on someone typing sales figures across from the till.

What to look for in restaurant inventory software

• A link to your till. Stock should go down when a dish is sold, without anyone typing it in. If inventory software is separate from your EPOS, check how the two connect and how often.
• Modifiers that change stock. "Add bacon" should take bacon off stock. "No cheese" should not take cheese off.
• Prep recipes. Sauces, doughs and stocks made in batches, with their own cost, used inside other recipes.
• Units and packs. You buy chicken by the case and use it by the gram, so the system should convert.
• Waste logging with reasons, costed in your reports.
• Stock counts with variance, ideally blind (without the expected figure showing), so counts are honest.
• Par levels and suggested orders, so ordering takes minutes, not an hour.
• Supplier price changes, with a warning when an ingredient goes up.
• Several sites, if you have them: stock per site and transfers from a central kitchen.

What inventory software costs

Inventory tools are sold in two ways:

• Built into your EPOS or as an add-on. For example, SumUp lists an Advanced Stock module at £19 a month, and Café QR's Stock and recipes add-on is £12 a month.
• A separate inventory system that connects to your till. For example, Square lists Square Restaurant Inventory by MarketMan at £79 a month per location on top of Square for Restaurants Plus. Standalone tools often go deeper on supplier ordering and purchasing, but you pay for two systems and depend on the link between them.

Prices are from the providers' UK pages, last checked on 6 November 2026, and will change. For the whole EPOS bill, including card fees, see our UK EPOS price list.

How to start, with or without software

1. Write recipes for your 10 best-selling dishes. These are most of your food cost.
2. Do a full stock count at the same time on the same day each week, such as Monday morning before deliveries.
3. Book every delivery in and check it against the invoice.
4. Log waste for two weeks, with a reason.
5. Work out theoretical and actual food cost for the month and look at the gap.
6. Fix one thing: a portion size, a prep quantity or a supplier price. Then measure again next month.

Where Café QR fits

Café QR is an EPOS for independent UK cafés, restaurants, pubs and takeaways, and stock is part of the same system as the till. With the Stock and recipes add-on, each dish has a recipe and every order takes its ingredients off stock at the venue that sold it. Options carry their own changes, so "add bacon" takes bacon off and a swap puts the original ingredient back. You can see each dish's cost and margin, make prep batches, record deliveries and waste, count stock blind with variance at cost, and turn low stock into suggested orders for each supplier.

The add-on is £12 a month on any plan, and it is included in Multi-site (£59 a month plus £29 for each extra venue), which adds stock per branch and central kitchen transfers. With Insights and Food safety it is the Profit & Compliance deal at £19 a month, which adds profit per dish on every channel, after VAT and delivery app commission.

There are limits. Café QR records purchase orders, but you place them with the supplier your usual way. There are no supplier price feeds, and the stock figures are only as good as your recipes and counts. A restaurant group that wants a dedicated purchasing system may prefer a standalone inventory tool.

See the restaurant POS page, compare plans on pricing, or start a free month.

Related reading

• Best Restaurant EPOS Systems in the UK
• How to Reduce Restaurant Operating Costs
• Café Profit Margins