First and foremost, make sure you know exactly what can cause Positive Variances and Negative Variances by clicking the links.
Once you are sure you have true variances, you need to take action right away. Don’t try to fix a few things and wait for next month to hope they are better. Hope is not a strategy.
We recommend that you use the Critical Inventory to help track inventory items with reoccurring variances by counting them daily. This way you can pinpoint who is working when these variances are happening.
Take Action
Everything that goes out of the kitchen or the bar needs to be rung in the POS. The classic line is: “ Not chit, no shit”.
When you do a critical inventory daily you can find out what is missing during the day or night shift. If something is missing, say a couple of steaks, then you may want to look at who has access to the raw materials. Much product has been taken out of the kitchen by employees in backpacks, purses, even hidden in garbage bags, taken out to the dumpster and then picked up later after the shift. If you tell your team that you are counting a certain item before a shift and then the variances stop, you have a good idea of what the cause was. Analyzing who is working when these odd variances occur is a great way of narrowing down and identifying the culprit.
Ensure that preparation is done according to recipes and that all product that can be used is being used. It’s easy to not use the entire part of a vegetable or empty a bottle of sauce. Do some spot checks when prep is being done.
Have a waste sheet in the kitchen and make sure that everyone writes what is being wasted and the reason. You could also have a tablet or touchscreen with Piecemeal live in the kitchen and waste could be entered live as it happens.