Stock Management for a Cafe

[hummingbirdcafe]

Quick Question … How does everyone track all their stock coming in and out of their cafe? 

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Been open 5 years now and I manually go through all stock to have a general idea what I need to order etc, I see on square you can organise stock as in physical goods I.e coke cans and bottled water etc however wonder if anyone has a solution for items you don’t sell through the till for example packaging for cakes and biscuits, packets of flour and sugar used for baking etc - just to have an overall view of exactly what is sitting where. If not on square how else do you guys easily manage this to keep things tight! Seen the new handheld devices and thought they might be good for on the go barcode scanning etc if I set it up. 

[Summer2024 · Accepted solution]

Hi, @hummingbirdcafe ! 

I'm going to tag a couple sellers over on that side of the globe who may have some insights into how they manage their stock with their businesses. @Sam_400º @Twiggy 

I know that ingredient based stock tracking is something that's been asked for previously. 

I do have this "workaround" which is still manual but I wanted to be able to at least provide you with something. 

• Set up a hidden category called "Back-of-House Supplies" or whatever else you are thinking 

• Create items like:

  • “Flour (5kg bag)”

  • “Sugar (2kg bag)”

  • “Cake Box – Large”

• Mark them as “Stock tracked”, but not for sale online or at POS

• Whenever you use stock, manually reduce the quantity in Square

Pros:

• Simple

• Centralized inventory view

Cons:

• Still very manual

• No ingredient-level deductions when you sell a product 

I hope this helps! 

[CatiaM]

Hi Summer,

I am in a similar situation and was trying to understand your explanation a bit better as it seems like it makes sense to what we need . I currently want to hold a stock count for stock that is currently being sold through a vending machine on a site with no staff , I just need somewhere centralized that we can keep a record of stock and then manually adjusted as we sell ( it's a vending machine so the payment terminal doesn't connect with square) could you break down this explanation a little more? I can't seem to find " stock tracked" option how do I get there?