As pandemic measures begin to ease worldwide, diners are looking forward to tucking into their favourite dishes. If you run an F&B business, this comes as welcomed news, and you’ll want your kitchen fully operational and your staff ready to serve diners.
Amidst the rise in customers, ingredients may run low, leaving a line of “hangry” diners. To avoid a situation like that, it’s time to leverage a sound ingredient management system.
What is ingredient management?
Ingredient management is a digitised system to track and manage the quantity of ingredients assigned to each menu item. Keeping stock of ingredients is important to you as a merchant. If your supplies are running low, you can quickly restock instead of taking the dish off the menu. In this way, it helps merchants prevent revenue loss.
Why is ingredient management critical for food and beverage businesses?
- Facilitates processing of ingredients
It is essential to know what ingredients you have on hand during production and formulation and how quickly they are being used. You can put in place a digitalised recipe management program to measure the formulation and outcome of production, ensuring that you allocate the proper amount of ingredients.
Using a smart pos system like Qashier POS system provides:
- A visual understanding of the menu items sold.
- Number of ingredients being used.
- The speed at which they are being consumed.
Having this function allows you to allocate additional unused ingredients to storage. It also ensures that you order more ingredients in a timely fashion. Additionally, you can also take note of low-selling menu items and make better decisions for your business.
- To allow traceability.
Having a plan to manage ingredients throughout delivery, storage, production, and shipping mean that you’ll be able to track those materials accurately. Traceability is critical if you want to operate safely and minimise food poisoning risks. The more information you have on your materials, the less likely that allergens and other contaminants can get mixed into the wrong batch.
Being able to trace materials accurately also means that if you need to recall a product, you will have a head start in identifying and sending back these ingredients. With quality bulk ingredient management, you can accurately account for production and work on problems quickly to minimise the damage and the costs associated with product recalls.
How does the point of sale system help merchants manage ingredients?
A smart point of sale (POS) like the QashierX1 and QashierXL will digitally help your business manage inventory. Merchants can quantify how many ingredients a dish uses when setting up the device.
They can also tag each menu item with the ingredients that the dish uses, so that the system can track the amounts of ingredients utilised when the dish is purchased.
For example, you can add buns, cheddar cheese, lettuce and a meat patty to your cheeseburger item. You can also add the amount of each ingredient that goes into the burger. When the burger is purchased, the system automatically deducts the quantity from your total ingredient inventory.
You can also set a threshold for a notification reminder to tell your staff when a specific ingredient is running out.
This helps the day-to-day, minute-to-minute operations of all businesses to run smoother, and your staff can also react quicker to top up any missing ingredient. It minimises the time your staff carries out stock taking since you can keep your ingredients in check for the coming days and weeks.
This feature is beneficial for running smaller businesses such as food kiosks and hawkers. As the menus have fewer items with a small quantity of ingredients, merchants need to know when something is running low. Qashier’s smart POS system automatically orders your ingredients and you do not have to worry about not having enough ingredients on hand!
Conclusion
When you operate a food and beverage business, you just want to focus on good food and great customer service. Food waste in Southeast Asia accounts for around 50 percent of the total waste generated. Businesses need to ensure that they do not waste food and that products are used or sold optimally.
To prevent waste, you need to have a good ingredient management system that updates you quickly with a detailed list of the foods, including their use-by/best-before dates. In this way, you avoid food getting forgotten and going to waste.
Let a smart POS system like Qashier support your business operations to keep track of your ingredient inventory and prevent food wastage. That way, you can focus on what really matters – growing your business.
Qashier offers multiple digital solutions, including QR code table ordering, table management (F&B), employee management, customer relationship management (loyalty programs), inventory management, data analytics, and cashless payments, in an all-in-one device.
Qashier promises a seamless setup within 10 minutes, without any need for technical expertise. It boasts a user-friendly interface that is simple for anyone to learn and use. If you require assistance, you’ll find 7-days-a-week responsive technical support from the team.
Qashier is also affordable, with prices starting from as low as SGD1/day (in Singapore with a PSG grant), and this includes hardware, software, setup, training and 7-days-a-week local support.
Speak to us to see if Qashier’s Smart POS can meet your business needs. Schedule a meeting with us here, call us at (+65) 3165 0155, WhatsApp (+65) 8882 8912, or email [email protected].