Catering inventory: par levels, receiving, and what a delivery really cost
A restaurant sells roughly the same food every day, so its stock settles into a pattern. A caterer serves 400 covers of lamb on Saturday and nothing at all on Tuesday, so there is no pattern to settle into. That is why par levels copied from restaurant thinking do not work in catering, and why most catering teams end up buying from memory. This guide covers what makes catering stock hard, and what a system has to do to make it easy.
- Catering demand is lumpy, so a fixed par level is the wrong tool for most lines.
- Buy from the booked diary and the costed menus, not from a feeling.
- Stock is what arrived, not what you ordered. Receiving at the door is the only accurate moment.
- One basket should leave as one purchase order per supplier, with each supplier minimum visible.
- The movement history matters more than the count. A name and a time on every change.
1. The problems catering teams hit with stock
- Buying from memory. The chef writes an order on Thursday from what feels right, because working it out properly takes two hours.
- Par levels that do not fit. A par level assumes steady use, and a caterer has no steady use.
- Stock goes up when the order is sent. So the system says you have the lamb, and you do not.
- Nobody checks the delivery. The van comes during prep, the boxes go in, and the shortfall shows up on Saturday.
- Counts nobody trusts. The count says nine kilos, the shelf says four, and there is no history to explain the gap.
- Rush orders. Every one of them costs more than the planned order and nobody adds them up.
2. Why catering stock is harder than restaurant stock
Restaurant stock control assumes a rhythm. You sell roughly the same mix every service, so usage averages out and a par level does most of the work for you.
Catering has no rhythm. Saturday needs 40kg of lamb and next Tuesday needs none. An average across those two days describes neither of them. The booked diary, not the average, is what tells you what to buy.
3. Par levels for a business with no two weeks alike
Par levels are not useless in catering. They are useful for a smaller set of lines than most teams apply them to.
Keep true par levels for ambient staples every menu touches: oil, flour, stock, seasoning, the cleaning consumables. For proteins, fresh produce and anything driven by a single booking, buy from the diary instead. A par level on lamb is a guess about a wedding.
4. Buying from the diary instead of from a feeling
A suggested order built from booked catering events, costed menus and current stock is a different document from a shopping list. It knows Saturday needs 40 portions of the lamb, that the lamb recipe takes 180 grams a portion, and that nine kilos are already in the walk-in.
Worth knowing: the useful output is one basket split into one purchase order per supplier, with each supplier minimum shown. Buying is a supplier by supplier decision, and a single combined list hides the two things that decide it.
5. Receiving: the moment the number becomes true
Stock is not what you ordered. Stock is what arrived. Any system that adds stock when the purchase order is sent is telling you a story about a van.
Receiving against the order at the door is the only point where the number can be made accurate, and it is the only point where a short delivery can still be argued about easily. An hour later the driver has gone and it is a credit note negotiation.
Not every kitchen can staff the door every time, and a good system should say so honestly. Where nobody received a delivery, the supplier bill can fill it in afterwards, which is better than a permanent hole, and still worse than checking at the door.
6. Short deliveries, substitutions and credits
Three things happen at the back door and all three change your costs. A line arrives short. A line arrives as something else because the supplier substituted it. A line does not arrive at all.
Each needs a different answer, and the record of which one happened is what makes the supplier bill checkable a week later. See supplier invoice scanning for what to do when the bill lands.
7. Stock movement, and who touched it
The count is less useful than the movements behind it. A number that says nine kilos tells you nothing about why. A movement history that says twelve came in on Monday, three went out to Saturday's catering event and a person adjusted it by half a kilo on Wednesday tells you exactly where to look when the number is wrong.
Insist on a name and a time against every adjustment. Stock control without an audit trail is a guess that people have agreed to believe.
8. What this means for your role
Head of catering
Stock is cash sitting on a shelf. Buying from the booked diary rather than from habit is the fastest way to get that cash back without anybody eating worse.
Executive chef
Your recipes set the quantities. When the ordering is built from recipes you wrote, the order is right because the recipes are right, and nobody is converting portions into cases in their head.
Head chef
You receive the goods, so you decide whether the number is true. Checking at the door takes a minute and saves the week of argument that follows a delivery nobody checked.
Sales director
A late menu change is a stock decision as well as a kitchen one. Knowing what is already bought tells you what you can say yes to without a rush order eating the margin.
9. What good looks like
- Stock counted down by the catering events that actually ran, not by the ones that were booked
- Suggested orders built from the booked diary and current stock
- One basket, one purchase order per supplier, minimums visible
- Receiving done at the door against the order
- Short deliveries and substitutions recorded, not remembered
- A movement history with a name and a time on every line
- Par levels kept only for the ambient staples that deserve them
10. Questions people ask
What is a par level?
A par level is the amount of an ingredient you want to have on hand at all times. When stock drops below it, you buy back up to it. Par levels work well for ambient staples with steady use, and badly for anything driven by a single large booking.
Why is inventory harder for caterers than for restaurants?
Demand is lumpy. A restaurant sells a similar mix every service, so usage smooths out. A caterer can use six months of one ingredient in a single Saturday, then none for weeks. Averages describe nothing useful in that pattern.
Should stock go up when the purchase order is sent?
No. Stock should move when goods are received. A system that adds stock at the point of ordering is telling you about a van, not about your walk-in. A bill can fill a delivery in after the fact when nobody received it at the door, but the receiving step is still where the number becomes true.
How often should a catering kitchen count stock?
Full counts monthly, with weekly spot counts on the highest value lines. Counting everything every week is a job nobody sustains, and an unsustained count is worse than an honest gap.
What is the difference between a suggested order and a shopping list?
A shopping list is what somebody thinks you need. A suggested order is worked from the booked catering events, the recipes behind the menus on them, and what is already in stock. The second one can be checked; the first one can only be trusted.
11. Where Havenue fits
Havenue runs stock from the same record as the catering event and the purchase order, so the booked diary drives the buying and the executed catering event moves the stock.
See inventory and stock management, purchase order management and supplier management.
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