Resource Hub
Restaurant Stock
Management UK
UK restaurants waste an average of 18–20% of purchased food before it reaches a plate. At a 32% food cost target, waste is the fastest route to blowing past it. This hub covers stock control, wastage tracking, cellar management, and the weekly disciplines that keep food cost where it belongs.
🍺
Free Beer Margin Calculator
Enter keg cost, pints per keg, and selling price. Get GP% per pint, weekly margin, and the annual cost of line loss.
Calculate Now →
What Restaurant Stock Management Actually Means
Stock management is the system that sits between your purchasing and your food cost%. Without it, you’re relying on your food cost% at month-end to tell you something went wrong — by which point the waste, theft, or over-portioning has already happened across hundreds of portions.
Weekly stock takes are the foundation. They’re not about auditing your team — they’re about having a number to manage to. Opening stock plus deliveries minus closing stock equals what you used. What you used divided by your revenue gives your actual food cost%. If that number is higher than your theoretical food cost%, the difference is waste, theft, or over-portioning. Now you have something to investigate rather than an unexplained variance at month-end.
Cellar Management and Draught Beer
For pubs and restaurants with draught beer, line loss is a silent profit killer. A standard 9-gallon keg yields approximately 88 pints at zero waste. At 5% line loss you’re getting 83.6 pints — costing you roughly £22 per keg in lost revenue at £4.50/pint. Across 5 kegs a week, that’s £5,720/year going down the drain. Literally. Cellar temperature, line cleaning frequency, and pour technique all affect this number.
Stock Management Deep Dives
01Restaurant Stock Control UK — Complete Guide
How to run a weekly stock take, what to measure, and how to act on the results.
Restaurant Food Waste Reduction UK Guide
The most common causes of food waste and practical ways to reduce them without affecting quality.
Cellar Management UK Pubs — Complete Guide
Temperature, line cleaning, wastage tracking, and getting maximum yield from every keg.
Restaurant Portion Control UK Guide
Why portion inconsistency is a food cost problem, not a quality problem — and how to fix it.
Restaurant Stock Take Template UK (Free)
A weekly stock take spreadsheet built for UK operators — download and use immediately.
Pub Cellar Wastage Calculator
Calculate exactly how much your line loss and cellar wastage is costing per year.
Restaurant Supplier Management UK
How to negotiate better terms, review supplier pricing, and reduce food cost at source.
Restaurant Ordering System UK Guide
Par-level ordering, how to avoid over-buying, and matching orders to actual usage.
Theoretical vs Actual Food Cost UK Restaurants
Understanding the gap between what you should spend and what you actually spend.
Restaurant Console — Stock Module
How the stock control and wastage tracker work inside the Console.
Restaurant Console — Stock Module
Weekly Stock Take + Wastage Tracker Built In
The Stock module inside the Restaurant Console runs your weekly stock take calculation automatically — opening stock, deliveries, closing stock, usage cost, and actual vs theoretical food cost% in one sheet. The cellar wastage tracker calculates the annual cost of your line loss and shows the ROI of reducing it by even 1–2%.
Weekly stock take
Actual vs theoretical food cost
Cellar wastage tracker
Variance analysis
Supplier spend tracker
Par level ordering
Part of the 25-module Restaurant Console — £97 one-time, runs in Google Sheets you own permanently.
Common Stock Management Questions
How often should a restaurant do a stock take?
Weekly for food, weekly for draught beer. Some high-volume operations do daily cellar counts. Monthly stock takes are too infrequent to catch problems early — by the time a monthly figure shows a variance, you’ve lost 4 weeks of margin. A weekly stock take takes 45–60 minutes and gives you a number you can actually act on.
What is a good food cost percentage for a UK restaurant?
Below 32% on food, below 33% on drinks. If your actual food cost% is consistently 3–5% above your theoretical food cost%, the gap is waste, theft, or over-portioning. Each percentage point of food cost on £8,000 weekly food revenue is £4,160/year.
How much beer is lost to line waste in a pub?
Industry average is 5–8% of draught volume. A well-maintained cellar with clean lines and correct temperature runs at 3–5%. Poor cellar management, infrequent line cleaning, or incorrect dispense pressure can push this above 10%. At 5 kegs/week and £4.50/pint, the difference between 5% and 10% waste is £2,860/year.
What is theoretical food cost vs actual food cost?
Theoretical food cost is what you should have spent based on your recipes and the number of portions sold. Actual food cost is what your stock take shows you actually spent. The gap between the two is your variance — caused by waste, theft, over-portioning, complimentary meals, or staff food. Tracking this weekly makes the problem visible and fixable.
Track Stock Weekly with the Console
Weekly stock take, cellar wastage tracker, actual vs theoretical food cost, and 22 more modules. £97 one-time.
Get the Console — £97
See Stock Module
Built at Teal Farm Pub — £916k revenue, 5-star EHO, #1 TripAdvisor Washington.
More Resource Hubs