How to Keep Your Establishment’s Beverages Stocked

Whether you run a restaurant, bar, coffee shop, or another establishment that offers beverages, you need to stay stocked at all times. The non-alcoholic beverage market was at a value of 967.3 billion in 2016. Market research predicts that it will only continue to grow from there, with carbonated drinks leading the charge.

With such expanding growth, offering a variety of beverages at your establishment is a great way to expand your company's income. Keeping up with your consumers' beverage consumption requires you to have a good handle on vendor management. If you don't have the supplies you need to make your drinks, then you don't have drinks.

Depending on your establishment, drinks could be a fun side or the main attraction. Either way, beverages are an essential part of what you have to offer. Creating a good relationship with your drink vendors is vital to keep your customers happy and coming back to patronize your business.

Monitoring Beverage Usage to Inform Purchase Orders

Do you know what your favorite drinks are? Do you know what drinks tend to get ordered most? If you don't, then it's time to start tracking drink orders.

There are several ways you can track drink orders. Most of them will require you to implement a software management system of some kind.

You may already have a way to track what's ordered in your restaurant. Find a way to translate that data into a report. You can do this by reviewing it every month, or having an algorithm create the report for you.

Asset Panda is a great option. Configurable modules allow you to track drinks distributed and translate them directly into purchase orders. You can automate almost the entire process so you can spend more time taking customer requests and focusing on other aspects of your business. Knowing what drinks get requested most often directly informs what you need to order from your vendors. Otherwise, you'll order too much of what you don't need and not enough of what's requested more.

Sending in Purchase Orders Promptly

No one likes hearing that they can't have their favorite beverage. For some people, that could be what stops them from coming back in the future.

Sending in regular purchase orders helps you stay stocked up on the ingredients necessary to make the drinks your patrons love. However, you need first to understand what drinks you serve in a given amount of time, so you know what items you need to keep in stock.
It shouldn't matter how many vendors you use. Whether you have one or 20, you can schedule recurring purchase orders in advance once you know the fulfillment time.

Creating Maintenance Schedules to Keep Your Beverages Stocked

Depending on how you create your drinks, you likely have tools and equipment that help you blend, create, or serve your drinks.
When these assets break, it can seriously mess with your ability to order drinks. What good is making sure everything gets shipped on time when your equipment is broken?

If your vendors supply your machines, you can build in a maintenance clause into your contract. Then it's one more thing you can cross off your list of things you need to do. If you don't already have one, ask if you can review your contract so you can add a maintenance clause to it.