The relationship with customers, advertising, public relations… anyone who believes the success of a restaurant or a café is exclusively based on these elements, besides the menu offered, hasn’t taken into consideration an equally essential aspect: stock supply and management. Making the order strategy for the various product types efficient and checking that the stock is neither lacking or excessive can help you manage costs and increase the profits of your business.
Managing coffee stock
Coffee falls under the category of products with medium shelf life and, although it can be stored for quite a long time, it’s better not to buy too many batches, to preserve the aroma and the natural fragrance intact. Being a dry product, coffee doesn’t perish, but after a few months it starts losing its aroma and taste intensity, and for this reason, the best thing is to make sure your customers drink the beverage prepared from freshly grounded coffee beans. Do you want to learn more about the roasting and brewing process? Check out the coffee-pro courses of the Vergnano Academy and expand your professional horizons!
Behind every cup there lies a long story, a family, and a number of choices. It’s about expertise, experience and attention to detail passed down and perfected by each generation.
Stock records: everything in order
Efficiency means reducing waste on the one hand and limiting costs on the other. For this reason, it’s important that someone, preferably an accountant, keeps a register always up to date with all the merchandise that enters and exits from the warehouse: the so-called continuous inventory, which coincides, in its more modern version, with a computerised file. This makes it easier for the manager to determine which products need to be reordered and the relevant quantities, based on the actual current state of the stock (classified by product type and shell life) and consumption during the year, which can vary based on the time of year and seasonality of certain products.
Coffee, the elixir of… loyalty
Do your customers seem to be drinking less coffee than usual? Regardless of the sociological or nutritional reason behind it—whether it is due to a spending review caused by the economic crisis or temporary lifestyle trends, so that today that extra cup of coffee is demonised and tomorrow it will be the rediscovered new age to fight the risk of cellular ageing— implement ad hoc marketing strategies that arouse interest in high-quality Italian espresso. An example? A business lunch formula, in which the set menu includes coffee at the end of the meal. Or a coffee bonus: a free espresso once a certain number of coupons has been collected. Do your customers come regularly to the restaurant or café? Serve them a free cup of coffee from time to time! You will benefit from this in the long term, as they will become loyal customers. If you sell packages of coffee beans or ground blends directly to your customers, display them in plain sight, from the one that entered the inventory first, so as to sell them more quickly. You can offer discounts on packages that are becoming too old to be sold, proposing the buy 1, get 1 for free or similar deals.
Dedicated to professionals in search of excellence. To those who want to make every espresso a true masterpiece. Our courses are also open to those who simply love coffee in all its nuances and want to learn every aspect of it.