Recipe-Based Stock Control for a Café — A Worked Example
- Recipe-based stock control deducts ingredients the moment an order is placed, not at the end of the week. One latte takes 0.2 litres of milk and 0.02 kilograms of beans off the shelf; three lattes take 0.6 litres and 0.06 kilograms.
- Ingredients are tracked in real units — kilograms, litres, pieces — with eight unit types covering everything from milk in litres to cups in pieces.
- Five things change a stock number: stock in, stock out, waste, a stocktake adjustment, and the orders themselves. Each one leaves its own row in the log, with a name and a time.
- Items without a recipe never touch stock, on purpose. Put recipes on the ingredients that actually disappear and leave the rest of the menu alone.
- The system counts quantities, not money. There is no cost per cup, no margin report and no automatic purchase orders in this layer.
- A stocktake correction is typed as the number you counted — the system does not make you work out the difference.
Most cafés count stock the honest way: somebody looks at the milk on Sunday night, guesses what is left, and orders anyway. Recipe-based stock control replaces the guess with arithmetic that runs itself. You write down what a latte contains once; from then on, every latte ordered subtracts those quantities from your store, and the only things you type by hand are deliveries, waste and the occasional correction. This walkthrough shows what that looks like in a small café, using the same numbers the Kafe360 panel uses in its own setup guide.
What Recipe-Based Means, in One Sentence
Each menu item carries a recipe — a short list of ingredients and how much of each it uses. When the item is ordered, the system writes a deduction against those ingredients. Nobody in service touches stock screens; the waiter orders a latte, the kitchen sees a latte, and somewhere behind them the milk number drops by 0.2 litres. In Kafe360, waiters never even see the stock section — it is a managers-only part of the panel, because the deduction is supposed to happen without anyone getting a screen wrong in the middle of a rush.
Step One — List the Ingredients That Actually Disappear
Start with a short list, not the whole store room. A realistic first list for a coffee-led café has three kinds of thing on it:
| Ingredient | Unit | Why that unit |
|---|---|---|
| Milk | Litre | Delivered in crates, consumed in fractions of a litre per drink |
| Coffee beans | Kilogram | Bought by the bag, consumed in grams per shot — kilograms keep the numbers readable |
| Syrups | Millilitre or litre | Pumps vary; pick the unit your bottle labels use |
| Takeaway cups | Piece | One per takeaway drink, counted exactly |
| Cake, whole | Portion | Bought whole, sold as slices — a portion per slice makes the deduction honest |
Kafe360's stock control offers eight units — kilogram, gram, litre, millilitre, piece, pack, box and portion — and each ingredient keeps its own unit everywhere it appears. Set the minimum level you never want to drop below at the same time: when an ingredient reaches it, the panel marks it Low and counts it at the top of the stock page. That badge is the reminder; no email or message goes out.
Start with ten ingredients, not a hundred. Milk, beans, syrups, cups, the two cakes you bake — the things that visibly disappear. A small list that is correct beats a complete list that was abandoned in week two.
Step Two — Write the Recipes
A recipe is just quantities. Using the example Kafe360 shows in its own panel:
| Menu item | Ingredient | Quantity per serving |
|---|---|---|
| Latte | Milk | 0.2 L |
| Latte | Coffee beans | 0.02 kg |
| Takeaway latte | Milk | 0.2 L |
| Takeaway latte | Coffee beans | 0.02 kg |
| Takeaway latte | Takeaway cup | 1 piece |
Note the last row. A takeaway version of the same drink is a separate menu item, and that is what makes the cup count honest — sit-in lattes do not touch the cup line, takeaway lattes do. Edit recipes whenever the real recipe changes; nothing is retyped elsewhere. And items you deliberately leave without a recipe never touch stock at all, which is the correct fate of the packaged sparkling water you sell by the bottle.
The quantities in this table are the panel's own worked example, not a rule about your coffee. Measure your own — pull a shot onto the scale, pour your milk into a jug. Fifteen minutes with a scale on a quiet afternoon fixes the two numbers your whole coffee count rests on.
What Happens When an Order Comes In
A waiter sends three lattes to the kitchen. The kitchen gets the order; the stock log gets two new rows, both written by the system and marked as such — milk minus 0.6 L, beans minus 0.06 kg. Nobody typed anything. The deduction happens at the moment the order is placed, which matters more than it sounds: if it happened at payment, every unpaid bill at midnight would be milk the system still thinks it has.
The Five Ways a Stock Number Changes
Every movement is one of five types, and each keeps its own row in the log with the person, the time and an optional note:
| Movement | Who enters it | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Stock In | You, at the delivery | Adds on top of what you had |
| Stock Out | You | Removes without a sale — moved to another site, staff food |
| Waste | You, when it happens | Removes and records why — spilled, burnt, past its date |
| Stock Adjustment | You, after a stocktake | Sets the level to what you actually counted |
| Order | Nobody — the system | The recipe deduction described above |
Because waste is logged separately from sales, a spill never hides inside a good trading day. The movements list shows the most recent entries — enough to reconstruct this morning, not a substitute for a monthly review.
A Fortnight in the Life of One Ingredient
Worked example
Milk opens the fortnight at 6 L. A delivery of 20 L arrives on Tuesday and is entered as Stock In. Over fourteen trading days the café sells 68 lattes and 5 takeaway lattes, so the system writes 73 Order deductions of 0.2 L each — 14.6 L in total. A jug is dropped on the Friday: 0.7 L, logged as Waste with a note. By stocktake Sunday the panel expects 6 + 20 − 14.6 − 0.7 = 10.7 L. The fridge is counted and holds 10.2 L. The manager enters a Stock Adjustment of 10.2, the level becomes 10.2, and the 0.5 L gap is now a named, dated number instead of a feeling. Next fortnight the gap is 0.2 L. Nothing was bought, sold or trained differently — it just got counted honestly.
What the Numbers Change About Ordering
The point of the exercise is not the stock page; it is the order you place with the supplier. Once a fortnight of Order rows exists, you know your real usage — 14.6 litres of milk a fortnight in the example above — and the minimum level stops being a guess. Set it at, say, three trading days of usage and the Low badge becomes a reorder signal you can act on. Read the movement log alongside it: if Waste is a meaningful share of the milk line, the answer is a shorter jug or a calmer Friday, not a bigger order.
Where This Stops Being an Inventory System
Recipe-based deduction is one layer, and it is worth knowing where it ends:
- It counts quantities, not money. No ingredient carries a cost, so there is no cost per cup and no margin report. Costing a menu is still your spreadsheet plus your supplier prices.
- It never blocks a sale. Zero stock is information, not a lock. The guest still gets their coffee.
- It does not order for you. There are no supplier records and no purchase orders in this layer — the output is a truthful number and a Low badge, and the phone call is yours.
- It does not message you. No email or push when something runs low. The panel shows it; you look.
- It has no barcode scanning and prints no stocktake sheet. The count happens with a clipboard and the panel, and the correction is typed once.
Do not buy stock control for the costing report unless you have seen the costing report. Plenty of small systems — this one included — deduct quantities honestly and stop there. That is genuinely useful, and it is not the same as a margin report.
Starting Small — the First Week
- Pick ten ingredients maximum and set each one's unit and minimum level.
- Measure two recipes properly with a scale — the drink you sell most, and its takeaway twin.
- Enter deliveries as Stock In on the day they arrive, not from memory at the weekend.
- Log waste when it happens, with a note; a spill entered on Friday is data, one entered on Monday is folklore.
- Count one ingredient — milk — on the next two Sundays and adjust it. If the gap between expected and counted narrows, the recipes are right.
Recipe-based stock control in Kafe360 is part of the annual plan, works in the eight units listed above, and can be switched off entirely in settings if a venue decides counting is not for them yet.
Write two recipes tonight and watch one ingredient for a fortnight. Stock control is included in the annual plan at $249 a year, with a 30-day free trial and no card to start.
Start your 30-day free trialFrequently asked questions
When exactly is stock deducted in recipe-based control?
What happens to menu items with no recipe?
Does stock control stop a sale when an ingredient hits zero?
Can recipe-based stock control tell me what a cup costs?
Will it send an alert when an ingredient runs low?
How do I fix the numbers after a physical stocktake?
Opening a venue? Start with a free QR menu, move to the full system when you are ready.