1. Do your research - If you have pars in place already, or not, the first step to making sure they're helping your bottom line is to do a little digging. Talk to your team, especially whoever is doing your ordering, about if they're seeing any products that you're consistently running out of, or throwing away from sitting on the shelf for too long.
   
   You will also need to pull your product sales mix (PMIX) reports from your POS to make sure your current par math is still on par (ba-dum-tss) with your sales. Guest tastes can change quicker than you think, and staying on top of what's selling is crucial to keeping tighter pars and therefore tighter food and bar costs. Gut instinct is great to start, and an incredibly important skillset on its own for running a restaurant, but data/numbers are the quickest and most reliable way to be able to make positive, financially impactful changes.
    
2. Pay attention to holidays, events and food trends - Is Taylor Swift's Eras Tour coming to town next week (a girl can dream)? Or did a new report come out about how french fries have been proven to help prevent chronic illness (still dreaming)? Holidays, events and even food trends can impact your sales, so take extra care to keep on top of them by planning.
   
   Sure, you can't predict when Keith Lee will secretly show up and review your exquisite mango habanero chicken tenders from the front seat of his car, making your restaurant go viral and blowing through your weekly tendies par in 2 hours the next day. But you can plan for sporting events, holidays, reservations and even weather. If a similar event or weather pattern has happened in the past, go back and pull your PMIX numbers from that time to get a better idea of what to expect. 
    
3. Take notes - Speaking of going back and looking at past numbers, if you change or update a par because trends have changed, make a quick note about why so you can readjust if things change again. There's nothing worse than staring at a change you made a few weeks ago, not remembering why, and getting stuck trying to decide if you should or shouldn't have made that change. Have your team get in the practice of leaving notes when they make changes, too, for redundancy in case they leave or change roles at your restaurant. 
    
4. Organize by vendor vs. product when it makes sense to - If you only use a few vendors, it may make more sense to organize your par sheets by product, so you can breeze through inventory before putting in your weekly orders all at once. If on the other hand you use a lot of vendors who all deliver on different days, you may want to organize your par sheets by vendor so you're making sure your pars are met for each order and delivery.
    
5. Set a regular par review cadence - reviewing pars quarterly may be sufficient, but if you're a high volume operation, monthly or bi-weekly can make more of an impact on your bottom line by keeping ordering and prep really dialed in.
   
   
6. Use smart inventory tools to help monitor - It takes a lot of time to review and set your pars, and while more frequent reviews lead to tighter food and bar costs, the time spent on figuring them out doesn't come for free either. Thankfully, there are tons of smart inventory management tools out there that can help get you the numbers you need to manage pars at a glance.
   
   Tools like an integrated waste log (so you can spot check or confirm what your team is telling you about waste), automated invoice management (so you don't have to remember what you should have on hand based on recent orders), and even smart scales for bar inventory or food prep will help confirm the pars your setting are what they should be. You can track waste, invoices and liquor inventory manually, but if you have a lean team or are growing quickly, putting tools in place that integrate (aka talk to each other on their own) to track that stuff for you might be worth the investment.

💬 Ask [me] anything!

Really. Each month we’ll take a look at the questions we get and answer one here. Have a question about our product, accounting, or restaurant operations in general? 💌 Email me or message us on our social media channels.

Taft's Brewing | Cincinnati, OH

THE ECONOMY

Inflation Up (but lower than expected) 

The February 2025 Consumer Price Index (CPI) report is in, and indicates the following month-over-month changes in food inflation:

• Overall Food Inflation: Up 0.2% from January, and is up 2.6% YOY.
• Food At Home: No change from January, and is up 1.9% YOY. 
• Food Away from Home: Up 0.4% from January, and is up 3.7% YOY.
• Limited Service Meals: Up 0.3% from January and by 3.5% YOY.

• Full Service Meals: Up 0.4% from January, and by 3.7% YOY.

Overall, inflation came in at 0.2% up from January, which is still increasing, but at a much softer rate than what was expected. Year-over-year inflation is at 2.8% which is a drop from last month's YoY. Food at home did not change last month, which was due to fruit, vegetable and nonalcoholic drink decreases offsetting the increases for eggs, beef, poultry and fish. Here's our most recent egg prices chart if you're curious.

Tl;dr - YOY restaurant inflation went back up last month, groceries stayed the same.