The waste log
Keep a sheet by the bar. Every time something is thrown out or given away, someone writes one line: the item, how many, why, and their initials. Remakes, dropped drinks, expired milk, pastries left at close, staff drinks and comps all go on it. A line takes ten seconds.
The reasons matter more than the total. In its first three weeks the sample shop in our kit logged $53.70, and expired pastry and dairy made up almost half of it. That points at how much gets ordered, which the count below helps fix.
The weekly count
Once a week, same day, same time, before the delivery comes in, count everything on the shelf in the unit you buy it in: bags, gallons, cartons, sleeves of cups. Twenty to thirty items covers most small cafes. List them in the order they sit on your shelves and the count goes fast.
What the count tells you
Last week's count, plus what came in, minus what is on the shelf now, is what you used. Your sales tell you what you should have used: 335 lattes at 18 grams each is 6,030 grams of espresso. The difference between the two is shrink.
The sample shop's count for its third week showed $110.93 more stock gone than its sales explain. Its waste log for the same week held $14.16. About $97 left the shop with no line in the log. The biggest gaps were drip coffee beans at $27.60, jasmine green tea at $16.03 and croissants at $12.10. Those are the places to look first: how drip batches are measured, whether tea is weighed or scooped by eye, and where the croissants went.
Order to a par, not by feel
Give every item a par: how much you want on the shelf right after a delivery. Then order the difference. The sample shop's par for oat milk is 18 cartons; with 11 on hand, it orders 7. Pars stop both problems at once: running out of oat milk on a Saturday, and pouring out cream on a Tuesday.
The kit's Inventory Count sheet does the arithmetic. Type the count, and it shows what you used, what your sales say you should have used, the dollar gap for each item, what to order, and the value of what is on the shelf. The Waste and Comp Log totals every week by reason. Both are in the Daily Numbers workbook in the Tillwhistle kit, $97 once.