Clifftop Bar & Grill: Improving Stock Control in Food & Beverage Mgmt

This report investigates stock control issues at the Clifftop Bar and Grill, a reputable restaurant facing declining profits. An inventory consultant identified discrepancies between recorded and actual inventory values, including missing frozen meat and cheese. The report discusses actual and potential risks such as excessive waste, cash flow problems, and theft. It recommends strategies for mitigating internal threats to stock control, including staff education, risk assessment, and technology implementation, specifically suggesting Zoho Inventory for efficient management. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of technology in improving cost control, waste management, and overall success in the food and beverage industry.

Running head: FOOD AND BEVERAGE MANAGMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Background:...........................................................................................................................2
Actual and potential risks:......................................................................................................3
Mitigation of risks of internal threats to stock control:..........................................................3
Recommendation....................................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction:
Food and beverage industry is one of the most growing industries in the world right
now. Since the time of the first and Second World War, the food and beverage industry had
seen tremendous amount of growth. Back in those days, the government used to ration the
amount of food available in the economy. This had led to the introduction of various kinds of
food preservatives, juice concentrates, artificial sweeteners and many other allied products.
This had led to the great amount of growth in the industry since then. Similarly it has also
faced a lot of problems since then, in the form of storage and accounting of the various food
items. The problems used to persists even more because of the perishable nature of the foods
being involved. In this report, some of these problems specifically related to the inventory
aspect has been discussed.
Discussion:
Background:
The Clifftop bar and Grill is one of the most reputed food restaurants across the
country. It has a considerable amount of reputation in the food and beverage arena. However,
the restaurant has seen a significant amount of fall in its profits in recent months. After
engagement of the inventory consultant some significant amount of observations were made.
According to the inventory consultant, there are large number of discrepancies between the
value of inventory in the records and the actual inventory value. As per the inventory records,
it was also found out that some of the items were also missing, which had added more
confusion to the problem. These items were frozen meat and cheese, which are generally kept
in the inventory at all times, but this time, those have not been accounted for by the
accountants.

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Actual and potential risks:
The restaurant is engaged in the business of food and beverage and like every other business,
it faces quiet a lot of risks both present and potential ones. These risks and threats are some of
the reasons which leads to the loss of these restaurants and the consequent decrease in its
profits. Generation of excessive amounts of wastes in the supply chain is one of the worrying
reasons which is creating havoc in the food and beverage industry. Decrease in the cash flow
and no improvement in the bottom line is another cause of worry for the food and beverage
management. Lack of prudential maintenance of accounting and inventory records, theft are
some of the other risks faced by restaurant businesses. Creation and maintenance of a
competitive advantage is another reason which causes significant amount of risk to these food
restaurants and Clifftop bar and Grill is no exception to this.
Mitigation of risks of internal threats to stock control:
The main aim of risk management is to safeguard the positive development of the
earnings of the restaurant business and ensuring continuity of the business by applying risk
management in an effective manner in the food and beverage industry. Risk management is
part of any restaurant´s strategic and operative preparation, daily decision creation process
and internal control system (Kotas, 2014). The mitigation of the various kinds of risks and
threats to stock control, becomes imperative from the point of view of the business. Some of
the most important ways through which this can be achieved are as follows:
 Educating the staffs of the restaurant about all kinds of potential risks, is one of the
best ways to mitigate risks.
 Involvement of the people across the restaurants would go a long way in mitigating
the risks, frequent brainstorming sessions and open house meetings must be
conducted for devising ways to manage risks.

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 Preparation of a risk chart, classifying each of the risks in the order of their severity.
This would help in categorising each of the risks.
 Development of contingency plans is also a significant step in this regard. It would
help in controlling the situation in case of any emergency.
 Monitoring the risk management functions with the help of technology also is a
significant solution. The use of POS or the Point of Scale technology in the food and
beverage industry has helped in a lot of ways, it has specially helped in keeping a
track of the food items, orders, number of customers and other minute details.
Recommendation:
For the purpose of ensuring strong inventory control management, technology is
imperative. Zoho Inventory is one such popular inventory control systems, which is can be
used in the case of efficient inventory control management (Zoho.com, 2018). It is used as a
management solution for both small and large companies, used to automatically systematise
their order and inventory management, also helping in keeping a track of all the delivery of
the items in order to make better and intelligent business decisions. It also contains a
dominant analytic and reporting kit, and special features such as inventory replacement and
fulfilment for evading stock-outs (Kimes and Beard, 2013). It can be used and are being
rapidly used in food and beverage companies and restaurants for its hassle free user systems,
which enables its users to keep track of all its inventories, ranging from normal raw materials
such as meat, fishes, other perishable items such as cheese and butter related products. The
system would help in providing revenue security in the following ways:
 Centralized storage. The more stock locations the restaurant owners have to govern,
the more difficult it becomes to manage orders and direct products to the right

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customers, increasing the overall costs of maintenance. This leads to significant
amount of revenue wastage and security (Ozdemir and Caliskan, 2014).
 Security: All the items which are entering the premises of the restaurant is being
tracked with the help of the system, this helps in preventing the theft of items by
anyone. This leads to providing significant amount of security against the loss of theft
and provides adequate security to the revenue.
 No more hidden costs. Another competitive advantage of such inventory systems is
that they adjust easily to sudden increase in the sales, and as a result the owners could
adjust them in line with sudden increase and drops (Heo, 2013).
 Accurate planning and forecasting. Inventory management systems helps in
planning ahead and forecasting by keeping track of the status of the food products and
the raw materials, managing negative trends and opportunities, all these play a role in
providing adequate revenue security.
Conclusion:
The food and beverage industry is on the brink of a big break through. With the help
of today’s updated technology, this industry is making progress in leaps and bounds. Be it
Zoho inventory or the POS, these technologies have helped in ensuring the success of the
food and beverage industries. Right from cost control, waste control, price tracking, tracking
of the guests and the item of food produced. With the help of such technologies, the food and
beverage industry would go in a long way in its pursuit of success.

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References:
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Academic Press.
Kimes, S.E. and Beard, J., 2013. The future of restaurant revenue management. Journal of
Revenue and Pricing Management, 12(5), pp.464-469.
Kotas, R., 2014. Management accounting for hotels and restaurants. Routledge.
Ozdemir, B. and Caliskan, O., 2014. A review of literature on restaurant menus: Specifying
the managerial issues. International Journal of gastronomy and food science, 2(1), pp.3-13
Silver, A., 2012. System and method for managing restaurant customer data elements. U.S.
Patent 8,224,700.
Hair Jr, J.F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A.H., Samouel, P. and Page, M.J., 2015. Essentials
of business research methods. Routledge.
Heasman, M. and Lang, T., 2015. Food wars: the global battle for mouths, minds and
markets. Routledge.
Heo, C.Y., 2013. Restaurant revenue management. Revenue management for hospitality and
tourism. Woodeaton, Oxford: Goodfellow Publishers ltd, pp.118-129.
Zoho.com. (2018). Online Inventory Management Software | Zoho Inventory. [online]
Available at: https://www.zoho.com/in/inventory/ [Accessed 17 Jun. 2018].