Guide
Deliveries, Ordering & Stockholding: Controlling Stock From the Door to the Shelf
By David Holden · Stock Auditing since 1992 – Allied Domecq, Hilton, Marco Pierre White, RedCat Hospitality Ltd.
Treat every box on a delivery like an envelope stuffed with £50 notes, because that’s exactly what it is.
Goods in is where your money enters the building, it’s one of the most fundamental steps in stock control but also one of the most overlooked parts of the operation. What you order, what you sign for and how much you store on the shelf all decide how much cash is tied up and how much quietly goes missing before a single sale. This guide brings together everything I’ve written on it.
PART ONE - CHECKING A DELIVERY
How should a delivery be checked?
Three things have to agree before anyone signs: what you ordered, what the delivery note says, and what’s physically in front of you.
Touch every product. Don’t trust the driver’s count and don’t assume the box holds what it should. The delivery note is what the supplier will point to if you try to claim a credit later, so if anything is short, damaged write it on the delivery note before the driver leaves - Then phone the supplier the same day, log the shortage and chase the credit until it lands. Put the stock away immediately, I’ve found cases of wine left in a car park because whoever signed for them had gone back inside and left them sitting there waiting to be stolen.
You can’t control what you don’t have. If stock is missing before it even reaches the store room everything after it, the stocktake, the GP, the variance, is measuring a number that was wrong from the start.
PART TWO - NOBODY IN THE CELLAR ALONE
Should delivery drivers go into the cellar on their own?
No. Nobody goes into your cellar or storeroom unaccompanied, not because you distrust them, but because it removes the opportunity.
At one Birmingham site, the GM watched a drayman wheel out a full keg of Guinness hidden under a stack of empties. She caught it at the door. But the switch had been set up minutes earlier in the cellar, while he was in there on his own.
One keg, £594 to replace. A 50-litre Guinness keg costs around £190 trade. Lose it and you need £594 of sales from nowhere to keep your margin straight.
PART THREE - "IT'S ALL THERE, SIGN HERE"
What do you do when a driver pressures you to sign?
Check anyway. If someone is pushing you to sign before you’ve looked, ask yourself what they’ve got to gain from you not looking.
“Must still be on the lorry” – said 25 floors up, about a keg that would mean a second trip down in the lift. A simple test: if the excuse costs the driver more effort than just producing the item, be suspicious!
It works the other way too. A butcher trying to clear stock delivered 8kg against a 5kg order, hoping nobody would check. You’re not short-changed, you’re actually spending more and solving someone else’s stock problem.
Whoever checks needs two things: to know the stock well enough to check quickly, and the backbone to say “not until it’s checked” when a driver starts looking at his watch.
PART FOUR - ORDERING
How do you order stock properly?
Count first, then order, on a fixed day, in the building, with the stock in front of you. Order up to par, from what you’ll actually sell.
ORDERING DONE PROPERLY
-
Set a fixed ordering day. Same day every week.
-
Count everything on that day - In the building, not from memory.
-
Look at what you’ll sell. Same week last year, plus any functions or parties already booked.
-
Order up to par - Not what you ordered last time, and not what the rep suggests.
-
Order little and often rather than one big order.
-
Have big orders checked by someone else before they go in – Christmas above all.
-
Check the delivery against the order when it arrives.
Ordering from the sofa at home is guesswork dressed up as management. And bulk buying feels efficient, but you then spend weeks hoping to sell it before it expires or gets in the way. Small regular orders keep stock turning and cash moving, and when something stops selling, you’re not sitting on six cases of it.
PART FIVE - PAR LEVELS
How do you work out a par level?
Par level = average daily usage × (lead time + days until the next delivery) + safety stock.
It has to carry you from placing the order right through to the delivery after.
House Red Wine, Weekly delivery: Average sales of 2 bottles a day - Two days’ lead time = 4 bottles. Plus seven days to the next delivery = 14 bottles. Add 2 as a buffer. Par level is 20.
On ordering day, count what’s there and order the difference. Seven bottles on the shelf against a par of 20 means you order 13.
Safety stock covers a late delivery or a busier weekend than expected. It isn’t a second cellar. Every bottle above par is cash that has left your bank account and not come back yet, which is how a business ends up stock rich and cash poor, with full fridges and nothing in the account on a Thursday when wages go out.
Read: Stock and Ordering Controls in Hospitality - The Framework That Keeps Cash Moving →
PART SIX - SLOW MOVERS AND CHRISTMAS
What does over-ordering actually cost?
Not usually spoilage - Dead money. Cash sitting on a shelf that could be paying for stock that sells this week.
Sell 4 shots of Lagavulin a month and keep a backup bottle, and it might sit there for six months. You might as well pin two £20 notes to the spirit store wall. The better question is why it’s on the list at all.
Christmas is where it goes most wrong. I once found 50 cases of Skol Special in a pub that sold three a week - That's nearly 17 weeks of stock, about £1,500 in today’s money, on one line. Across the site, stockholding had gone from around £5,000 to £40,000.
The invoice for the overstocked beer would have to be paid in January despite the stock not having been sold.
Christmas is a busy period, not a three-month siege. Pull last Christmas’s sales line by line, add any parties already booked, and order from that, not from the back of a napkin.
PART SEVEN - DAYS STOCKHOLDING
How much stock should a bar hold?
Under 14 days’ worth for liquor. In my experience, the sites that keep stockholding low are the ones that are usually well run everywhere else too.
Run the same sum product by product and the slow movers stand out straight away. Functions get blamed for high stockholding more often than they explain it - They’re planned in advance, so order for them properly and the figure should still land where it should.
What’s it worth to you?
A £30 short delivery once a fortnight is £780 a year nobody notices. One keg lost at the door needs £594 of sales to replace. And on the bar above, £1,300 is sitting on a shelf instead of in the bank.
PART EIGHT
Common questions
What should I do if a delivery is short?
Write the details on the delivery note before the driver leaves, phone the supplier the same day, and chase the credit until it arrives.
What is a par level?
The stock level you order up to. Average daily usage × (lead time + days until the next delivery), plus a small safety buffer. Count what’s there and order the difference.
How many days of stock should a bar hold?
Generally, under 14 days for liquor. Above that, cash is tied up in stock that isn’t selling.
How should I plan my Christmas order?
From last Christmas’s sales reports, line by line, plus any bookings already in. Not from memory or guesses.
RELATED GUIDES
Understanding Your Stocktake Report
What the numbers mean, and when a variance is a problem.