Your Inventory Agent Builds the Order From Counts While You Cook
What it takes off your plate
The AgentWorks Inventory Agent takes the inventory math and the ordering off your kitchen manager and chef, the people who should be on the line, tasting and training cooks, not sitting in the office with a clipboard and a calculator. Here is how inventory works in a lot of kitchens. Usage rates are estimated, not calculated from actual counts. Par levels were set once and never adjusted for the season. The order goes in from memory: walk the walk-in, glance at the shelf, call the rep. And the variance between what should have been used and what was actually used is never calculated.
That last gap costs the most. Without variance, waste, over-portioning and product walking out the back door all look the same: a food cost that feels high with no one able to say why.
What the Inventory Agent does, step by step
Inventory runs on people doing counts and vendors filling orders, so the Inventory Agent starts with the messages.
- It reminds the counter. On count day, whoever owns the count, the closing kitchen manager or the sous chef, gets a text with the count sheet for their stations, and a follow-up if the count has not come in by the time you set.
- It chases the gaps. If an item is missing from the count or a number looks wrong against last week, it asks the counter to recheck that item before anything else is calculated.
- It confirms deliveries. When a delivery arrives, it asks the receiving cook to confirm what came in against the invoice, and notes shorts and substitutions with the vendor.
- It calculates real usage. From count to count, adding what was received, it works out what each item actually used, rather than what anyone remembers.
- It adjusts the pars. It compares usage with sales velocity from the POS, raises pars on items that are moving faster and lowers pars on items that sit, so the pars follow the season and the menu.
- It drafts the order. It builds an order suggestion for each vendor from on-hand, par and the next delivery day, and sends it to the chef to adjust and approve. Once approved, it sends the order to the rep and confirms receipt.
- It flags variance. It compares what the POS says should have been used with what the counts show, and flags the items where the gap points to waste, over-portioning or theft, with the likely cause beside each one.
Where the work is recorded
Every count, delivery confirmation and order is saved with the date and who did it, and every message to a vendor rep is logged on that vendor's record in the CRM your team already uses, so anyone can see what was ordered, what was promised and what showed up short.
Usage, pars and variance live alongside your POS data in Square or Toast, item by item. The next morning, the chef opens one page and sees the approved order and when it arrives, the pars that changed and why, and the handful of items with variance worth a conversation. If the chef is off, the sous picks up exactly where the Inventory Agent left off.
What your people do instead
Your chef and kitchen manager stay where the food and the guests are. They taste every sauce before service, coach the new line cook on portioning, and walk the dining room to hear how the specials are landing. When the Inventory Agent flags a variance on proteins, the chef has the conversation with the station, watches a few plates go out and fixes the portion, instead of discovering the problem in next month's statements.
The general manager spends the rush on the floor with guests and the team. The agent keeps the counts, orders and numbers moving, and your people keep the kitchen and the dining room right.
For how the same count data feeds food cost, read how kitchens stop back-of-house margin bleed and how operators manage food costs in the kitchen.
One next step
Inventory and ordering may be the right first workflow to hand to an agent, or reservations, catering inquiries or financial reporting may be costing your team more time with guests. The free Restaurant Industry Assessment shows which workflow an AgentWorks agent should take first. To see every agent built for restaurants and restaurant groups, visit the restaurant industry page.
See where the Inventory Agent would start in your restaurant business.
I'm Tony, the Restaurant ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
Tony replies from restaurant@agentworksstudio.com. One email with the link — no list, no drip, unless you ask for the weekly letter. Or go straight there →