One page, one formula, one Friday walk: what you use in a day, how many days until the truck comes, one day of safety stock, minus what is actually on the shelf - that is the order. Par levels are not purchasing sophistication; they are the sheet that turns the food cost count into an action. The tracker finds the leak. The par sheet stops reordering the water that leaks out of it.
The only math on the page
Par = (weekly usage ÷ 7) × (delivery cycle days + 1 safety day) − on-hand. Round to case size. That is the entire formula, and every argument about it is an argument about four honest inputs:
- Weekly usage - from the purchase invoices, not from memory. One catering week will lie to you for a month; use a rolling three.
- Delivery cycle - the real days between drops, not the contract days. The vendor who says "Tuesday and Friday" and delivers "Tuesday and most Fridays" has a three-day cycle some weeks.
- One safety day - sized to delivery-day reality. A missed truck on a holiday weekend is a calendar fact, not a math error. Safety is for the missed truck, not for the sale you are nostalgic about.
- On-hand - the Friday count. Same shelf walk that feeds the food cost sheet: count first, order second, price third, twenty minutes total.
The sheet - one row per item, one walk per week
Seven columns per row: item in vendor units (cases, bags, each - the math has to speak the vendor's language), weekly usage, real cycle days, par, on-hand, order (par minus on-hand, rounded to case size, zero if negative), and a par check note for the weeks the row surprises you - "salad special," "heat wave," "menu test." Three surprises in a quarter is a par change, not a coincidence.
A row that reads zero two weeks running is telling you the par is too fat. Cut it before the money does.
The quarterly dead-stock audit
Once a quarter, list every item with its shelf value and how many weeks of usage the shelf holds. Anything over three weeks is dead money wearing a uniform: the lamb shoulder from the winter special, the hearts of palm from the catering bid that never came back, the premium bun the menu abandoned. The audit's output is a decision per row - special it, cut the par, or accept the vendor minimum. Not a spreadsheet; decisions.
Worked example - the 40-seat restaurant
Same restaurant as the food cost tracker's 34.1% week. The first par audit finds $2,300 of dead stock. Then the fixes:
- Ground beef: usage 190 lb/week, par 81 lb, ordered as 4×20 lb cases with a standing mid-week top-up. The burger-patty drift from the tracker's example gets a second fix: one random patty weighed per delivery at the door.
- Romaine: sold out by 7pm twice in a month - a three-day cycle written as two. Safety day added, par 24 → 30. The Saturday 86 disappears.
- Produce par cut 15% behind the repaired walk-in gasket - the spoilage fix from the tracker's example, now permanent in the math instead of remembered in a story.
Net effect: roughly $2,300 freed on day one and about $180 a week back, without buying anything smarter. The par sheet did not buy cleverly; it stopped buying stupidly - which is where most food businesses keep their margins.
5 traps (the ones that make the sheet lie)
- Set once, never revisited. A par from opening month is a fossil. The par check column exists so the number learns from the weeks it was wrong.
- Ordering by feel. "We were busy Saturday" is a story; 190 lb is a number. Feel orders double when the rep visits and halves when cash is tight.
- Ignoring case sizes. A par in kitchen units ordering in vendor units rounds every week into drift. Write the par in the unit you order in.
- Safety stock sized by fear. One day is a cushion; five days is a second walk-in you pay rent on.
- Letting the vendor set the par. Their case pack and lead times are inputs. The minimum delivery is their number. The par is yours.
Related: the delivery receiving checklist is where the order becomes fact; the walk-in cooler maintenance checklist keeps the box working; the refrigeration temperature log protects the money the order just spent; the weekly ops review is where par misses get decided; and the purchase order process covers everything with a PO number.
Every page ships with a kit block - the paid tools behind the free advice:
- The First 30 Minutes - free incident quick-start checklist
- Ops Starter Kit - incident response for small teams - $14
- Ops Starter Kit Vol. 2 - advanced incident response & communications - $27
- Ops Mega Bundle - all 5 kits in one download - $49
Code HIVE-LAUNCH30 takes 30% off any kit at checkout.
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