Par Levels and Auto-Reorder: Stop Running Out of Stock

Every chef has lived the Friday-night message: "Chef, we're out of lemons." The dish gets 86'd, the server apologises, and somebody drives to a supermarket at retail prices. None of this is bad luck. It is the predictable result of ordering by feel.

Par levels fix it.

What a par level is

A par level is the minimum quantity of an item you want on hand at the moment the next delivery arrives. When stock drops below par, you order enough to get back above it.

Two numbers per item, that is all:

• Par — the trigger quantity.
• Order quantity — how much to bring in when you hit the trigger (often "back up to par", sometimes a full case).

How to calculate a par level

The honest formula:

Par = daily usage × (lead time in days + safety days)

• Daily usage: average consumption on a normal day. Take it from your recipes and covers, or from the last four weeks of purchases.
• Lead time: days between placing the order and receiving it.
• Safety days: buffer for busy days and late trucks — usually 1 day for fresh produce, 2–3 for dry goods.

Worked example

Lemons: 40 per day on average, supplier delivers next day (lead time 1), safety 1 day.

Par = 40 × (1 + 1) = 80 lemons. Count 55 on Thursday morning → below par → order back to 80 plus the weekend uplift.

For a dry item ordered weekly — say rice at 6 kg/day, lead time 2 days, safety 3 — par = 6 × 5 = 30 kg, and the order quantity is a week's worth (42 kg) so you are not reordering every other day.

Set pars by category, then tune

Don't try to perfect 300 items on day one. Start with:

1. Proteins — the expensive lines where overstock is money sitting in the fridge and understock is a lost dish.
2. The ten things you run out of — ask the team; they know.
3. Everything else at a generous default, then tighten over a month.

Review pars when the menu changes, when the season changes, and after any big event. A par level is a living number.

The count is the hard part — make it easy

A par system only works if someone counts. Keep the count short:

• Count the walk-in and the dry store on a fixed day, before the main order.
• Count in the unit you order in (cases, kilos), not in portions.
• Scan barcodes where you can — it turns a 40-minute count into 10.

Auto-reorder: the part that saves you

Once pars and counts exist, the reorder list writes itself: every item where on hand < par goes on the list with par − on hand as the quantity. No judgement calls at 11 pm, no "did we order the cream?".

This is exactly what AKROUN FOOD AI's inventory console does: set a par on any item, enter counts (or scan), and anything below par flows automatically into a dedicated reorder shopping list — and drops off again once it is back in stock. The list even carries buy links per store, so ordering is a tap, not a phone call.

Three signs your pars are wrong

• Chronic overstock on dry goods: par is too high or order quantity too big — money and shelf space wasted.
• Repeated 86s on the same item: par is too low, or lead time is longer than you think.
• Waste in the bin on fresh items: safety days too generous for perishables.

Adjust one number, watch for two weeks, adjust again. Pars are not set-and-forget, but they are set-and-mostly-forget — and that is the whole point.