Opening and closing service: the restaurant stock checklist
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Between one rush and the next, kitchen stock changes fast — and mistakes that go unnoticed at opening often show up at closing, or worse, mid-service. A simple checklist, kept at these two specific moments, prevents most of the bad surprises.
At opening: check before service starts
Before the first customer, three things are worth checking: products close to their expiry date (to use first), alert thresholds triggered since the day before, and deliveries expected that day. This check takes a few minutes and avoids discovering a shortage mid-rush.
It's also the right moment to check that a pending supplier order hasn't silently fallen behind — better to know at 9am than at 7pm, when it's too late to fix.
During service: log as it happens, not afterward
The stock that actually leaves during a service is almost always different from what was planned — a dish that sells better than expected, a kitchen mistake, a product used for something other than its original recipe. Logging what goes out the moment it happens (a quick scan or click) avoids having to reconstruct it all from memory at the end of service, exactly when that's hardest to do correctly.
At closing: what to check before leaving
At the end of service, three checks close the loop: quickly reconciling what was logged as gone with what's visually left in storage (a repeated gap signals a process problem, not just a one-off mistake), flagging any opened product to use first the next day, and checking that no threshold alert went unanswered during the day.
What makes a checklist actually get followed, not just written
A paper checklist posted in the kitchen gets followed the first few weeks, then often forgotten at the first real rush. What holds up over time is when checks rely on automatic alerts (threshold reached, expiry approaching) rather than on one person's memory — the checklist becomes a control reflex rather than one more list of chores.
Frequently asked questions
?Does every type of restaurant need a different checklist?
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The core principles (check at opening, log continuously, control at closing) stay the same; what changes is the specific products and thresholds for each kitchen.
?Does Fluxalyo replace a paper checklist?
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It covers the stock side of it — alert thresholds, expiry dates, stock movements logged as they happen — so the check relies on alerts rather than on the team's memory.
See best practices for tracking expiry dates →
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