Today we want to tell you about one of our tools, the purchase and consumption audit for hospitality. This type of tool is often undervalued, but it can be the solution to problems such as theft, stock deviations or controlling your franchisees' purchasing circuit.
How the purchasing and consumption audit for hospitality came about
Let’s look at a simple case: after just one summer season, a restaurant discovered during a thorough review that more than 200 beer bottles had gone missing. What was the problem? At first, nobody knew, but shortly afterwards they caught an employee taking a couple of cases after Friday shifts. Many people in hospitality know these things happen, and in other industries too, but in many cases no one knows how to solve it properly, let alone keep it under control.
We could tell you countless stories like this, but we’d rather get straight to the point. Some of our clients came to us with exactly these kinds of issues and didn’t know how to solve them.
We realised that for clients using both our Business Intelligence tool and our Purchasing and Stock tool, we could cross-check sales and consumption data against purchasing data and analyse the variances. That’s why the purchasing and consumption audit tool for hospitality brings all this data together, identifies variances, and quantifies the impact by calculating the cost of those variances. It also breaks the figures down by year, quarter, month, and week.
Practical examples:
Application in over-purchasing
Let’s take an example: the tool tells us there is an issue with the product “Wine”, which is costing us XXX€. It then shows that 60% more is being purchased than sold, and that this happens every month. Let’s say 100 units are being consumed each month, but 160 are being purchased.
Where is all that excess product going? Why is so much being purchased if, supposedly, there is already enough stock in the storeroom, or is it simply being thrown away?
Application in consumption and the purchasing process
Another example: a franchise has a defined purchasing process for its franchisees. Purchases are made through the franchise’s head office, and the franchisor is the one who selects suppliers and negotiates rebates with them. With this tool, we can identify variances such as consuming less product than is being sold. Let’s go back to a product: “burgers”. The tool tells us that 100 are being consumed while 180 are being sold. This can mean one of two things: either the franchisee is purchasing outside the approved purchasing process, or there is a quality issue in how the dishes are being prepared.
Unfortunately, we can’t tell you whether someone is stealing from you, whether they are bypassing the purchasing process, or whether the recipe costing is wrong (in the case of dishes), but the purchasing and consumption audit will identify all of these issues and tell you how much money that problem is costing the business. What’s more, all of this is done automatically and without any effort on your part, so you can focus only on what really matters: your business.
If you want to learn more about our sales forecasting tool for restaurants, visit our website.
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How to move from detecting variances to correcting them day to day
Detecting a variance is a good start, but the real challenge in hospitality comes when you don’t know how to correct it operationally. If you’re buying more than you sell, if food cost goes up for no clear reason, or if each site works with different item references, the audit gives you the warning sign, but you need a tool that helps you take action. That’s where Controliza connects analysis with execution, so you’re not left with just the data.
With Controliza Purchases you can centralize the approved catalog, restrict authorized suppliers, and ensure every order follows the workflow defined by the chain. This helps you reduce off-contract purchasing, prevent each site from negotiating on its own, and improve traceability from order to receipt. In addition, delivery note validation lets you detect price or quantity discrepancies as soon as goods are received, before the error ends up affecting your margin.
This also has a direct impact on waste, recipe costing, and stock. If you combine centralized purchasing with demand forecasting from Forecasting, you can adjust orders to actual consumption and reduce both stockouts and overstock. The result is less variance, better compliance at each site, and a clear view of where money is being lost so you can correct it before it becomes a structural problem.
Why this audit is especially useful in collective catering
In collective catering, the problem is not only theft or stock deviations. You also work with cyclical menus, tight budgets, high production volumes, and strict compliance requirements. That means a small mismatch between what was planned, what was purchased, what arrived on the delivery notes, and what was actually consumed can quickly turn into avoidable waste, higher food cost, and gaps in traceability. If you manage school canteens, hospitals, company dining, or care homes, these deviations are harder to detect because operations look stable on the surface while losses build up day after day.
This is where Controliza adds another layer of operational intelligence. By connecting purchase data, reception, recipe costing, consumption, and APPCC traceability records, you can detect whether the issue comes from over-ordering, poor receiving control, supplier discrepancies, or menu execution problems. For example, if planned consumption follows a cyclical menu but purchases systematically exceed expected demand, you can review ordering criteria with support from Forecasting and adjust before the variance becomes structural.
The practical impact is clear: less waste, tighter control of delivery notes, better compliance, and more reliable food cost. Instead of reacting at the end of the month, you can identify recurring deviations early, understand their operational cause, and correct them before they affect margins or service quality.
How the purchase and consumption audit for hospitality came about
Here is a simple case: a restaurant discovered that after just one summer, upon conducting a thorough review, more than 200 bottles of beer had gone missing. What was the problem? In an initial review nobody knew, but shortly after, an employee was found taking a couple of cases after their Friday shift. Many people who work in hospitality know these things happen, even in other sectors, but often they do not know how to find an adequate solution, let alone control it.
We could tell you a thousand stories like this, but we prefer to get straight to the point. Some of our clients raised these types of problems and did not know how to find a solution.
We realized that for clients who had both our Business Intelligence tool and the Purchasing and Stock tool, we could cross-reference sales and consumption data with purchasing data, and thus analyze deviations. Therefore, the purchase and consumption audit tool for hospitality cross-references all this data, identifies deviations and quantifies this cost, calculating the expense of these deviations. Additionally, it breaks it down by year, quarter, month and week.
Practical examples:
Application in over-purchasing
Pongamos un ejemplo: la herramienta nos dice que tenemos un problema con el producto ‘Vino’, que nos está costando XXX€. Después, nos dice que se está comprando un 60% más de lo que se está vendiendo, y que esto se repite todos los meses. Pongamos que cada mes se están consumiendo 100 unidades y se están comprando 160.
Where is all that surplus product? Why is so much being purchased, if supposedly we have more than enough product in storage or it is being thrown away?
Application in consumption and the purchasing circuit
Otro ejemplo: Una franquicia tiene marcado el circuito de compras para sus franquiciados. Las compras se hacen a la central de la franquiciada y el franquiciador es el que selecciona los proveedores y negocia los rappels con ellos. Mediante esta herramienta, podremos identificar desviaciones como que se está consumiendo menos producto del que se vende. Volvamos a un producto, “hamburguesas”. La herramienta nos dice que se están consumiendo 100 cuando se están vendiendo 180. Esto puede decir dos cosas. O bien, que el franquiciado se está saliendo del circuito de compras o que hay un problema de calidad en la elaboración de los platos.
Unfortunately, we cannot tell you if you are being robbed, if they are going outside the purchasing circuit or if the recipe costing is wrong (in the case of dishes), but the purchase and consumption audit will identify all these problems and tell you how much money that problem is costing the business. Additionally, all of this is done automatically and effortlessly for the client. So you only worry about what truly matters: your business.
Si quieres saber más sobre nuestra herramienta de predicción de ventas para restaurantes visita our website.
You can also visit our LinkedIn profile
