by Imagine trying to decide what to cook for dinner without knowing what’s in your refrigerator or pantry.
You might have your heart set on mashed potatoes — only to find that you don’t have potatoes, butter, or milk.
This culinary disaster is a great example of why inventory management is so important for your farm or butcher shop. To market and sell your farm-fresh meats effectively and profitably, you need to know exactly what’s in stock and ready for sale.
In this blog, we’ll cover three key steps to flawless meat inventory management and explore the tools and strategies you need to make the most of your stock.
1. Invest in the Right Meat Inventory Management Tools
Before we take a deep dive into the world of meat inventory management, let’s make sure you have the right tools.
Investing in a reliable scale, label printer, and point of sale (POS) system will make a world of difference in your inventory management process, ensuring accurate stock counts, minimizing waste, and saving you time.
Let’s take a closer look at these tools and how they can help you manage your stock.
Choose a Reliable Scale
When it comes to weight-based meat sales, accuracy is paramount. When a customer orders three pounds of ground sausage, they expect you to provide exactly what they paid for.
A reliable scale is the starting point for the majority of your sales. Whether you’re packaging pounds of ground beef to display in your farm shop coolers or preparing custom amounts to fulfill online orders, you’ll rely on your scale to help you portion out meat for sale and calculate your prices.
To streamline this process, we recommend choosing a scale that integrates seamlessly with your POS system. This integration eliminates manual weight entry, automatically calculates the weight-based price, and deducts the meat from your inventory records.
Leverage an Integrated Label Printer
A label printer is another crucial meat inventory management tool.
Labels keep your shop’s refrigerators and freezers organized, make it easier for customers to browse your offerings, and ensure accuracy checkout accuracy.
A thorough meat label should include:
- The name of the product
- The package’s exact weight
- The price per pound for the product and the package’s exact price
- Key dates like the package or best by dates
- A barcode
When a customer selects a well-labeled package of meat from your shop, they’ll know exactly how much they’re getting, how much it will cost, and how fresh it is. When it’s time for them to check out, all your cashier has to do is scan the barcode, eliminating the need for error-prone price calculations and inventory adjustments.
Rely on a Specialized POS System
The engine powering these two tools is your POS system, which seamlessly integrates with your scale and label printer to streamline the meat inventory management process. Your system should also give you real-time access to an overview of your inventory and replace the manual process of counting and tracking it on paper or in a spreadsheet.
Keep in mind that meat inventory management can be complicated, so you’ll need a specialized POS system to help you navigate the challenges of perishable stock and weight-based sales. Your best bet will be a solution designed with farmers and butchers in mind will be your best bet.
2. Adopt Meat Inventory Management Best Practices
Now that you have the right tools, it’s time to craft the right approach to meat inventory management. Let’s explore three essential best practices to follow as you take charge of your stock.
Implement a FIFO Approach
First in, first out (FIFO) is a fundamental concept in perishable inventory management. It involves selling your oldest stock first, ensuring that a customer takes it home before it expires.
By following the FIFO principle, you can eliminate waste and provide your customers with the freshest meat — regardless of when they visit your shop.
To put this strategy into practice, you need to thoroughly label your products with their package and best-by dates and organize your refrigerators and freezers to place old stock toward the front and new stock toward the back.
Track and Sell by Weight
Selling by weight is another critical part of a successful meat inventory management plan.
Since every steak, pork chop, and chicken wing in your meat cooler is a different size, you’ll need to sell them by their exact weight. This approach will build your customers’ trust and guarantee that they receive a consistent product every time they shop with you.
Selling by weight also helps you make the most of your meat inventory. Instead of being stuck with odds and ends, you can turn every last ounce of your stock into profit.
To put this strategy into action, you need a reliable scale, label printer, and POS system equipped to manage weight-based sales.
Embrace the Nose to Tail Philosophy
Another way to make the most of your meat inventory is to embrace the “nose to tail” trend.
This approach is all about using the whole animal, rather than only selling the most common cuts. For example, instead of only selling premium steaks and lean ground beef, you can offer bones and organs — which are perfect for making hearty stocks and traditional recipes.
Whole animal butchery helps you reduce waste and maximize sales.It also expands your customer base, establishing your shop as the number one place to go for hard-to-find cuts of meat.
3. Craft a Data-Driven Meat Inventory Management Strategy
We’ve covered the basics of meat inventory management, so it’s time to talk about how to optimize your approach using inventory reports.
Here are three ways to use inventory data to boost customer satisfaction and maximize profits.
Learn About Your Customers
A major benefit of using a POS system to track your meat inventory is that it helps you learn about your customers’ preferences and shopping behaviors.
By reviewing your historical inventory data, you can see when your customers shop, how much they spend, and which products they purchase most often.
For example, you might see an uptick in turkey sales during the fall and winter seasons — and you can use this insight to adjust your marketing and promotional strategies.
Run Strategic Promotions
One way to use your stock records is to plan promotions tailored to your customers’ wants and needs and your inventory turnover trends.
Let's look at an example. Imagine your POS system’s inventory report shows more ground sausage on hand than usual. To avoid waste and increase turnover for the sausage, you can launch a limited-time promotion, offering customers a discount for purchasing it.
Your customers will enjoy the savings, and you’ll be able to sell all the sausage before it spoils — protecting your bottom line.
Another way to keep inventory moving is to offer a subscription service, which lets customers sign up for a recurring shipment of their favorite products.
The easiest way to plan and manage promotions like these is through your POS system. You can customize the terms of the promotion, schedule it, monitor its success, and even send your customers email updates to encourage them to take advantage of the deal.
Make a Long-Term Plan for Your Business
Effective meat inventory management is beneficial in the short term, and it can help you make a long-term plan for your farm’s success.
By learning your inventory turnover rates and understanding your customers’ product preferences and shopping habits, you’ll be better prepared to meet their needs and adjust your operations to maximize their satisfaction and spending.
For example, if you notice a year-after-year increase in purchases of organic meats, you can invest more time and money into expanding your organic offerings and feel confident that your investments will pay off.
Crush Your Meat Inventory Management Goals With GrazeCart
Congratulations! Now you’re ready to manage your shop’s meat inventory like a pro. Let’s do a quick recap of the three key steps to effective meat inventory management:
- Invest in a powerful POS system that integrates with a deli scale and printer.
- Adopt farm industry best practices, including weight-based sales, FIFO, and nose to tail butchery.
- Strive to constantly improve your inventory management practices, using your inventory and sales reports as a guide.
To give your shop the best chance for success, our number one tip is to invest in a farm POS solution like GrazeCart. Our software makes it a breeze to track inventory levels, make weight-based sales, monitor sales trends, and even accept online orders.
Give GrazeCart a try by launching your free trial today.