How to Build a Restaurant Vendor Ordering Schedule

A restaurant ordering schedule is one weekly calendar that shows, for every vendor, when you count, when the order is due, and when the truck shows up. To build one, write down each vendor's exact cutoff day and time and its delivery days. Then schedule each count before the cutoff it feeds and work out how many days each order has to last.

Without one, the schedule lives in somebody's head. The produce cutoff gets missed on the chef's day off, the meat order goes in a day late, and someone ends up at the store mid-shift. This guide walks through building the calendar, with an illustrative five-vendor example you can adapt. The schedule is one step in the workflow covered in our complete guide to restaurant purchasing and inventory management.

The short answer

For each vendor, you need four things on paper:

1. How you order: portal, app, email, text, or phone call
2. The cutoff: day and time, for every delivery
3. Delivery days, plus the usual delivery window if you know it
4. Days of coverage: how long each order has to last, counted from the day you count until the next delivery after this one arrives

Put all of that on a seven-day grid. Each day then has a list of which vendors to count and order, in cutoff order, and which trucks to expect.

How to build your vendor ordering schedule

1. List every vendor you actually order from

Start with your invoices from the last month or two rather than memory. Include the vendors you order from only every week or two, like coffee, linens, or chemicals. Those are the orders most likely to get forgotten.

2. Record each vendor's ordering method, cutoffs, and delivery days

For each vendor, write down:

• Ordering method. Web portal, vendor app, email, text, or phone.
• Every cutoff, with a time. A vendor that delivers twice a week usually has two cutoffs. Write them as day + time pairs, for example "Mon 4:00 PM" and "Thu 4:00 PM."
• Delivery days and window. "Tuesday, usually before 10 AM" is more useful than "Tuesday."
• Rep name and phone number, for when an order needs to change after cutoff.
• Anything else that affects the order, such as minimums, delivery fees, or a different cutoff on holiday weeks.

Confirm cutoffs with your rep instead of copying them from an old order guide. Routes change, and the cutoff in a vendor's ordering portal may not match what the rep told you years ago. If a vendor is in a different time zone, write down which time zone the cutoff is in.

3. Work backward from each cutoff to set count times

The count for an order has to be finished before that order is due, with enough time left to build and send it. If the cutoff is 4:00 PM and the person ordering also works lunch, a count that starts at 3:30 is too late.

Counting closer to the cutoff gives a more current number. Counting earlier, before prep, is easier to fit into the day. Pick one and keep it consistent, so the same item is counted at about the same point in the day each time.

4. Calculate days of coverage for each order

For each order, count the days from the day you count up to (but not including) the delivery after this one. This assumes trucks arrive before service. If a delivery arrives mid-service, count that day as well.

Two things to watch for:

• Uneven gaps. A Tuesday/Friday vendor gives you a 3-day gap and a 4-day gap. Each order needs its own coverage number.
• Lead time. If a vendor needs the order two days ahead, every order from that vendor has to cover one more day than it would with next-day delivery.

5. Lay it out on a weekly grid

Make a seven-day calendar. Under each day, list:

• Which vendors to count and order, sorted by cutoff time
• Which deliveries are arriving

The grid shows things a vendor list doesn't. You can see which days are overloaded, which days nobody is around to order, and whether a Saturday delivery lands on the day the walk-in is already full.

6. Assign an owner and a backup for each order

Every cutoff needs a name next to it, plus a backup for that person's days off. The calendar is only useful if the person who works that day knows the order is theirs. The backup also needs to know how to place it, which is what an ordering SOP and a one page handoff sheet are for.

7. Post it, and review it when things change

Put the schedule where the people who order will see it: on the office wall, in the shared drive, or in your purchasing system. Recheck it when a vendor changes routes, before holiday weeks, and when you add or drop a vendor.

Worked example: a five-vendor weekly ordering schedule

This is an illustrative example. The restaurant, vendors, cutoffs, and usage numbers are made up to show the method. They are not typical figures for any distributor.

Setup:

• A neighborhood restaurant open 7 days a week.
• All deliveries arrive in the morning, before service.
• The kitchen counts on the morning of each cutoff day.
• Five vendors: a broadline distributor, a produce company, a meat purveyor, a bakery, and a coffee roaster.

Vendor schedule and days of coverage

Here's how two of those coverage numbers work out:

• Broadline, Thursday order. The kitchen counts Thursday morning, and the truck comes Friday. The next broadline truck after that is Tuesday, so the count has to carry the kitchen through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. That's 5 days.
• Meat, Thursday order. The meat purveyor needs two days, so Thursday's order arrives Saturday. The next meat delivery is Wednesday, so this order covers Thursday through Tuesday. That's 6 days, the longest stretch on the schedule except for coffee.

The same schedule as a weekly calendar

Laid out this way, two things stand out:

• Monday has five cutoffs. Whoever orders on Monday needs the meat order in by noon, which means the meat count can't wait until after lunch. Sorting by cutoff time gives that person a running order for the day. If Monday is also that person's day off, the backup has to be named in advance.
• Sunday's only order is bread. That's easy to forget when the usual ordering manager is off. It's a good one to give the Sunday closer.

If Monday is too much for one person, ask your vendors whether a different cutoff or delivery day is available. Some can move you to another route. Others can't, and it's better to find that out before you plan around it.

Using days of coverage to size the order

The coverage column tells you how long each order has to last. Say this kitchen goes through about 4 packages of short rib a day. The short rib comes from the meat purveyor in cases of 6 packages.

On Thursday morning there are 11 packages on hand:

Needed through Tuesday: 4 packages × 6 days = 24 packages
Short:                  24 − 11 = 13 packages
In cases:               13 ÷ 6 = 2.17 → order 3 cases (18 packages)

On Monday the same item only needs to cover 5 days, or 20 packages. Ordering the same amount on both days would leave the kitchen either short over the weekend or overstocked early in the week.

That calculation doesn't include a buffer for busy nights or a late truck. Our guide to setting restaurant par levels covers how to add one. If you count in packages but buy in cases, as in this example, see restaurant inventory units for how to handle the conversion.

How often should a restaurant order?

There's no single right frequency. In practice, it's set by a few things:

• The vendor's delivery days. You can only order as often as they deliver to you.
• Shelf life. Produce, fish, and bread usually need more frequent deliveries than dry goods or paper.
• Storage space. A small walk-in can force more frequent, smaller orders.
• Minimums and delivery fees. If a vendor has a minimum, a light order may not be worth placing. Our guide to comparing vendor prices shows how fees and minimums change which vendor is really cheaper.
• Who has time to order. Every extra cutoff is another count and another order someone has to do.

The tradeoff shows up in the coverage numbers. In the example above, the broadline orders cover 4 or 5 days. If the same vendor delivered only on Fridays, the Thursday order would have to cover Thursday through the following Thursday, which is 8 days. That means more product on the shelf and more space and cash tied up in it. In exchange, there's one less order to place each week.

Common mistakes with vendor ordering schedules

• Writing down the day but not the time. That's how orders end up a few hours late.
• Counting after the cutoff. If the count happens at close and the cutoff was 4 PM, the order was built from yesterday's numbers.
• Treating both weekly orders from one vendor the same. Uneven delivery gaps need different order sizes.
• Forgetting lead time. A vendor that needs two days' notice adds a day to every order's coverage.
• Ignoring orders that haven't arrived yet. With long lead times, like the coffee order above, check what's already on order before you place another one.
• No backup person. If one manager does all the ordering, every day off is a risk.
• Not checking holiday weeks. Delivery days and cutoffs often shift around holidays. Ask your reps ahead of time instead of finding out when the truck doesn't come. Our guide to restaurant holiday ordering shows how to redraw the week and resize each order.

Keeping the schedule in Proteus Kitchen

A printed calendar on the office wall works. It just has to be updated by hand when a vendor changes a cutoff. If you'd rather keep vendor details with the rest of your purchasing, Proteus Kitchen lets you save each vendor's ordering method, delivery days, one or more order deadlines (each a day and time), contact information, and notes. Those vendors sit alongside your inventory, purchase orders, and purchasing history, and Proteus doesn't need a POS integration.

Next step: map your vendors this week

1. Pull your last month of invoices and list every vendor.
2. Confirm each cutoff day and time, and each delivery day, with your reps.
3. Fill in the vendor table above with your own vendors, then build the weekly grid.
4. Put a name and a backup next to every cutoff.
5. After two or three weeks, check which orders were late, short, or rushed, and adjust the schedule.