Sold out is not a stock count
A rival’s site says a sold-out item is instantly removed from the menu. That is availability. Three different things get called stock, and only one is this.
One rival’s site says that if something goes out of stock while a guest is browsing, it is instantly removed from the menu. It is a good sentence and a real feature. It is also the only sentence about stock on their 119 pages, and when we read it against the stock row of our comparison table, the cell stayed blank. That looks harsh until you separate the three things operators mean when they say stock.
Three meanings of one word
Availability is whether a guest can order the dish right now. A sold-out switch on the till or the kitchen screen, and the menu updating so nobody orders what cannot be made. Every ordering product needs this and most have it. It is a yes or no per dish.
Counts are how much of each ingredient you hold. Chicken thighs in kilos, buns in units, a case of tonic. Counting it in, counting it out, and a stocktake that tells you what walked. This is where theft, waste and over-ordering show up, and it is what a bar manager means by stock.
Cost is what a dish costs to make from its recipe, what margin it earns at its menu price, and what the margin should have been against what it was. This needs counts, prices and recipes together, and it is the number a food hall owner is actually chasing when they ask about stock, because it is the one that moves profit.
Why the row means the second and third
Our row is named for ingredient-level stock and recipe costing, so a tick means a supplier describes counts or cost. Availability alone does not earn it, however well it is done, because a venue with a sold-out switch and no counts still has no idea what its food cost was last week. A rival whose site describes counting, purchase orders and variance earns a half even with no costing, and we wrote about that last week. A rival whose site describes only the sold-out switch earns a blank, with the sentence recorded in our notes so the next reader knows exactly what was found.
When you ask a supplier whether they do stock, ask which of the three. The answer yes is true for all of them and useful for none.