How The Speech House Hotel Cut Stocktake Time by 50% Using growyze

“For years we had an external stocktaker who had been managing inventory for the business,” explains Hannah. “This was beneficial as it meant there was someone completely separate to the business who had nothing to gain from the figures, creating a non-biased, accurate report.”

Despite this benefit, the end-to-end stocktaking process was very time-consuming, using completely manual, pen and paper methods. “We would have to spend a good four-to-six hours prior to the stocktake getting everything ready. Then two days for the full count and this would be followed by processing and pulling everything together. This meant that we were looking at the best part of three days to do a stocktake for a smaller-sized hotel, so it was quite a long, drawn-out process” explains Hannah. 

In 2020 as the external stocktaker approached retirement, Hannah found herself agreeing to take inventory management under her role. “The stocktaking process was expensive and I’d already started looking, thinking there had to be another way out there. We’d continued to do it on a manual basis for about a year, then I was doing a Google search and I found growyze.”

At this point growyze was still in beta testing, meaning that Hannah and The Speech House helped to really shape the product and ensure it could meet the needs of a hotel searching for faster inventory management. Over time, as the product evolved to meet The Speech House’s needs more effectively and Hannah began implementing it into the business, stocktakes became faster and more efficient. 

“We use growyze for all of our stock counts now, so all of our stocktaking on drinks goes through the system. We also do some of the ordering, although some of our suppliers are not digital in any way so we often have to make those orders manually” says Hannah. 

This provides the additional benefit that invoices and deliveries can be reconciled on growyze, as Hannah shares: “When the invoices come in, they automatically go into growyze and match up with the deliveries. When it comes to stocktake we then do all of the stocktaking on the app, which then also gets matched against the deliveries.”

“The biggest benefit for us is the timesaving on the counts,” mentions Hannah. “Plus the detail on the counts is more reliable in terms of the stock available. Whereas before the counts would have taken the best part of three hours per area, we can have the wets counted now in about an hour and a half, to 2 hours. We’ve massively cut back on the counts time which is huge, and then the reporting is much more detailed than when it was manual.”

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Hannah makes use of growyze’s barcode scanning feature, counting items by scanning the barcodes on a phone. “We use the barcode scanning or start to type food in manually where needed” explains Hannah. “Being in the forest the signal isn’t always great, so even with our wireless boosters everywhere we still have to sometimes come out of the fridge to reconnect!”. A problem we’re sure many rural hospitality businesses can relate to… 

Hannah has also helped various other members of the team to adopt growyze for their respective areas. “Our bookkeeper is able to do the invoices, so when they come in she’ll go onto growyze to see they’re correctly matched up. The Chef and Bar Manager are able to use it for ordering and then the Duty Managers and Supervisors can check in deliveries, with Bar Staff being able to add waste.” 

“I’ve recommended growyze to a few other hotels and restaurants”, shares Hannah but often, these businesses aren’t doing stocktake at all - manually or otherwise. “I think that’s the thing with bars, hotels and restaurants, a lot of them don’t do stocktake. They should, but they don’t. Most business owners, especially when it comes to hospitality, are so busy that they don’t have the time or they see it as additional work that isn’t needed.”

But, as Hannah explains, this means they’re missing out on crucial information that could improve and affect their business. “I don’t think many understand the importance of doing a stocktake, the information it can give you to build your business”, explains Hannah. “When I recommend growyze to them I’m always very honest; it’s not always easy to set up and it will take time, but once you get through that it will massively help your business.” 

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‍At growyze we offer a full onboarding service, helping to set up your suppliers, orders and processes using growyze without too much involvement from your team. Book a demo today to find out more.