Inventory Specialist

Firebirds Wood Fired Grill•Charlotte, NC

About The Position

The Inventory Specialist owns the accuracy of food and beverage inventory data across all Firebirds Wood Fired Grill restaurant locations. The role maintains the back-office inventory system, works with Bar and Culinary teams to build and cost recipes, and manages the actual-versus-theoretical (AvT) Bar and Food cost process. It ensures monthly inventories are complete and accurate, working closely with restaurant managers, chefs, supply chain, and accounting to identify and explain variances and help address their root causes.

Requirements

At least 4 years of experience in restaurant inventory, food cost, purchasing, or kitchen management.
Hands-on experience with a restaurant back-office or inventory system, such as Data Central, R365, CrunchTime, or similar.
Working knowledge of recipe costing, yields, and unit-of-measure conversions.
Proficiency in Excel, including lookups, pivot tables, and basic formulas.
Valid driver’s license and reliable transportation for restaurant visits.

Nice To Haves

Associate’s or bachelor’s degree in hospitality, accounting, finance, or culinary arts.
Multi-unit restaurant experience.
Experience integrating POS systems, such as Toast, Aloha, or Square, with inventory software.
ServSafe certification.
Familiarity with month-end close and how inventory affects the P&L.

Responsibilities

Administer the Data Central back-office inventory platform, including users, permissions, locations, onboarding new restaurants, and system settings.
Maintain inventory item master data, including units of measure, pack sizes, conversions, GL categories, and storage locations.
Map POS menu items and modifiers to recipes so theoretical usage calculates correctly.
Troubleshoot data issues and serve as the main contact with the software vendor.
Work with Bar and Culinary teams to build and maintain recipes, prep recipes (sub-recipes), and plate specifications for menu items.
Calculate and update recipe costs as vendor prices change.
Track yields and trim loss so recipe costs reflect actual usage.
Partner with Bar and Culinary on new menu items, limited-time offers, and menu changes, and load them before launch.
Provide plate-cost and menu-mix data to support menu pricing decisions.
Produce AvT reports by location and category.
Investigate significant variances and identify likely causes, including waste, portioning, theft, receiving errors, or inaccurate recipe data.
Share findings with restaurant and area leaders and follow up on corrective actions.
Track trends over time and flag locations that are consistently out of range.
Review submitted inventory counts for completeness, outliers, and unit-of-measure errors before close.
Reconcile ending inventory, purchases, and transfers to cost of goods sold.
Ensure vendor invoices and credits are entered or imported correctly and on time.
Review order guides and par levels with managers to reduce overstock and outages.
Deliver food and beverage cost reports after bi-weekly inventory is completed.
Support budgeting and forecasting with cost and usage data.
Perform other duties as assigned.