Par levels, explained: stop counting the walk-in twice a day

The one number that turns stock anxiety into a five-minute morning ritual.
Jelena Kovač
Operations, Xef · Jun 9, 2026 · 6 min read

Every kitchen already has par levels — they just live in someone's head. The sous knows you need six kilos of burrata to survive a weekend, the bartender knows two cases of tonic is the floor. A par level is simply that instinct, written down: the minimum stock you are never willing to dip below.

What a par level is

For each item you care about, the par is the answer to one question: if delivery failed tomorrow, how much do I need on the shelf to get through service without changing the menu? It is not a forecast and not an order quantity — it is a tripwire.

Rule
Set pars on the twenty items that hurt when they run out — not on all four hundred SKUs. Salt never killed a service; burrata has.

Setting pars without a spreadsheet

Take last month's prep sheets and find the worst day for each key item. That number, plus one service of slack, is your starting par. You will be wrong by a little — that is fine. Pars are corrected by service, not by analysis.

Fig. 1 — A twenty-line par list beats a four-hundred-line inventory.
“The goal is not to know your stock. The goal is to never have to think about it.”

Let the orders draft themselves

Once pars exist, restocking is arithmetic — which means software should do it. When Xef sees stock dip below par, it drafts the order to the right vendor at the agreed price and waits for one tap. The morning ritual becomes: read three drafts, approve, pour coffee.

Questions from the pass

How often should pars change?
Seasonally, and whenever the menu does. A summer terrace and a January Tuesday do not share a burrata par.
Do pars work for a bar program?
Better than anywhere — pour counts are predictable and case sizes are standard. Start there if the kitchen resists.
What if my vendor is out of stock?
Xef drafts to your backup vendor automatically when the primary can't fill the line — that's half the point of pars living in the platform.
Run your pars on autopilot
Xef watches stock and drafts the orders — free forever for the base account.
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