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The Stock tab is the master list of every ingredient your restaurant tracks. Ingredients are the atomic unit of Inventory: recipes, modifiers, restocks, waste entries, and auto-deductions all reference them.
Stock tab showing ingredients grouped by category with status badges

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Who this is for

  • Owner / Admin — sets up ingredients during onboarding, maintains costs.
  • Manager — adds new ingredients when a supplier delivers something new, updates unit cost after price changes.
Ingredients are shared across all branches of a restaurant. Adding tomatoes at your Kabulonga branch adds them at every branch. Only stock quantities are branch-specific.

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Add an ingredient

1

Open the Stock tab

Go to Inventory → Stock and tap Add Ingredient (top right).
2

Enter the name

Use the exact name that will appear in recipes — e.g. Chicken breast, not Chix. Recipes and search rely on this label.
3

Choose a unit

Pick the unit you buy and count the ingredient in. Available units:
Do not change units after the ingredient is in use. Existing recipe quantities will not auto-convert. If you must switch, edit every recipe line that references this ingredient.
4

Pick a category

One of: Proteins, Produce, Beverages, Dry Goods, Dairy, Spices, Other. Categories drive grouping on the Stock tab and in Low Stock Alerts.
5

Set the current stock

Enter what you have on hand right now. This seeds the initial value — from here on, restocks and auto-deductions update it automatically.
6

Set min and max stock levels

  • Minimum stock — the level at which the ingredient appears in Low Stock Alerts. Set to at least one day of typical usage.
  • Maximum stock — the target reorder-up-to level. Shown as a reference on the restock modal.
7

Set the unit cost (ZMW)

Cost per one unit — for example ZMW 85 per kg of chicken breast. This drives food-cost analysis on every recipe that uses the ingredient.
8

Save

The ingredient appears in the Stock tab under its category, with a colour-coded status badge based on current stock vs. minimum:
  • Green — healthy (above minimum)
  • Amber — low (at or near minimum)
  • Red — critical (below minimum, appears in Alerts)
  • Grey — out of stock (current_stock = 0)

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Edit an ingredient

Tap any ingredient row to open the edit drawer. You can safely update:
  • Name
  • Category
  • Min / max stock
  • Unit cost
  • Current stock (manual adjustment — writes to the Adjustments log)
Changing unit requires a manager PIN and a warning confirmation because it silently rescales every recipe.

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Delete an ingredient

You can only delete an ingredient that is not referenced by any recipe or modifier. If it is in use, DishInk shows the exact recipes blocking deletion. Remove the recipe links first, then delete.
Instead of deleting, set current stock to 0 and min stock to 0. The ingredient stays available for historical reports without cluttering the Alerts tab.

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Tips & best practices

Cost your ingredients accurately, once a quarter. Food-cost reports are only as good as the unit costs behind them. Pull three recent invoices, average the price, update the ingredient.
Use portions for anything you pre-portion in the kitchen (e.g. 200 g steak). It makes recipes read as 1 portion instead of 0.2 kg and eliminates conversion mistakes.

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Common mistakes

  • Duplicate ingredients — Chicken, Chicken breast, Chix breast all created separately. Consolidate before building recipes.
  • Cost in the wrong unit — ZMW 45 entered when the unit is g instead of kg makes cost-per-serving 1000× too high.
  • Min stock left at 0 — the ingredient will never appear in Low Stock Alerts and you’ll run out mid-service.
  • Manual adjustments used for deliveries — always use Restock for deliveries; it captures unit cost and reference number for reconciliation.
Last modified on July 19, 2026