How do you calculate par level?

Par Level = (Average Daily Usage × Delivery Lead Time in Days) + Safety Stock. For example, if you use 8 kg of chicken daily, deliveries take 2 days, and you keep half a day of safety stock (4 kg), your par is (8 × 2) + 4 = 20 kg.

How much safety stock should a restaurant keep?

A common starting point is half a day to one full day of average usage. Increase it for items with unreliable suppliers or volatile demand, and reduce it for highly perishable items where excess stock becomes waste.

Par Level Calculator

Q: What does par mean in inventory?

Par (or par level) is the minimum quantity of an item a restaurant should keep on hand to cover usage until the next delivery, plus a small safety buffer. When stock falls below par, you reorder enough to bring it back up to par.

Work out the right par level for any inventory item from your daily usage, delivery lead time, and safety stock — plus how much to order at count time.

Average Daily Usage How much of this item you use on a typical day (kg, litres, units — any unit).

Delivery Lead Time (days) Days between placing an order and receiving it.

Safety Stock Buffer in the same unit. Start with half a day of usage.

Current Stock on Hand (optional) If entered, we'll also show how much to order.

Result

Enter usage, lead time, and safety stock to see your par level.

What does par mean in inventory?

Par — short for "periodic automatic replacement" — is the minimum quantity of an item you should have on hand to cover usage until your next delivery arrives, plus a safety buffer. It's the answer to the question every kitchen asks at order time: "how much of this should we have?"

When your count shows stock below par, you order the difference. When it's at or above par, you don't. That simple rule replaces guesswork ordering, which is the root cause of both stockouts and waste.

The par level formula

Par Level = (Average Daily Usage × Lead Time in Days) + Safety Stock

And once you have a par, the order quantity at count time is simply:

Order Quantity = Par Level − Current Stock on Hand

How to find average daily usage

Don't guess. Pull three to four weeks of sales data from your POS for every menu item that uses the ingredient, multiply by the recipe quantity per portion, and divide by days. Recalculate seasonally — usage patterns shift with weather, holidays, and menu changes.

How much safety stock?

Start with half a day to one full day of average usage. Push it higher for items with unreliable suppliers or unpredictable demand spikes; pull it lower for highly perishable items where extra stock just becomes waste. Safety stock is a dial, not a fixed rule.

Common par level mistakes

Setting pars once and never revisiting them — review monthly, or whenever the menu or supplier schedule changes
Using one par for items with very different weekday vs weekend usage — split them if the difference is large
Ignoring case sizes — if your supplier sells in 10 kg cases, round your order to the nearest case and adjust the par slightly to match
Copying pars between locations — two outlets with different sales volumes need different pars, even on the same menu

Par levels and food cost

Par levels are one of the three inventory systems that control your COGS, alongside waste tracking and inventory turnover. Over-ordering shows up as spoilage in your food cost percentage; under-ordering shows up as 86'd items and lost sales. A well-set par avoids both. For the full picture, see our restaurant inventory management guide.