How much stock to keep on hand.

Two different problems wearing one name

"How much stock should I keep" sounds like one question. It's really two, and they pull in opposite directions. Keep too little of anything and you run out mid-shift, turning away a customer who was ready to pay. Keep too much of the wrong thing and it spoils in the fridge, or it just sits there as cash you can't spend on tomorrow's delivery. A carinderia near a jeepney stop in Quezon City doesn't have one answer to "how much" — it has a different answer for the pork, the rice, and the styro containers, all sitting three feet apart.

Perishable wants less, shelf-stable can carry more

Fresh meat, produce, and dairy spoil on a clock you don't control. Buy more than you'll use before it turns, and the extra isn't stock anymore, it's a loss you paid for. A small fridge makes this worse: even if the item wouldn't spoil for another two days, there's nowhere to put it. The right on-hand level for a perishable item is close to what you'll sell before it spoils or before the next delivery, whichever comes first.

Rice, canned goods, bottled drinks, and disposables like cups and wrappers don't have that clock. A bag of rice doesn't care if it sits for two weeks. For these, the ceiling isn't spoilage, it's cash and shelf space. You can carry more of them without losing anything, so it's fine to buy a week or two ahead if the price or the trip makes that worth it.

The rule of thumb

Instead of a fixed formula, think in two dials: how fast the item sells, and how fast it spoils.

1. Fast-selling and perishable. Keep the least. Restock near daily. This is the fresh patties, the lettuce, the milk. The fridge shouldn't be full of these overnight.
2. Slow-selling and shelf-stable. Keep the most. Restock weekly or every two weeks. This is the rice, the canned goods, the disposables. There's no cost to having extra sitting in the corner.
3. Everything in between scales with the same logic. A fast-selling shelf-stable item (say, bottled water on a hot week) can still carry a few extra days because it won't spoil. A slow-selling perishable item (say, a specialty cheese you only use for one dish) should carry almost nothing, because slow sales plus a spoilage clock is the worst combination there is.

This is the same days-of-stock thinking as the safety-stock guide, just applied to the base level instead of the buffer on top of it. And "on hand" isn't only what's on the shelf right now — count what's already ordered and on the way too, the way the stock-in-transit guide lays out. A tray of patties already on the truck is stock you have, even if it hasn't landed yet.

A quick way to check yourself

Walk the counter and the fridge once. For each item, ask two questions: would this still be good in three days, and would I run out before then at the rate it's selling. An item that fails the first question (it wouldn't survive three days) needs a tighter, more frequent restock. An item that fails the second (you'd sell through it before three days are up) needs a bigger buffer or a faster delivery cycle. Most stalls find their fresh items cluster on one side and their dry goods cluster on the other, which is exactly the split this guide is describing.

Where ForeFlux picks up

ForeFlux tracks days-of-stock for every item automatically, using how fast it's actually selling, not a guess. So instead of walking the counter and doing this math by hand for every ingredient, the order sheet already shows which items are running thin and which ones have room to wait. The perishable-versus-shelf-stable split still matters, ForeFlux just does the daily counting for you.