How To Organize Your Grocery Stockroom: 7 Tips & Tools

Excessive spoilage, costly stockouts, and lower profits: These are the telltale signs of a grocery store stockroom in disarray. 

Fortunately, these problems are preventable with the right strategies — which is why we’ve put together this quick guide on how to organize your grocery stockroom. 

Keep reading to learn the seven steps to transform your grocery stockroom, improve your inventory management approach, and protect your bottom line. 

1. Evaluate Your Space

Before you dive into reorganizing, take a step back and evaluate the current state of your stockroom. 

First, identify what’s working and what isn’t. For example, you might notice that perishable, high-turnover items like bread and baked goods are located deeper in your storage room, while shelf-stable products like canned goods are more accessible. This layout can lead to underutilized inventory and spoilage. 

Next, look for wasted space. Your stockroom might have a small footprint but high ceilings, which presents the perfect opportunity for vertical storage. 

2. Invest in the Right Storage

Once you’ve completed a thorough audit, you can make more informed decisions about what type of storage you need. 

If your current shelving options don’t cut it, install adjustable shelving units. Adjustable shelving allows you to rearrange your stockroom as needed and stock items of various sizes. 

Need to move items around frequently? Consider using rolling bins. These mobile storage options also make moving inventory from your stockroom to the sales floor easier. 

3. Create a Storage Diagram

You’ve invested in the right storage solutions and reorganized your grocery stockroom; now it’s time to keep it that way. 

Create a storage diagram indicating where each category of item is located in your stockroom, and display copies throughout your space. Employees can easily reference the diagram when receiving and sorting new inventory, making it effortless to maintain your stockroom’s organization. 

4. Understand Food Safety Regulations

Food safety should be your top priority when it comes to organizing your grocery stockroom. 

Without the right inventory management techniques, you run the risk of storing and selling expired products to customers. To prevent this disaster, keep these factors in mind: 

• First in, first out (FIFO): This stocking principle ensures that your oldest products are the first ones retrieved from the stockroom shelves when it’s time to restock the sales floor. 
• Climate control: To keep products fresh and employees comfortable, your stockroom should be kept at a controlled, food-safe temperature. Climate control is particularly important if your stockroom houses perishable products like produce and dairy. 
• Proper handling: Keeping products clean and safe is critical, which is why the FDA advises storing food at least six inches above the ground, discarding produce that has been dropped, and requiring employees to wash their hands or wear gloves when handling certain items. 
• Cross-contamination: If you store meat in your grocery stockroom, you should keep raw meat separate from other foods to prevent cross-contamination. 

Review the FDA’s website and check with your local health department to ensure you follow all food safety regulations and recommendations. 

5. Label All Products, Shelves, and Bins

Labeling is the cornerstone of grocery stockroom organization. Every shelf and bin should have a clearly visible label to help employees quickly identify where items belong. 

If you plan to store perishable items like meat or cheese in your stockroom, make sure they’re thoroughly labeled with the item name, weight, price, package date, and expiration date. 

Pro tip: A deli scale and barcode label printer that integrates with your point of sale (POS) system can simplify the labeling process for these weight-based items. 

6. Use Grocery Inventory Management Software

Grocery inventory management software is a must-have for an organized stockroom and a well-stocked sales floor. 

This powerful tool tracks every product on its journey through your grocery store — from when it arrives and is placed in your stockroom to when a customer takes it through the checkout line. 

Grocery inventory software helps you understand exactly what you have in stock, preventing items from getting lost in your stockroom and helping you make better reordering decisions. 

Related read: Grocery Store POS & Inventory Management Software: 7 Top Providers 

7. Train Your Staff

The best way to implement these strategies is to get your staff on board. Invest time in training your employees on your new stockroom organizational system, and schedule regular refreshers to keep everyone committed to the plan. 

Cover key topics like your stockroom diagram, food safety principles, the importance of thorough labeling, and how to use your grocery inventory software. 

Improve Grocery Inventory Management With IT Retail

Effective grocery inventory management requires two essential ingredients: a well-organized stockroom and the right POS system. 

IT Retail is an all-in-one POS solution specifically designed to help grocers like you manage perishable inventory. With our software, you can monitor stock levels in real time, track and sell perishable items by weight, automatically generate purchase orders to replenish your stock, print custom barcode labels, and more. 

Along with these powerful inventory management features, IT Retail can help you satisfy customers and boost profits with flexible self-checkout options, a built-in loyalty program, and advanced sales reporting.

See IT Retail in action by scheduling your live demo today!