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Before: Drivers were honest. The process was not. Someone loaded partial pallets, someone else rounded on the sheet, and the receiving manager signed to get back to service. By Friday, three sites thought they owned the same case of protein. What was broken: Transfers were treated like a favor between friends, not a financial event. ERP had a module. People used the group chat because it was faster until it was not. When food cost blew at one site, the first move was blame the vendor. The real leak was untracked moves.
We made the rule dumb simple: nothing moves without a ticket number. Load and receive both sign quantity and temp on high-risk items. Mismatch stops the truck at the door until a photo and a note hit the log. Sounds harsh. It took one week before people preferred it to month-end fights. Ops reviewed transfer variance every Thursday. Small pile. Fast fixes.
Food cost by location finally meant something. Acquisitions due diligence got easier because inventory was not a black box. Drivers and receivers stopped being the unofficial accountants.