A par level is how much of something you want on the shelf once a delivery has landed. A reorder point is the level that tells you to order more. Par goes with a fixed schedule: on every order day you count, and order whatever gets you back up to par. A reorder point goes with ordering whenever you need to: the moment stock drops to the line, you order. Kitchens and cafés mostly run on pars, makers mostly on reorder points, and plenty of businesses need both.
The short version
- Par level is a target. The order is par minus what's on hand.
- Reorder point is a trigger. When stock hits it, you order a set amount.
- Pars suit things delivered on set days: milk, bread, produce.
- Reorder points suit things you order when you need them: cups, jars, labels, green coffee.
- Underneath, both need the same two facts: how fast you use it, and how long it takes to arrive.
- TaroStack keeps both from how you really use things. The section near the end shows how.
Par levels, worked through
A café goes through about 10 cartons of oat milk a day, seven days a week. The dairy delivers Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, and the order goes in after close the night before.
The par is what should be on the shelf right after a delivery: enough to reach the next one, plus a cushion. The cushion here is half a day's use, 5 cartons.
| Delivery | Days until the next one | Par |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 2 | 2 × 10 + 5 = 25 |
| Wednesday | 2 | 2 × 10 + 5 = 25 |
| Friday | 3 | 3 × 10 + 5 = 35 |
On Sunday night the count says 7 cartons, so Monday's order is 25 − 7 = 18. On Thursday night it says 6, so Friday's order is 35 − 6 = 29.
Notice Friday. Friday's par is bigger because Friday's delivery has to carry the weekend. One par for every day is an easy mistake to make, and it shows up the same way: somebody runs to the grocery store for oat milk on Sunday afternoon. If that's your Sunday, the problem was set on Friday.
The formula, in words: par = daily use × days until the next delivery + a cushion.
Reorder points, worked through
The same café buys 16 oz to-go cups from a packaging supplier. There's no delivery schedule; the café orders when it needs to, and cups take five days from order to door. It uses about 180 a day, and wants two days of cups as a cushion in case the supplier runs late.
Reorder point = daily use × lead time + safety stock
180 × 5 + 180 × 2 = 900 + 360 = 1,260 cups
So when the stack in the back falls to 1,260, the café orders three cases of 1,000. Over the five days it waits, it uses 900, leaving 360 when the 3,000 arrive. That's 3,360 cups, about eighteen days of trade, and the stack is back down at 1,260 in under twelve days, which is when the next order goes in.
The order size doesn't change from order to order (three cases), and that's typical. What changes is when you order, which a par system never asks you to decide. There's a longer version of this, with jars and a supplier's lead time, in the reorder point example.
Side by side
| Par level | Reorder point | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | How much should be here after a delivery? | When do I order? |
| When you order | On a schedule | Whenever you hit the line |
| How much you order | Changes every time: par minus on hand | Usually the same: a case, a pallet |
| When you count | Every order day | Often enough to notice the line |
| Suits | Milk, bread, produce, anything delivered on set days | Cups, jars, labels, anything ordered as needed |
| When it's wrong | You run short before the next delivery, or bin the extra | You run out while the order's on its way, or tie up cash |
My advice is to use pars for anything with a delivery day and reorder points for everything else, and not to fight about which is better. They answer different questions.
Using both at once: min and max
Some inventory systems call the pair "min and max". The min is the reorder point; the max is an order-up-to level, which is a par by another name. When stock falls to the min, you order enough to reach the max.
For the cups, min 1,260 and max 4,260. At 1,260 on hand, the order is 4,260 − 1,260 = 3,000, which is the same three cases. (What's on the shelf when they arrive is 3,360, not 4,260, because the café kept selling cups while it waited. The max is where the order aims, not where the shelf ends up.) A min/max row is a handy way to write both ideas on one sheet, and the bakery inventory list has a par column and a reorder column side by side for exactly this reason.
Safety stock is inside both
"Reorder point vs safety stock" gets searched as if they were rivals. They're not. Safety stock is the cushion, the 360 cups or the 5 cartons, and it sits inside both formulas. It's there for the week use jumps or the truck is late.
How big to make it is a judgment. A day or two of use for things with reliable suppliers; more for anything shipped from far away or bought from someone who's let you down before. There's a formula for doing it with more precision, in safety stock for a small business, and for most small kitchens the rough version is fine.
Where this stops working
Use isn't flat. The café's 10 cartons a day is really 7 on a Tuesday and 16 on a Saturday, and a par built on the average is short every weekend and long every Wednesday. The fix is a par per delivery day built from that stretch's real use, which is more arithmetic than most people want at 9 p.m.
Pars also get set once and never touched. The menu changes, a new drink takes off, and the whiteboard still says 25.
And both methods are only as good as the count they start from. If nobody counts, or the count is guessed, the order is wrong in a way that looks right. When there's a second person ordering, a second site, or a supplier whose lead time slips, the sheet stops keeping up.
How TaroStack does it
Both methods in this article rest on two facts, how fast you use something and how long it takes to arrive, and both go stale when nobody updates them. TaroStack keeps those facts current. The reorder list shows every item in days of cover, so instead of a par written on a whiteboard in spring, each item says how many days it will last at the rate you're really using it. Reorder points are suggested from how stock actually moves, and you get an alert when something reaches its reorder point.
Suppliers carry their own lead times and minimums, so the cups' five days and the case of 1,000 are written down once rather than remembered, and TaroStack checks each supplier's lead times against how long deliveries really take. Purchase orders can need an approval, and receiving works with or without one. Counting happens on a phone, even with no signal in the walk-in.
The reorder list and suggested reorder points are on every plan, from $49 a month. Min/max levels, and planning what to buy across the week and across sites, are on Standard at $99. Try it free for 30 days. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.