Convenience stores have a lot of inventory going in and out. It's essentially their business model. People don't come to make large purchases at a convenience store. They come to make a lot of little purchases. This means that, in order to ensure that your convenience store is as well stocked as possible, you need to have an efficient inventory management system. This will allow you to keep track of what needs to be ordered and restocked before you even risk getting low. Here are some tips for managing your convenience store inventory.

1. Keep Track of Trends

Be sure that you train all of your managers about trends in purchasing. People are going to be much more likely to buy popsicles during the summer than the winter, so it doesn't make sense to purchase a huge order of popsicles in February because they might go bad by July, when they are actually wanted. Teach your managers to pay attention to these trends so that they can more accurately predict what the customers are going to need and how much they will want of it. Keep data for each purpose in a spreadsheet or some other method that will allow your employees to easily create visualizations of the data. Graphs of sales per month for an item is a lot easier to understand than tables of information. 

2. Manage Your Vendors

You might not markup your prices too much in order to remain competitive with other convenience stores in your area. This means that your store is operating on a very small revenue margin on sales. This means that getting your goods for the lowest price is important. It also means that getting the goods on time to sell is important. Your best bet for getting deals and reliable services is to shop around for a vendor that has the best price. Then, you should talk to the vendor to see if he or she would be willing to give you a discount if you promised to purchase all of one type of product from him or her. Finally, keep this relationship going by upholding that promise. By doing this, you should be able to ensure that you consistently have stock that you can sell at a decent profit.

For more information, talk to a company that specializes in inventory management, such as Instant Inventory Service. They might have software that you could install to help your inventory management be even more effective.