Set up storage categories

Storage categories are how your kitchen is laid out — Walk-in Cooler, Freezer, Dry Storage, Bar, Cleaning. Every product belongs to a category, and counts are organized one category at a time. Picking the right categories up front makes counting fast and reports legible.

What a category is

A category is a physical storage location, not a product type. The right test is: "If I walked into the kitchen with a clipboard, where would I stand to count this?"

✅ Walk-in Cooler, Reach-in Freezer, Dry Storage, Bar, Cleaning closet
❌ Proteins, Dairy, Produce, Cleaning Supplies (those are product types, not locations)

If proteins live in the walk-in and dairy lives in the walk-in, they're both in Walk-in Cooler — one count covers both.

Fields on a category

Name (required) — what you'd call the place out loud. Examples: Walk-in Cooler, Freezer, Dry Storage, Bar.
Color — pick a swatch from the palette to color-code products and counts in the UI. Choose whatever helps your team scan quickly — a cool color for cold storage, a warm one for the line.
Description (optional) — a one-liner like "Cold storage near the back door" if names alone aren't obvious.

The Add category form with a required Name field, a row of color swatches, and an optional Description box

Ordering matters

Tap Reorder on the Categories page, then drag categories into the order you actually walk the kitchen. That order is exactly the order they appear during every inventory count — so if you always start at the walk-in and end at the bar, drag the walk-in to the top. Until you set a walk order, categories stay alphabetical and a new category slots into place by name. Once you've reordered, new categories you add land at the bottom of the list, ready to drag into place.

The Categories page in reorder mode: a "Drag to set the order you walk the kitchen" bar with a Done button, above four color-coded categories — Dry Storage, Freezer, Walk-in Cooler, and Bar — each with a drag handle on the right

How many categories should you have?

Three to six is the sweet spot for most restaurants. Too few (one giant "Kitchen" category) makes counts unwieldy. Too many (15 separate categories) turns each count into a parade.

A good rule: one category per physical area your staff walks to, not per shelf or per type of product.

What happens when you delete a category

Categories used by any product can't be hard-deleted. Either reassign those products to a different category first, or accept that the category will be hidden but kept around for historical reports.

Common mistakes

Modeling categories as product types

"Proteins" or "Cleaning Supplies" isn't a category — it's a tag. A category is a storage location. If two product types share a location, they share a category.

Splitting one walk-in into multiple categories

Don't create "Walk-in shelves 1–3" and "Walk-in shelves 4–6". You'll cross the same threshold to count both. One category per trip.

Forgetting to reorder

New categories land at the bottom of the list. Tap Reorder and drag them into the actual walking order on day one — it's a 30-second fix that compounds for every future count.