At our front desk, visitor badges vanish by Wednesday most weeks, so I’ve added a 2:30 p.m. midweek restock to the supply schedule to keep staff from scrambling. What’s the unexpected item you find yourself reordering most, and how do you time your replenishments?
For us it’s single-use alcohol wipes — guests grab them for phones and they disappear like mints at reception. @smith95 do you trust auto-ship for spikes, or do you set a 20% threshold? We use a two-bin kanban with a QR card on the last sleeve and a 3:00 p.m. Mon/Wed check to trigger reorders.
Phone charging cables disappear fastest here; we switched to bright-orange braided ones and marked the bin with a tape line — when it’s below the line by your “2:30 p.m.” Wednesday check, we top up and place the next-day order. Small caveat: people still pocket them, so we added a $0.00 “loaner” entry in the visitor log to nudge returns. @smith95 have you tried color-coding consumables to make low stock obvious?
Umbrella bags, weirdly. Rainy weeks wipe us out, so I do a Monday morning ‘forecast check’ — if there are 2+ wet days ahead we pre‑stage two extra sleeves and move the bin forward; otherwise they stay in the closet to curb waste, and we switched to compostable ones. Curious if anyone else ties restocks to weather, @luis.c, but this has been rock solid.
Wi‑Fi cards vanish fastest here, they migrate like geese by Tuesday, so I added a desk sign with a QR code and switched the handouts to half‑sheets, then set a par level of 20 in the holder — when it dips below that, we run a batch with the weekly print jobs. Curious if anyone has tried printing them on colored stock to slow the ‘souvenir effect’.
It’s the badge clips for us; they evaporate by Thursday. We switched to neon mini‑carabiners and set a “return clips here” dish at the exit, plus a sweep right before your 2:30 p.m. restock — curious if @lucwrig’s QR sign cut your paper waste much.