Inventory wastage is the most frustrating kind of loss for any owner or operator of a bar. It’s inventory you had, that you expected to make you money, that just disappears without you seeing a dime from it. This can be hard to pinpoint though, much like shrinkage. You can’t babysit every team member and task in the building, so things can slip through the cracks. It isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s a natural part of owning and running a busy bar. But it does need to be managed, or your profits get ravaged. Here’s a few ways to combat the enemy that is wastage.
Overstocking or poor shelf management is a small way that waste can hit your bar. If your bottles are shoved in the back and out of view, they can get lost back there and lose you the money spent on them. Whether it be from product expiration, or from not seeing them and telling customers you’re out of that liquor, if your shelves are overstocked and unorganized, it can be a quick way to lose your valuable money.
One cause, on the slightly larger side, is bottles that seem to have walked off. Whether they get misplaced somewhere within the four walls of your business, or somehow make their way out, that lost bottle not only represents loss in how much you spent on it, but the hundreds of potential dollars you lost from not turning that bottle into drinks. The fewer bottles that escape your view, the more money you make. It is also the source of waste that harms your bar the most, as a lost bottle with nothing to show for it is pure waste.
Spilling and overpouring are the heavyweights in liquor waste. Overpouring is a small problem, but snowballs into much more. If your bartenders are new or not properly trained, they may be accidentally losing you money without realizing it. Getting so much as 2-3 fewer drinks per bottle can really hit your profit margins hard, and make it hard to succeed in such a volatile industry. Spilled drinks are an innocent form of loss, but loss nonetheless. It’s money spent on liquor and ingredients that a customer didn’t get to enjoy, and you have to make them a new one for free. Or, if a bottle is dropped and spilled, that’s tons of money in product on the floor, wasted. Your bar needs one inventory solution that solves all these waste problems in one fell swoop. That’s why BarMinder exists.
By installing the BarMinder inventory system into your business, your inventory worries will be a thing of the past. You get real-time views of every bottle from when it enters your establishment until it goes into the trash. This means it’s much easier to identify which employees need refreshers on their training so that you can provide every one of your customers with exactly the experience you design.
BarMinder provides bar and restaurant owners an automatic digital inventory count that gives you a count on a physical hub in your location, or the BarMinder mobile app. Simply put a sticker tag on the neck of the liquor bottle, check it into the system, and know exactly what you have in your inventory at all times with confidence. Reduce shrinkage, reduce overhead and make more money with BarMinder.
