What Percent of Your Profits Are You Losing to Theft?

It’s no surprise; theft is a massive problem in the bar and restaurant industry. Sadly, most often it’s because of your staff.

Theft accounts for about 7% of loss in annual revenue for small businesses, and that’s eating into your narrow profit margins.

Most companies cannot afford to lose profit, so for the success and health of your business, it’s best to know where loss and theft can most likely happen and where you can prevent it.

The likely culprits

While it’s not impossible for theft to occur from simply skimming money out of the cash drawer, that type of theft is incredibly easy to track. More often than that, we would consider a lot of theft to be a sort of “friendly theft.” Friendly theft could be employees giving out free drinks or meals or even taking food home.

We call it “friendly fraud” because it’s usually not malicious. Your staff could view giving away food as treating a friend or rewarding themselves for a hard day's work.

But, it still takes money out of your pocket.

The best way to track this is to use your point-of-sale system. Set up the standard of properly having your staff ring things up, and ring up items through your inventory.
Implementing these methods will allow you to track when things go missing.

Tracking food and drink orders from your point of sale system can cut down on some free meals and comps your staff might be giving out.

Once an order is placed and sent to the kitchen or bar, the ticket should not have the option to be deleted, unless you have a general manager or the owner logging in to approve the deletion.

Of course, a POS systm used for security purposes only works if the kitchen staff and bartender know not to give out orders without a ticket. But even if they don’t, you can still track the number of items sold vs. the amount left in your inventory.

You can prevent a lot of that 7% loss to your profit with the right tools in place, and train your staff to use your point-of-sale system properly.

Looking for a point-of-sale solution that does all that and more?

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