By John Hicks of Nightclub Marketing
- a specialist division of Headline Promotions, Press and Public Relations
I was once called in to a nightclub where profits had dropped dramatically over the previous twelve months trading period.
Oddly enough, the manager had just resigned and taken off in his new yacht to sail the seven seas, Not a bad result for someone on his wages! But he had left and profits were still underperforming so, naturally, there was a large degree of suspicion falling on the staff in general.
The immediate task was to hold some unannounced stock checks, till crashes mid shift and post-delivery spot checks to ensure deliveries of stock were correct.
Bartenders are generally a nice bunch of people, but temptation sometimes gets the best of them.
Here are some examples of what they might do to “get ahead in life.” There are variations on many of these themes, so don’t by any means consider this a comprehensive list:
1. Overpouring to get a larger tip.
2. Underpouring to build a bank of liquor, which the bartender will later sell and pocket the difference.
3. Bringing in his own liquor from the supermarket, taking advantage of their cheap prices, and pocketing the sales from that bottle
4. Comping drinks to get a bigger tip.
5. Giving free drinks to friends.
6. Ringing bottled beer as draught and pocketing the difference.
7. Ringing a sale on the comp or “no sale” key, then pocketing the difference.
8. Ringing drinks at happy hour prices, allowing the bartender to pocket the difference.
9. Abusing your promotions by ringing up more expensive drinks that contain the same amount/type of liquor as the promotion, and pocketing the difference.
10. Leaving the cash drawer open after ringing the sale, which gives the bartender a chance to make a few sales without you knowing it.
11. Claiming someone walked out without paying, when the bartender is actually pocketing the difference.
12. Selling a sample drink and pocketing the difference.
13. Faking a broken bottle, then selling the contents of the bottle and pocketing the difference.
14. Making and logging a drink wrong, then selling it to someone else after it’s returned and pocketing the difference.
15. Circumventing a pouring spout control system by bringing in his own spouts, leaving spouts off certain bottles, putting electronic spouts in the microwave to fry them (really!), or dozens of other ways that have been devised to beat spout systems.
16. Pocketing unrecorded sales of sodas or juices, which are seldom inventoried, or ringing them as a liquor sale to pad previous unrecorded liquor sales.
17. Z’ing the register an hour or so before quitting time, at which point all subsequent sales can be pocketed.
18. Pretending to make a mistake while ringing up a sale, then using a makeup ring to cover the “mistaken” ring. For instance, ringing a 5.50 drink at 1.50p, then pocketing the four pounds and, if questioned, saying the under-ring was a makeup for a previous sale that they had mistakenly mis-recorded.
19. Over-estimating the wastage in line cleaning and pocketing the difference - or selling the last few pints out of the system.
Many of these scams can be revealed, and thus deterred, by good management practices. Of those, the most important is thorough inventory control, including taking regular physical inventories and tracking receiving and empties. Simply relying on your EPOS system or pouring control system will not take the place of regular, thorough physical inventories.
So the choice is simple: keep a handle on things – or contribute to your bartenders’ early retirement.
What was wrong in the club I mentioned in the introduction? Well, I had people observe staff working, crashed their tills mid shift and reviewed the CCTV footage over many long and arduous hours. Nothing found!
Then on a busy Friday evening I was in the restaurant area with my Director bemoaning the fact that we had not found the problem. I called for an X reading from the till and it looked quite promising. The drinks sales were good. Door takings were fairly typical for a Friday night. Cloakroom sales were not brilliant but ok.
But hand on! Door takings typical??? The club was packed to near its 900 capacity. Door takings, when you divided the money by the admission charge, was only 400 or so people! We crashed the tills and found double the money on the X reading.
Then it dawned on us. There were two tills on the door but only one was connected to the EPOS system, one lot of takings were never recorded. The staff had known the manager was on the take so, when he left, they just carried on and split the takings.
The Police were called and head office started legal proceedings against staff for recovery of the money. And I got brownie points!
