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There are a lot of ways employees and customers can steal from you. How do you alleviate the common ways? As anyone who has worked in the food & beverage industry is aware, theft and loss is a serious problem that you need to manage. Theft can be done by employees or customers and is often not as straight-forward as taking money from the till or stealing your salt shakers.
Theft, a common problem in the industry?
As anyone who has worked in the food & beverage industry is aware, theft and loss is a serious problem that needs to be addressed and managed. Theft can be done by employees or customers and is often not as straight-forward as taking money from the till or stealing your salt shakers.
Here we will list some of the common methods of theft that plague bars, clubs, restaurants, etc. and ways to combat them.
Food, drinks, inventory theft
One of the most common problems is theft of food, beverages or supplies – simply taking a kilo of ground beef or a six-pack of beer or a bottle of Jack and hoping to get away with it. In many restaurants and bars, the employee will get away with it, because regular stock checks aren’t being done and no one is really sure how much stock there is supposed to be. A good POS system can help by maintaining accurate information on how much of the items should be in stock, and regular stock checks can catch this sort of theft. This sort of theft includes overpouring and underpouring, selling drinks for cash (never input into the system) misuse of comp tickets, and entering deliveries incorrectly. Comparisons of stock levels expected with actual stock levels and delivery receipts vs. delivery input reports can help catch these sorts of theft.
Unfair Competion in-house
A variation on this that is much more difficult to catch via reports is staff bringing their own stock in and selling it for cash rather than selling your stock. This requires management being focused on what stock they should have, on knowing what their average sale per customer should be and noticing variations, and simply paying attention to what the staff is doing.
Free items being sold
Another sort of theft that is fairly common is to use free options vs. paid options in side dishes – a way to benefit friends. As an example, say that you have two similar items on the menu – one is a set that includes either french fries or mashed potatoes and the other is a la carte where the sides are paid for separately. A staff member could ring up the a la carte main and add the free side intended for the set if the Point of Sales system you use doesn’t restrict that sort of use (free sides not available for the a la carte item). In your article sales reports, you should also be looking for excessive numbers of free sides compared to the set orders.
Void bills or orders, keep the cash, monitor the bills reports, a POS can help
The Point of Sales system you use may allow theft by your staff depending on how it deals with cash drawer counts, voids, credit backs, merge and split bills, as well as substituting of items sold for items input.
How much cash is in the till?
If cashiers know exactly how much money they are supposed to have at the end of their shift, many will manipulate their tickets to make sure they report exactly what they are supposed to, pocketing overs, voiding bills to eliminate unders. Not only is this theft from the owners, but it hides issues that should be dealt with (why are we under or over?). Serving a customer Johnny Walker Red while charging them for Johnny Walker Blue will not only upset your customer, but may indicate a scam being run by bartender in conjunction with cashier (do ticket for JW Blue, when customer pays, credit back JW Blue, put on JW Red – pocket the difference).
Commissions, split, merge bills
If you use commissions, it is a good idea to have commission items at a unique price to avoid having the commission item substituted for a same price non-commission item on the ticket (even though the non-commission item is sold) whether at the time or order or before the customer pays. The use of split to move items off the bill to another bill after the customer has given their cash but before the bill is paid in the POS in order to pocket the value of that item is also common. Managers should pay close attention to splits, merges, credit backs and voids as they may be used by employees to attempt to pocket cash.
Manipulation of float
Manipulation of float (claiming it was short to start) is another way in which staff may attempt to steal. The easiest way to deal with float and end cash disputes is to have a Point of Sales that provides for a blind count at beginning and end of shift (they count in their float at the beginning, count out the drawer at the end).
Promotions abuse
The use of promotion programs or coupons can be used for theft – taking a bill that has already been paid (but not entered as paid yet) and applying a promotion to it after the fact or applying a coupon and pocketing the value of the coupon. POS systems that automate application by time and day reduce this by taking promotions out of the hands of the staff and make it automated.
Monitor deliveries
Cashiers or managers may work with distributors to pay for extra deliveries that are never received and split the value of those extra items (order and pay for 10 cases, receive 9).
Ghost employees, time theft
One of the biggest frauds I have witnessed over the years was paying out fake salaries for employees who simply didn’t exist. In that case, the manager of the club was stealing thousands of dollars from the owners by pocketing funds for these ghost salaries.
Trust is built on data and numbers
For places that don’t use a Point of Sales system at all, but still rely on written bills, customers pocketing individual tickets is a real problem. In addition, staff can make addition mistakes in adding up the tickets (either intentionally or not) resulting in overs and unders which will be hidden from the boss.