photo credit: photo4dam

If you’re asking yourself what you should watch at your bar and you think “Well, all of it, of course,”

You’re doing it wrong.

Look, if you’re a manager, you have LOTS of things to focus on–employees doing their jobs, customers being happy with their food or drinks, food, labor and equipment costs, the list goes on. If you’re looking at every single bottle behind your bar, frankly, you’re wasting time.

So which bottles in your bar should you be watching? 

It all comes down to prioritizing cost vs. frequency–which are you most expensive bottles and which are poured the most. You probably have some expensive bottles behind the bar that almost never get poured. Likewise, you probably have some wells that are poured a lot.

These are your value bottles, the ones that make you the most money.

These value bottles are the ones you’re going to want to track the closest. When you run your audits, check these bottles first. The bottles that get poured the most will obviously change depending on the season, your specials, and whatever liquor company is spending the most money in advertising at the moment.

Medium priority

What about the bottles that aren’t as expensive or aren’t poured as often? They’re about medium priority. They’re still valuable to track and manage, but remember the 80/20 rule. These bottles don’t represent the money makers in your inventory like your value bottles do, so check these second and if needed, less frequently.

The rest of the bottles

Finally, what about your low value bottles like the mixers and cordials? Don’t worry about them. If you’re concerned about them, add them into your quarterly inventory, but for your maximum bang for your inventorying time, focus on your value liquors, the ones that represent the most of your revenue.

Trust me, bartenders aren’t giving away shots of sour apple or butterscotch brandy.

Saving time and money

If you want to reduce the time it takes to run an audit and keep your costs under control, make your value bottles your priority. Audit these more often than the rest so you focus your time on your profit makers and greatest potential losses.

When you audit these bottles, watch for unusual activity with them. Any by unusual activity I mean significantly more pours than sales. The kind of activity that means your bartenders are giving away drinks or over-pouring.

Shameless plug

Vine & Grain’s Lock & Stock system gives you the power to track your whole bar in less time and with more accuracy than with any other system or method. Read more about Lock & Stock here.

Do you have any advice to add to the discussion? Leave us a comment. And don’t forget to share this article on Facebook and Twitter. 

 photo credit: Caitlinator

Do you know how many servings you should be getting out of your bottles? If you’ve never done the math and are still running under the assumption of a manager or bar staff, you could be missing out on significant sales!

Proper bar or restaurant management starts with having accurate expectations for your inventory and sales. It’s next to impossible to have either of them if you’re running under false assumptions. We’re going to do the math and show you how many drinks you should be getting out of your bottles.

Click here to go right to the drinks chart

The formula

Before you figure out your pour count, you need to have two pieces of information:

1. Pour size
2. Bottle size

You should already know your pour size. If not, decide and set it now! It’s the basis for just about every other equation in the bar business.

There are basically two sizes of bottles you could have at your bar- 1L or 750mL. Technically bars are only allowed to have 1L bottles, but sometimes smaller bottles sneak in.

Now, let’s figure out your pour count.
The formula couldn’t be simpler:

Bottle size
—————-  = Pour count
Pour size

The slight difficulty in the equation is dealing with ounces vs. liters. Ok, so it’s not a huge problem, but it’s a slight annoyance. Google tells us the conversion is:

1L = 34 oz  (approximately, slightly rounded up)

So let’s assume you have a 1.5oz pour size. Your formula for a liter bottle would look like this:

34oz / 1.5oz = 22.6 servings

Based on this conversion, you should get 22 drinks out of your bottle with a half serving left to account for spillage and overpours. Of course you’d be hard pressed to find a bartender who could pour this perfectly, but knowing where to start is a key part of knowing how well they’re doing.

Here’s a chart showing you how many servings you should get out of your bottles.

Servings for pour sizes

Hover over your pour size to see how many servings you should get out of that bottle!

With this information you should be able to determine how your bartenders are doing and maximize your profitability from each of your liquors. This formula is part of what Lock & Stock does automatically to help you maximize your profitability and reduce your waste.

It seems there’s a rash of wine racks failing around the world. Hopefully this epidemic stops!

Laughing at the security camera

At least this guy has a sense of humor about it.

A sea of red

Look at them running from the waves like sea birds

Drunk (forklift) driving

This is why you shouldn’t drive drunk.

Ouch! We hate to see good bottles wasted like that. Hopefully this carnage stops! Oh the horror!

photo credit: mediafury

A bar’s liquor cost can either make or break that establishment’s profits. A low liquor cost means more profits per drink and a high liquor cost can shut down an otherwise well-run bar. Even if your liquor cost is low, you might still be able to lower it and pull out more profits, in many cases without any additional work.

Here is a list of some reasons why your liquor cost could be high:

A little extra per drink

Bartenders overpouring might not seem like a big deal when you first look at it. What’s it going to hurt if the bartender puts a little extra for their favorite customers? It makes for happier customers, right? The truth is, it can add up more quickly than you think.

A staggering total

If your bar pours a 1.25 oz per serving, you should be getting about 26 servings per liter bottle. That’s if you pour exactly, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say realistically you should get 25 servings from every bottle. If your bartender gives away even just .25 oz extra per drink, you’ll now only get 21 servings out of that bottle. That’s the equivalent of losing 4-5 drinks from every bottle!

If this is a well liquor, your loss might not seem like that much, but the lost profit from this one bottle could be $16-20 depending on how much you charge for your drinks! Multiply that by every bottle in your bar, and you’re talking some major profit loss. If your bar has 200 bottles on it, that could mean $3,200-$4,000 in lost profit just from the bottles on your bar!

That’s just from .25 oz extra, imagine if they were pouring even more than that, or pouring calls or premiums!

Now, look at that number across your usage over an entire month or year. Now you should be getting an idea of how much money you could be losing.

How to see it and solve it

Ask your bartenders or managers how many drinks they get out of a drink. Figure out how many drinks you should be getting out of a bottle based on your pour size (33 oz in a liter divided by your pour size) and compare the two. If they’re off, you have a good clue as to what’s happening.

Solving this one is fairly easy, but entails retraining your bartenders. Retraining means nothing if they know you’re not actually watching the bar. Let them know you’re taking frequent inventory to track how much liquor they’re pouring.

Free drinks gone wild

Even if your bartenders are pouring correctly, they could be giving away enough drinks to lower your profits and raise your liquor cost. We’ll go into why bartenders give away free drinks in another post, but there is certainly no denying it can be a significantly difficult and costly problem.

We put together a chart showing you how few free drinks it takes to take a sizable chunk out of your bottom-line!

Drinking on the job

This is similar to the free drinks problem in that you’re losing drinks you can’t collect money on. Most good owners and managers don’t allow drinking on the job, but as the saying goes “When the cat’s away, the mice do play”.

There is one sure fire way to stop your bartenders from drinking on the job: let your bartenders know the rule and if you see someone breaking it, fire them immediately. Trust me, word will spread.

Averaging your liquor cost

If your liquor cost is high, do you know which classification (well, call, premium, etc.) is the biggest problems? Most of the time your liquor cost percentage is simply an average of the total usage vs. total sales. When you look at each classification separately, you start to get an idea of which liquor classifications are the biggest problems and you can take steps to solve it.

See our other article on Is your liquor cost an estimate?

Not tracking your liquor usage

I’m not talking about looking at what you’re purchasing or adding up what you should have used based on your sales. If you’re not physically tracking your liquor inventory, you could be missing out on important information that could give you insights to why your liquor cost is so high.

Do you know for example which of your liquors is the most profitable? Do you know your liquor costs for each of your classifications and whether they’re close to your ideal liquor cost?

The reports you get with Lock & Stock tell you how close you are to your ideal liquor cost and how much you’re missing by showing you how much you actually poured compared to your sales. With that information you can tell whether your bartenders are overpouring, giving away free drinks or even pouring calls, ringing them up as wells and pocketing the difference.

Use these suggestions to figure out why your liquor cost is so high. Did we miss any potential reasons? Let us know in the comments!

 photo credit: susanna bolle

If you sell alcoholic beverages your liquor cost is probably the top metric (besides profits) used to measure success. It can tell you if you’re over-pouring, giving away too many free drinks, and whether you’re getting the maximum money out of your bottles. No wonder managers consider it the single most valuable metric in evaluating an establishment’s success. Do you know how accurate your liquor cost percentage is? Do you know your ideal liquor cost? Do you know how to compare the two to maximize your profits?

What’s a good liquor cost? 

The industry standard says a ”good” liquor cost is anywhere between 22–26%. Your ideal liquor cost could be significantly lower, especially when you looks at specific costs for each of your liquor classifications (wells, calls, etc.). A good average ideal liquor cost is usually anywhere from 16-19% and can sometimes be even lower.

Why is it an estimate? 

As you probably already know, your liquor cost for a particular time period is your usage divided by your sales, or, put more simply, what you poured divided by what you sold. The problem with this formula for most establishments is it is only as accurate as your usage and sales numbers. We’re going to assume your sales are accurate, but what about your usage?

With a liquor cost estimate that could be as high as 8% off, how do you know if you’re hitting maximum profitability? You can’t, and worse, it can hide problems in your specific liquor classifications.

Here are the top 3 reasons why your liquor cost is most likely an estimate at best: 

Problem #1 — Using a visual auditing method

No matter what kind of visual auditing method you use—dividing the bottle into tenths, measuring the bottle level on a hand-held computer with a line, or scanning the level of liquid in a bottle with a ruler long barcode—your usage is an estimate at best. If you’re dividing the bottle into tenths, your usage number can be 5-10% off. That’s if we’re talking about a normal shaped bottle. Imagine trying to estimate the level on a bottle of Patron or Grand Marnier, or trying to see through a Bailey’s bottle! With these bottle shapes and colors, you could be even farther off.

If your auditing method is estimated, then that estimate is flowing up to your liquor cost percentage meaning it could be off as much as 2-8% at the least. This means your estimates could be costing your thousands of dollars a month in lost profits and waste. An inaccurate liquor cost percentage could mean you could be missing solvable issues costing you profits.

Problem #2 — Trusting your POS for usage

If you’re one of the few establishments who have set up their POS to track their usage, congratulations for taking the time and initiative to use some sort of tool. Unfortunately even with using your POS, you’re not getting accurate usage measurement. You have a chance of this data being accurate if your bartenders are inputting every free drink they pour as a comp and noting every time they pour a little extra into a drink. Unfortunately the likelihood of that happening is about as low as winning the lottery.

Trusting your POS for usage relies on how much you trust your bartenders. Even if you feel like you can trust them, how can you verify your trust in them with an inaccurate liquor cost?

Problem #3 — Auditing inventory once a month, quarter or year. 

Traditional liquor inventory methods are incredibly long and tedious, so it’s only natural to only spend the time once a month, quarter or year (unless you’re using Lock & Stock of course!). This means your liquor cost is averaged over that time period. This might not seem like a big deal until you consider how averaging over this long of a time period hides anomalies and issues.

By the time you figured out your liquor cost, it’s too late to fix problems or to know what worked to increase your profits. It’s like having a weight loss plan but only weighing yourself once a month to figure out if what you’re doing is working. You might miss the smaller, incremental improvements you could be making.

How are you tracking your usage or inventorying your bottles at your bar or restaurant? Let us know in the comments.

Stonewood Grill is a Central Florida staple serving delicious steaks and fresh seafood cooked over an oak wood grill.  Rich cherry and mahogany woods and stone work compliment the decor to create a warm, comfortable ambiance. To top off the delicious food, Stonewood Grill features an extensive diverse wine list by bottle and by glass. Stonewood also offers several high end whiskeys and cognacs.

Stonewood Wine Cellar

Stonewood Grill is rolling out the Lock & Stock revenue management system to its locations.

For more information: www.stonewoodgrill.com

The flavored liquor train keeps on chugging! For those of you who like Jagermeister (or have patrons who do), prepare for the newest (old) liquor offering: Barenjager honey liqueur.

Barenjager means bear hunter, referring to the medieval European hunters who would lure bears and humans alike with a mead-like concoction called meschkinnes. Every village had their own recipe for meschkinnes and somewhere in the 15th century the Teucke and Konig Bear Trap Company created the first commercial version called Bärenjäger.

It’s still made with the same traditional methods with better ingredients than were available hundreds of years ago including honey from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

The flavor was described to us by a bar manager as a “honey flavored Jagermeister” though we haven’t had a chance to confirm it yet. If you’ve had it, what did you think? Let us know in the comments.

It’s no secret between the partners of this company that Chipotle is one of our favorite local restaurants for a quick mexican bite. We’re a huge fan of their burritos and tacos and love that every ingredient is organic and all the meat is humanely raised. Jeff Johnson, our Chief Technology Officer, and his fiancé eat at Chipotle several times per week and have come to expect Chipotle level quality from all their Mexican food. We’ve even had several interviews and business meetings in their dining rooms!

Over the last several weeks, Jeff, his fiancé Gabriella have been traveling across the United States for meetings and implementations. Because Jeff and the rest of us eat there so often, we’ve cultivated a relationship with the managers. When Jeff was telling one of the corporate managers about the trip, they decided to sponsor the trip!

Every town Jeff and Gabriella stopped in if there was a Chipotle, guess where they ate! A great big thanks goes out to Chipotle for sponsoring Vine & Grain on our cross country trip and helping keep Jeff and Gabriella full and happy!

Gabriella created a Facebook group page to chronicle the entire trip. Take a look at which Chipotles Jeff and Gabriella stopped at and see photos and updates at BMW Motorrad Across the USA

Jeff and G at Chipotle Grande Opening in Lido, CA

photo credit: EastofNYC

If your bank informed you that 20% of your account balance was lost due to shrinkage, you’d seek every legal remedy to have your money returned and take your business to another bank.  You expect a bank to use the latest technology to provide secure access and accurate tracking of your money to the penny.  You also require the bank to provide documentation of every deposit, withdrawal, and transfer of cash. For banks, anything less is unacceptable.

For restaurateurs, your bar is your bank.  Your bar holds thousands of dollars of liquid cash.  Experienced restaurateurs recognize the significant money invested in their bar inventory yet they allow transactions to occur at their bar they would never accept at their bank:

• Transfers between storage and beverage stations without documentation or accountability
• Inaccurate, or nonexistent, measurement of opened beverage inventory
• No measured comparison of inventory usage to drinks sold

For profitable restaurants, this is also unacceptable.  The lack of efficient and accurate inventory control allows shrinkage to increase through pouring errors, beverage manipulation, and theft.

Treat your bar like a bank. Innovative technology exists that measures bar inventory to the thousandths of an ounce (.001).  By connecting your bar inventory and point-of-sale (POS) systems, you can produce reports that show exactly where all of the liquid cash is flowing.  Just like a bank, you’ll have:

• Accountability – Tracking of inventory received, transferred, and poured
• Accuracy – Measuring exact amount of spirits remaining in open bottles
• Balancing – Comparisons of bar inventory used to the number drinks sold in the POS

By leveraging the new technology of a bar inventory system owners will identify what, when, how, and who is contributing to shrinkage.  This information is used to improve restaurant policies and procedures to protect the bar’s liquid assets.  Like banks, you should leverage technology to keep the profits you’ve earned by tracking liquid cash to the penny.  Your bar is your bank.

While some of the flavors sound delicious (Vanilla for one!), I can’t imagine putting some of these in my mouth, let alone trying to come up with some sort of drink to make with it. Chocolate covered bacon shot anyone? I didn’t think so. (Actually, truth be told I’d probably try that one… not that I’d like it.)

Here are the 5 grossest flavors we could find:

1. Bubblegum Vodka
   Bubblegum was made to be chewed, not drank. Most candy flavors come from nature, but bubblegum exists no where but in the checkout aisle at your local grocery store. Vodka flavors inspired by candy flavors I can understand, but I’ve never once thought “Oh, this bubble gum would be great in a cocktail. I’m going to put a piece in my drink and see what happens.” This could be due in part to the fact that I’ve never been a fan of bubblegum in the first place, but I think most people would agree this is a flavor to avoid.

   http://www.threeolives.com/

2. Bacon Vodka
   
   I’m a huge fan of bacon (who isn’t), so when I heard about bacon flavored vodka, I have to admit: I was torn. I’ve had chocolate with bacon in it that I thought was great. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put bacon in vodka though, either  needs to be celebrated or never allowed near a still again. Either way, I’m intrigued but disgusted. I can’t imagine a single cocktail you could make with this, but I also feel like I need to try this sometime soon.

   http://www.bakonvodka.com/

3. Wasabi Vodka
   

   Have you ever been eating sushi, looked down at the green blob on your platter and thought “I really want to drink that?” No, me neither, but apparently some sick mind out there has. Some crazy person over at Indio Spirits thought it would be a good idea to take the spicy part of eating sushi and make a vodka out of it. Spicy tuna roll cocktail anyone?

   http://www.indiospirits.com/

4. Garlic Vodka
   

   When you’ve exhausted all the fruits or sweet flavors you can think of to infuse into a vodka, you start thinking about everything else. I would have filed garlic in the “Too obvious to list” category in the “flavors to not make a liquor out of” list. Apparently some crazy Russian decided garlic was exactly what they should flavor their vodka with. Just when you thought you’d have a hard time mixing a drink with bacon or wasabi flavors, along comes the perfect vodka for Apple-garlic-tini or the White Garlic Russian.

   http://www.slashfood.com/2006/10/30/vodka-to-ward-off-vampires/

5. And the winner goes to: Smoked Salmon Vodka
   There are vodka flavors that are gross, and then there are flavors that you just simply cannot fathom the reason for existing in any alternate reality you can come up with. File this vodka under the latter category. In an attempt to think of something Alaskan, Toby Foster decided smoked salmon was about the most Alaskan thing you could drink. I guess moose vodka was off the table.
   http://alaskadistillery.com/

So what’s next for vodka flavors? I’m putting in bets now for either mustard or NY strip steak.

If you’ve had one of these flavors, what did you think of it? What the grossest flavor you can think of?