My job is to help bar owners improve their profitability by controlling the amount of liquor they lose due to waste, spillage, and theft. Retailers lose about 1.5% of merchandise to shoplifting and theft, but 25% of all liquor goes missing on average. When we start evaluating a bar, teams of two or three of us will usually come in at 4 a.m. and do a secret audit. Liquor losses are usually about $3,000 a week. We carry handheld scanners to scan all the full bottles, and we weigh every bottle on a scale; then after a shift we can show all the items that weren't rung in correctly. The biggest problem is over-pouring, but it's also typical for staff to pour a higher-end Scotch and charge their friends for a cheaper liquor. After we've met with employees, we find that product loss usually goes down for four to five weeks. Then I begin to see a bit of a rise—the employees are testing the system. So we'll pinpoint an exact person and an exact shift. I used to own a bar, and losses were a big problem. I learned all the bartender's tricks.
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