Restaurants, like other retail businesses, are inherently susceptible to theft!!! Do not panic, take a moment and think about your reaction? Why are this things happening to you? And what is the best way to solve them. We have the solution!
The article below is to help you realize that something in your restaurant is going wrong.
Retail businesses employ a variety of tactics for loss prevention. Cameras are used to keep a watchful eye on merchandise, RF (radio frequency) tags and exit scanners help alert employees to shoplifters and POS systems with scanning units help keep track of merchandise counts.
For most retail businesses, it’s their customers who account for the majority of theft, whereas for restaurants, it’s the employees who are responsible for the biggest losses. The National Restaurant Association reports that 75 percent of all inventory shrinkage happens as a result of theft – most of it by your employees.
Unlike retail operations that buy merchandise, markup the price and then sell it as is to the public, restaurants are manufacturers too. The inventory items purchased are typically just components of the menu items sold. In most cases, the customer does not have direct access – but your employees do.
So how do restaurants know when a specific item goes missing? Customers won’t appreciate an RF tag served with their $35 hand-cut filet. And though many POS systems are capable, tracking the amount of filets on hand becomes a little more complex when cutting them from a 10-lb. whole tenderloin. Cameras are good, but who has time to watch video 24/7?
The reality is that for most restaurants it’s impractical to get real-time on-hand counts for all their inventory items, but that shouldn’t stop them from tracking their most valuable inventory. For many restaurants, 10-15 key items typically account for as much as 50% of their total food or beverage purchases. If you monitor the products that make up 50% of your food cost every day, chances are you WILL be able to reduce shrinkage due to theft – or from any other means for that matter.
The real benefit of tracking certain inventory items daily comes from the psychological and behavioral impact it has on employees. Do employees notice management counting things? You bet they notice. We’ve had operators tell us that if they hadn’t started tracking key items daily, they probably would have gone out of business.
What about your restaurant? Are you tracking your key item inventory? If not, you’re most likely contributing to the 75% shrinkage statistic.(M.M.)
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