I hosted an event online yesterday for 50 Irish and UK hospitality businesses where I spoke for two hours on the subject of inventory control or stocktaking as it is referred to in Europe.

The unfortunate truth about stocktaking is that for many bars/restaurants they are either reluctantly undertaking a physical inventory every so often or they are doing nothing at all and to be quite honest, neither is good enough.

In this day and age, when the economic difficulties of doing business are as plain as day, it should be obvious to business owners that in order to Manage, they have to Measure. There are no two ways about it.

Do you think a bank could stay in business long if they didn’t count their cash at the end of the day? (sadly many banks have gone to the wall for other business sins….)

Do you think that a dry cleaning business would last if they kept losing customer’s clothes? I don’t think so.

I argue that by this measure, there is no reason why a bar or  a restaurant shouldn’t be keeping daily tabs on their stock and cash.

One bar owner recently shared with me his surprise that his bottom line normally improved for the few weeks after he was presented with inventory results. Unfortunately he was only presented with results twice a year.  Something wrong with this picture?

If you make cost control and physical inventories into scheduled tasks that happen a few times a year, don’t expect miracles. But by adopting a black and white mentality whereby there are consistent standards and measures in place, you may be just as surprised as our bar owner, except you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find all year long!

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• How One Bar Owner Gets A Near Perfect Inventory Result
• Can you easily calculate your food cost?
• The Value of An Outsider

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