Do You Have a Liquor Problem or Not?

This is a liquor control technique developed by a personal friend of mine when he was the GM at a casual, high-end restaurant with a very busy bar. This simple, straight-forward technique for determining whether there is a liquor problem or not, resulted in adding literally tens of thousands of dollars to the restaurant's bottom line every year.

Another good feature is that once you use it a few times it takes only about 30 minutes a week to perform.

Are We "Bleeding" or Not, and If So, How Bad?

What if you knew, for certain, at the end of every week the quantity of liquor you actually used and the quantity of liquor you should have used based on the drinks you sold? At minimum you'd know whether you had a liquor cost problem or not. You'd know if it was time to start watching the bar closer and make some changes or move on to something else.

Following are the mechanics of accurately determining whether you have a liquor problem or you don't. Our example is based on performing the functions weekly, however, I know of a few operators who discovered major liquor control problems, that actually did it daily for awhile.