What to Do to Prevent Bartenders From Breaking the Bank

Yes, it’s a fact of life. And to be really honest with you, I don’t know a single bartender who has not either knowingly or un-knowingly stolen. This leads me to the common bartending scams you can prevent using your own two eyes and the reports on your POS system.

Bartender Scam 1:
Free Drinks
    Probably the most common form of bartender theft is giving away free drinks to friends. It’s a pretty small circle of bartenders knowing bartenders, and they all like to be hospitable in their own establishment, and that means free drinks.

Defeating Bartender Scam 1
    Sometimes you have to spell out the obvious as much as it pains you to do it. It might never occur to your bartenders they are stealing because whoever trained them taught them that part too. They just think it’s how it’s done. Teach your bartenders what things cost. Teach them how each ounce of alcohol they give away to friends is one ounce of alcohol they are stealing from you.
    Demonstrate using real numbers. Teach them about pour cost and show them the reports that outline each missing ounce.
    Then, give them the freedom to give away two free drinks each shift as a business-building tool. (The ability to do this depends on your state’s laws. Please verify before implementing the policy.)
    And if they think it’s necessary to give away more than these two drinks, they have to ask management (you will say yes 99 percent of the time).

Bartender Scam 2:        
The Floating Drink
    A customer sits down at the bar and orders a popular beer and an appetizer. The bartender rings up the order and delivers the beer and appetizer to the customer. When the customer is finished the bartender drops the check, which accurately has the beer and the food on it. The customer then proceeds to pay with cash. As the bartender goes to the register to close out the ticket, a new customer sits down and orders the same beer the first customer ordered.
    While at the register, the bartender opens a new ticket for the new guest and goes into the first customer’s ticket and transfers the beer from that ticket to the new customer’s ticket. He then closes out the first customer’s ticket and pockets the cash collected for the transferred beer. He does this many times during the shift, ultimately making himself an additional $50 to $100.

Defeating Bartender Scam 2
    Every shift manager needs to go into the POS system’s back office reports and run the transfers report. They will see who transferred any items or whole tickets. Management easily can decipher the transfers from the bar to a server for guests who were waiting at the bar for their table from the ones that are clearly theft.

Bartender Scam 3: The Short Pour
    Bartenders are social people, and they make friends easily. I’m sure it’s never surprising to see a couple of your bartender’s friends sitting at the bar watching the game.     Here’s how this one works: A bar customer orders a Gin & Tonic. Your bartender fixes the drink, only instead of pouring the full ounce into the drink, he pours half into the customer’s glass and then duplicates the short pour the next round. Now the bartender has a free ounce to pour into to his friend’s drink or, even worse yet, he sells it to anther customer and keep the cash. He figures no one knows, so no harm, no foul. (And he knows that if you’re watching your item-by-item POS sales reports closely, you won’t find it!)
    Your customers complain your drinks aren’t strong enough, and not only is the customer shorted, now the drink tastes different. But nothing looks funny in the drawer or in your POS reports.

Defeating Bartender Scam 3
    Again, education is key. But if you have a dishonest bartender, he’ll find a way around your rules. In fact, nothing you do will ever completely stop a dishonest person from stealing. What you can do is put systems in place and have management on the floor to keep honest people honest.
    So what do you do about this virtually untraceable scam? Double-checking inventory on the shelves before and after a shift and then comparing what was sold to verify every ounce of booze was paid for won’t work because the bartender employed the short pour.
    Call your POS dealer and have a customer poll display installed on your bar register. This way the bartender knows that the customer sees exactly what they are being charged and for what, and management can see from across the restaurant. When a bartender knows he’s  being watched, it’s usually the best theft deterrent.
    Otherwise the best way is to employ a mid-shift bar drawer audit. In the middle of the shift, bring your bartender a new bar drawer. Run his server reports and credit card reports and grab his current bar drawer. Go back to the office and verify that the money in the drawer matches the starting bank plus all closed tickets, cash or charge.
    If you find that there is a lot of extra money in the drawer, you know you have a bartender who’s been stealing and is waiting until the end of the shift to take the extra money out of the drawer before they give it to you.               NCB

David Scott Peters is a “restaurant coach” and creator of the SMART Systems approach to boosting profits. For more information, contact Peters at or visit www.therestaurantexpert.com.