When was the last time you stole something?
Don't tell me you've never stolen anything. Why did you do it? Accident? Necessity? You simply wanted it? Maybe you knew you shouldn't but you weren't harming anyone, the owner may never know, or the chance of getting caught was slim to none.
I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I just wanted to express the fact that theft is inevitable. As a restaurant manager, you must realize that your employees may be behind your recent food and beverage losses or the POS manipulation scheme you can't seem to pinpoint.
The National Restaurant Association estimates that employee theft accounts for about 75% of restaurant losses. From another perspective, theft equal to over 3% of annual revenue. In this day in age, we can manage and prevent losses in ways our predecessors couldn't. I understand that investigating every transaction can be difficult but if you have a comprehensive loss management system in place, there is a higher chance theft will be deterred and detected.
Here are five steps to manage restaurant losses:
1 - Monitor: Numbers never lie. Find a way to track transactional data from your POS and BOH systems. Through ancient spreadsheet methods or with external product, just collect and monitor your data.
2 - Detect: With your data, pinpoint odd situations. Suppose an employee has a high percentage of voids on reopen checks, or excessive chargebacks. This information should be flagged because it's potentially problematic.
3 - Route: Once you have detected a possible incident, inform management. For instance, if you are monitoring data for multiple restaurant units, communicate possible incidents to the proper regional manager(s).
4 - Resolve: Allow management to do their job. They must gauge the severity of the issue and resolve the problem how they sees fit. For example, after management confronts the situation there are factors to consider. Did they implement disciplinary action, termination, employee training?
5 - Measure: Track the incident for prevention and reference. Let's say an issue arose and it was dealt with. Can we set specific metrics to prevent a similar event? Such as setting allowable guidelines for discounts, thresholds for chargebacks, etc.
Don't be a restaurant that tolerates losses, create a plan to manage and prevent theft today.
Mirus is a recognized leader in restaurant data and analysis solutions. If you don't have a comprehensive loss management system in place, we have a solution called Sentinel™.
To learn more, please visit: www.mirus.com/loss-prevention
For details, contact:
Chuck Bartlett
Director of Business Development
chuck@mirus.com
979-204-2642
Leslie Thompson
Business Development Manager
leslie@mirus.com
281-772-4189
