Mirus Reporter

Employees Learn Quick

Voids, Comps, and other means to adjust orders in process, just placed or delivered are a necessity if you operate a restaurant. Let’s face it, employees can make mistakes while entering orders just as customers can change their minds and now want a different item or realize they don’t have enough cash and now need to pay with a credit card. On the other hand, if you just tendered a customer's order to cash, you’ll need to void the order and re-enter using the new tender type.

Of course, these are just two of many examples where voids are a requirement. Comps on the other hand are used in the restaurant business when the wrong item was delivered or the customer was unhappy with their experience. While these tools are available to make corrections and adjustments as needed – your employees learn quickly that they can just as easily be manipulated to their financial advantage.

Restaurant Theft

$60k of your hard-earned revenue may be going home in the pockets of thieves. The NRA estimates that, on average, Net Income (‘NI’) for most restaurant companies is around 5% to 6%. The NRA also states that loss due to fraud at the restaurant runs around 4% of sales CASH is KING. Assuming the NRA estimates for theft are accurate then it would be safe to further assume that a restaurant with $1,500,000 (‘$1.5M’) in sales could conservatively lose $45K or possibly even $60K in revenue due to theft.

Given the number of ways theft can occur, it’s no wonder the percentage (4%) remains as high as it does. It’s not my intent to attempt to try and cover each way a restaurant can be losing money, rather, I’ll focus on the most popular -cash theft.

I’m A Good Person. Most of the Time...

Have you ever stolen anything? Did you get caught? When you were caught, was it your first time stealing? Even the most ethical employees can make bad decisions when something is right there for the taking. There’s too much temptation, even for those who usually make the best decisions.

No matter how much you trust your employees (managers included), you MUST be able to check thoroughly on their daily activities to find potential irregularities. When your employees make poor choices why should YOUR restaurant business pay the price?

Theft Happens

We all know that theft happens in the restaurant industry; heck, it happens in most industries. For example, did you know; according to a study by the National Retail Federation, 2016 was the first year ever that 100% of retailers said they were victims of organized retail theft.

Unfortunately there are numerous stats to back up the prevalence of restaurant theft:

Are your promos being used to commit fraud?

The majority of restaurants have utilized some type of promotion in order to build revenue, introduce a new product, drive traffic or reward loyal customers. In short, your restaurant business is providing a coupon offer in return for more / specific customer interaction. This give and take process generally works well. However, while it may be increasing traffic and driving sales, your business may be losing hundreds, heck even thousands of dollars due to fraud and you may not even know it.

The Elephant In The Room...

Theft, or loss, in the restaurant industry is everywhere. Lots of small, cash transactions are one factor that sets the stage for loss. Food that can be consumed at home is another. This is a touchy subject for restaurant companies, a reality that very few like to discuss.

Of all the discussions that are uncomfortable for restaurant companies, manager theft ranks near the top. At most companies, the manager is a key control point for finances. We empower them with unique access to money and data. One bad apple can do a lot of damage.

Our clients love us and we love them right back! We're constantly amazed by their ingenuity and accomplishments. Their ideas and requests are what keep us on the leading edge of restaurant business solutions. Each month we shine the light on our clients, their accomplishments and what they're doing to increase their restaurant profit margin.

I don't always try to prevent loss. But when I do, I do it manually.

Loss prevention within the restaurant industry is a hot topic right now. There’s something awkward and unsettling about it, too. Operators want to act like they have it under control and financial executives are hesitant to disclose that loss is actually occurring. Why? My theory is that they don’t want to appear vulnerable. I heard a story a few weeks ago where an employee had stolen over $5,000 and it flew under the radar for about three months until a District Manager finally realized something wasn’t adding up on the P&L. There isn’t an end to that story yet as it is still being settled in court. Which brings me to my point: there’s a manual and automated methodology to preventing loss. (Although I would go as far as saying that preventing is not the appropriate choice of words … restaurants are always at risk of being stolen from – so the only sure fire way to prevent loss would be to hire an auditor to be at each location everyday. Who can afford that, anyway?)

Loss of any kind is a sensitive subject. In this week’s post, I had the opportunity to pick the brain of a MIRUS client who deals exclusively with loss on a daily basis. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Las Vegas for the annual MIRUS User Conference and he offered up his time to participate in a QA.

Mike Scafidi knows about loss. He has made it his career since the early 90s. Mike has helped prevent loss for big brands, such as: Macy's, Toys R Us/Kids R Us, Marshalls and PetSmart. For the past four years, Mike has dedicated his time to loss prevention for Uno Chicago Grill. Three of those four years have been spent using the MIRUS Enterprise solution for restaurant reporting and analysis. Mike uses the software for fraud detection and loss prevention, specifically.

Whether you own one restaurant or 100 there's no eluding the fact that at some point you have been stolen from. It may have been a lot or a little but your employees who handle food and money day in and day out have either purposefully or accidentally stolen from you. (Who am I kidding, 99.9% of the time it was on purpose and chances are multiple people conspired in it...)

In conjunction with HT Magazine, Editor in Chief Abigail Lorden has worked with myself and Mirus President/CEO Dave Bennett to dive into the subject of loss prevention within the restaurant industry. The commentary below will be featured in a future issue of HT Magazine but we feel it's important enough to also be featured in The Mirus Reporter.