Very few pieces of technology are more important to restaurants than their POS system. The right POS system will allow your restaurant to perform all its essential functions, including telling the bar and kitchen what to make, ensuring customers are charged correctly and providing detailed sales reports. In recent years, SpotOn has developed a reputation as one of the leading POS systems on the market, and for good reason. SpotOn is very feature rich, customer centric and has great customer service.

For many bars and restaurants, SpotOn’s emphasis on customer service is one of its most appealing draws. If you ever have any questions about the technology or need help troubleshooting an issue, you can speak to someone who is truly an expert on their system. This exceptional level of support and customer service can be extremely beneficial when trying to maximize the ROI of your POS system.

In general, we’ve found that restaurants that value this level of customer service from their POS system provider also typically value this kind of service and support from their bar inventory system provider. This is one of the biggest reasons why many SpotOn clients have been a great fit for Bar-i’s inventory system, and vice versa.

At Bar-i, we also emphasize exceptional customer service as part of our business model. We walk you through the entire setup process for our liquor inventory system to ensure this important process is completed correctly and sets you up for success. Once your new system is up and running, you receive ongoing support from your dedicated account manager who has extensive expertise with the nuances of our software. We’ve found that providing this level of ongoing support helps our clients get the most out of our system and leverage their inventory efforts to improve profitability.

Unlocking the Value of Sales Data Is Critical to Integrating Your POS and Inventory Systems

Integrating your POS system with your bar inventory system is an effective way to enhance the impact you receive from these tools. If you want to optimize the value you get from this integration, it’s important to use all the data provided by your POS to improve the accuracy and efficiency of your inventory efforts.

POS systems provide a record of how many times every drink was sold, and this is one of the most critical pieces of POS data that will help improve the accuracy of your inventory efforts. To unlock this valuable piece of sales data, you’ll need to take steps to optimize the setup of your POS system. Unfortunately, simply seeing how many times each button was pressed won’t tell you how much of each liquor is sold because you have different sized drinks and complex cocktails that                                                               use different amounts of each liquor. You need additional functionality to turn the data regarding how many times each button was pressed into an accurate record of how much was sold for each product during the inventory period.

Bar-i’s liquor inventory system provides this functionality, allowing you to use this important data from your SpotOn POS system to precisely compare what was sold vs. poured during each inventory cycle. When you’re able to make this comparison, it unlocks the full value of the data you have in your SpotOn POS system and enables you to use that data to lower your liquor cost:

• Most bars pour approximately 15% more product than they’re actually selling
• Bar-i clients typically lower their liquor cost by 3% when they use this advanced tracking data to determine what is being poured that isn’t being sold

How to Transform this Data into Actionable Insights

In order to use your sales data to compare precisely what was sold vs. poured, you need to convert the data you receive regarding the number of times each button is pressed into a record of ounces poured. You can accomplish this by writing recipes to convert the SpotOn sales data into a record of what is sold. This is a technical process, but Bar-i’s system is set up to handle it for you.

While Bar-i’s system is set up to integrate with your SpotOn POS system and transform this data into a format that will help you drive profits, you’ll still need to take an active role in the process. The good news is that your dedicated Bar-i account manager will walk you through each step and provide all the support you need to ensure the process is completed correctly.

Simplify Your Drink Sizes

The first step in the process is to decide how many drink sizes you plan to serve. Some bars make this really complicated by having different sizes for shots, singles, doubles, rocks/neat drinks and martinis. This creates a situation where you have to track five different pour sizes for each liquor you serve, making it much harder to accurately track your liquor usage.

We recommend simplifying your drink sizes to include only two different serving sizes:

• One pouring size for shots and singles
• Another pouring size for every other type of drink you serve (doubles, rocks, martinis, etc.)

This makes it much easier for bartenders to accurately pour the proper amount for each drink, and it’ll also be easier to identify exactly how much should be poured when buttons are being pressed on your POS.

You’ll also need to consider how you’re going to approach:

• Two-liquor drinks (i.e., White Russians) – Are you going to pour these as singles, doubles or a different quantity?
  
  
• Signature drinks – How are you going to modify your signature drinks if a customer wants to substitute a different type of liquor for the one you typically use?

Create Buttons for Each Size

Once you’ve determined your drink sizes, you need to create specific buttons in your SpotOn POS system for each drink size. For example, if you have two drink sizes, your buttons for Tito’s vodka might be labeled “Tito’s 1.5 oz” and “Tito’s 3.0 oz” (they can also be labeled “Tito’s single” and “Tito’s double”). It’s important to make these labels clear so that:

• Your staff knows exactly what they should be ringing in
• It’s clear to customers what they’re paying for
• It’s clear to your inventory system what the recipe should be for each drink

These buttons will allow you to ring up drinks in a way that counts the amount of liquor being poured accurately.

Optimize Your POS Button Setup to Accurately Track and Price Signature Drinks

The buttons listed above are easy to use with simple cocktails, but it can get more complicated when your bartenders are ringing in signature drinks. In our experience, the most effective way to ring in these drinks is to create a modifier button for the signature drink.

Let’s use an example of a house Moscow mule signature drink to illustrate the most effective way to structure your POS buttons. Rather than having a button for “house mule,” we recommend ringing up the drink with the button for the type of liquor you use. If you use Tito’s in your house mule, ring up this signature drink under the “Tito’s 1.5 oz” button and then use a modifier to signify that it’s a signature drink (i.e., create a “make as house mule” modifier button).

This approach provides several important benefits:

• It creates a consistent upcharge for the signature drink and lets the bartender know which mixers, glassware, etc. need to be included
  
  
• The signature drink modifier always means the same thing, allowing you to use it in a variety of applications that will improve the specificity of your data
  
  
• You have the flexibility to cater to the needs of your customers and capture pricing correctly without losing the ability to track the liquors being poured correctly

For example, if a customer asks for a double house mule, your bartender can use the “Tito’s 3.0 oz” button instead and the “house mule” modifier will ensure the proper ingredients and upcharge is added. You’ll know that two servings of Tito’s were used, and the drink will be priced correctly. If a customer wants to have the drink made with a higher end vodka or a different type of liquor (i.e., a whiskey mule), you can easily address this. Just ring the base spirit button for the liquor being used and then press the modifier button to indicate it’s a house mule. The drink will be made and priced correctly, and you’ll have an accurate record of the specific liquor that was used.

Optimizing this Process Requires a Sophisticated Liquor Inventory System

In order to optimize your POS for liquor inventory, you’ll need to use a sophisticated bar inventory system that has the ability to write recipes for every drink. Bar-i’s system can do this, making it an ideal solution to optimize the value you get out of your SpotOn POS.

In addition to writing the recipes for each POS button, Bar-i’s system will match up your inventory data (physical counts and purchases) against your sales data to help you accurately compare what was poured vs. sold for each product at your bar. This allows you to identify how many servings of each product are missing every inventory period. You can use this information to take the steps necessary to reduce the amount of each product being poured, but not sold. When you do this, your shrinkage will decrease significantly, allowing you to lower your liquor cost and improve your profitability.

Set Up Rewards and Performance Tiers to Incentivize Your Staff

One of the most effective steps you can take to reduce shrinkage is to incentivize your staff to pour drinks accurately and ring in each drink poured. When you have accurate usage data for each product, you can set up rewards and performance tiers that will provide effective incentives for your staff.

When your bartenders ring up 95% or more of everything poured, you can reward them with perks such as extra shift drinks and larger comp tabs. When they don’t meet this 95% threshold, you can take steps to improve performance such as scheduling pouring practice and having regular meetings to discuss expectations for how drinks should be poured and what needs to be done to ring them in correctly.

As you see your bartenders improve, you can create additional performance tiers with additional perks for 96%, 97%, or any other goal you want to set as your standard. Over time, you’ll see a significant reduction in missing product, allowing you to more effectively maximize profits from bar sales.

If you would like to learn more about how Bar-i’s liquor inventory system can help streamline your processes and maximize your profitability, please contact us today to schedule a free consultation. We serve clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.