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Looking to elevate your cocktail game, streamline your bar operations, or simply unlock the secrets of the perfect pour? You've come to the right place!
At Überbartools™, we're passionate about all things bar-related, and we're dedicated to sharing our knowledge and insights with you.
The Six Early Signs of Liquor Wastage in your Bar
Liquor loss and wastage is a silent profit killer for most bars. Over many years we’ve discovered 6 early signs of liquor wastage.
WHEELS, WEDGES, BROTHELS FOR BAR FLIES? A SOLUTION
For years the bane of bartenders and managers has been securing seasonal fruit at good prices for garnishing.
Secondary to these issues, prep time, wastage/spoilage, with each impacting on costs and ultimately bar profitability.
Devices to help preserve and protect fruit such as limes, oranges, lemons, apples, pineapples from turning rancid have dotted the landscape with pretty mixed results.
Bottom line – lots of expensive fruit thrown away!
Within this mix we see the pesky bar fly, attracted to sweet smelling fruit, using wheels and wedges as cabanas to host their other air borne friends!
More and smarter bars are turning to dehydrated fruit as the solution for their problems, purchasing dehydrators, then capitalising on sourcing cheap, seasonal fruit for the coming year.
Dried fruit for cocktail cuts waste, spoilage and arising hygiene issues.
If you’re over fresh fruit give dehydrated alternatives a go at a fraction of the cost!
The Pour Challenge
Anyone can pour liquor right.
What's not to know.. pick up a liquor bottle, pour into a jigger, serve into a glass of some sort...yawn.. it's so easy.. a child can do it?
Pouring alcohol consistently, without spilling or wasting a drop takes lots of skill, whilst it may appear so easy, yet many of us know intuitively the simpler something appears the more difficult it’s likely to be.
Ironically when children play games, it takes practice, practice and more practice before mastery is attained.
To prove have you taken: A series of deceptively easy tests (or are they?) to challenge:
- TEST WASTE: Pick up a liquor bottle, pour alcohol into a jigger, tin or glass without spilling a drop.
- TEST ACCURACY: Pour an exact shot of alcohol - i.e 1 oz, 30 ml etc. repeat (3 times)..then measure each portion to check for.
- TEST CONSISTENCY: Prepare the same cocktail 3 times ensuring it LOOKS and TASTES the same.
- TEST SPEED: Prepare 3 different quickly, just like a real bar situation, except don’t waste a drop, serve each drink accurately and consistently!
Odds are that most people will fail some if not all the above? Why?
Possibly the answer may lay with bar managers not really understanding the impacts and consequences of pouring failure.
From experience people don’t treasure what’s not valued.
The impact of inconsistently made cocktails affects the bottom line, reducing Spend Per Guest, increasing costs as liquor is over-poured or just wasted.
Once drink inconsistency is identified as an issue, one can then start looking at impacts on business outcomes such as provided guest value for money, quality and ultimately guest satisfaction!
Bars wanting to sustain profitability long term need to get the Pour Challenge right, there's nothing childish about disappointing guests...it's not a game!
Did you complete each test without failing any test?
THE BATTLE FOR ON-PREMISE POURING AGREEMENTS
Around the world at any one time 10,000s of on premise accounts are looking to either tender or re-tender their speed rail business to a dominant Liquor Company.
The process occurs every 1 -2 years involving a roller coaster ride of posturing as Liquor Company’s vie or die for business.
Prospective bar brides sit patiently on the throne waiting for liquor beaus to make lucrative offers, turning the process into a total Dutch auction.
Is this circus really worth the effort long term to a Liquor Company when one considers some of the unintended consequences.
- Liquor Companies invest in huge amounts of time, effort and money into retaining or gaining business, diverting staff and resources from more profitable activities
- Reduced margins from discounted pouring agreements necessitate cost cutting down stream usually reflected in reduced head count. The standing few are left to pick up the slack of the near departing, placing additional stress on the already stretched.
- Supplier/customer relationships are reduced to a transactional game based on “cost per shot (nip)”, where it’s questionable whether sustainable loyalty is really created between bar and Liquor Company.
Is it possible to change pouring agreements and transition them from 1-2 year sugar fixes to more orderly 3-5 year deals (with allowances for reasonable cost increases)? Can relationships be re calibrated around the “value” to a business of a sole relationship with one company rather than essentially a “zero sum game” based on a "cost per shot" game of roulette.
Is follows that greater business certainty creates longer more beneficial outcomes for bar and Liquor Company creating with it potentially positive impacts on long term profits.
Imagine how 3-5 year contracts would change the structures of Liquor Companies as reduced venue churn, reduces back office staff time working out deals, BDM’s refocusing time to building sustainable relationships based on "value to a venue “rather than cost of a shot".
Ultimately a rethought strategy would open up new possibilities creating new win/win scenarios for brand, bar and the totally forgotten party in this game of thrones: the guest.
Organisation focus misdirected towards short term plays takes focus away from the bigger picture allowing smaller craft brands to seep through the cracks or wedges created by behemoths bucking it out!
Maybe it’s time for a rethink!
Angel's Share v's Devil's Take
Sometimes polar opposites exist within the same continuum ... a practical example of this thought is Angel's Share, which receives reverence and respect whilst it’s polar opposite the Devil’s Take, is completely ignored by profit atheists!
Angel's Share affects Distillers costs…Devil’s Take destroys Bar profits!
The differences and outcomes are wide reaching and devastating!
Angel's Share is the evaporative process in alcohol barrelling whereby a certain amount of alcohol evaporates silently through a barrel’s staves to reach the heavens: Angel's Share or Bacchus’s Bounty can equate to 5-10% yearly by volume loss depending on climatic conditions such as heat or cold.
The Devil’s Take on the other hand occurs downstream and is the process of alcohol transfer loss from bottle to serving glass at the Point of Pour. The Devil’s Take is widely agreed by industry experts such as Barmetrix and Bevinco to represent losses on average of 3-5 mL (1/10-1/6 Oz) per 30 mL or 1 Oz serve!
So how does one account for Angel's Share and the Devil’s Take?
Distillers are a fairly canny lot... every production loss, irregularity, imperfection is quickly noted and accounted for. As spirit ages, Angel's Share accounts for increasing costs. The total costs to bottle (including storage, processing, bottling, and packaging) is then divided by total net volume produced, resulting in higher cost and wholesale/retail sales price... (Marketing, transport, taxes, and margins excluded)
Bar operators on the other hand receive a certain amount of bottled sprits and alcohol into stock ... depleting via sales an amount weekly… the difference between POS recorded sales and remaining stock on hand being the Devil’s Take. .representing alcohol drips, leaks, over pours, freebies, shrinkage! Bars do not charge more money to guests/consumers for the arising alcohol wastage/loss. Of course if Bar’s were to increase the price of every drink served by the comparable amount of alcohol over-poured or wasted, wouldn’t incensed consumers demand greater accountability in the way alcohol is dispensed?
The Devil’s Take is broadly explained away by bar management as “a cost of doing business” rather than the consequence of poor practice and execution at the Point of Pour.
If Distillers owned bars would they find ways to account and reverse engineer the Point of Pour process to reduce or eliminate a preventable loss…we believe they would!
Acceptance of the Devil’s Take is not futile; practical, cost effective solutions are available to overcome this large problem... to learn more enquire here!
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