Successfully managing an establishment that serves alcohol requires a lot more than a liquor license and a few experienced bartenders. To keep your bar or nightclub running smoothly, it is important to have processes in place that streamline your service, optimize your inventory and increase your sales.
Keep reading to learn how you can accomplish that with your bar POS system.
1. Manage inventory
In order to keep your customers happy, you never want to run out of a beverage or ingredient during a busy night. That’s why it’s important to keep your inventory stocked at all times. To keep an optimal amount of beverages and ingredients on hand and to optimize purchase orders, you must be familiar with your sales performance.
You can use your POS system’s reporting features to keep track of best-selling drinks and your peak nights and periods to make sure that you never run out.
2. Monitor pour levels
There isn’t a single business that likes to waste money or inventory – but for bars, that can be hard to control. To control costs and see significant savings over time, measure and monitor your pouring levels to make sure employees aren’t overdoing it. This will also help you ensure that your menu items are served in a consistent manner, no matter who the bartender is.
Monitoring pour levels also helps to mitigate risk of liquor shrinkage and employee theft. For added security, you can use your POS system to evaluate employee performance and keep a closer eye on your beverage inventory.
3. Host special events
Hosting events like happy hour, karaoke night, open mic night, wing night or a round of speed dating on a weekly or monthly basis can help you attract new customers and introduce new menu items. You can use your POS system’s reporting features to take a look at your bar performance – you can schedule special events on slow nights to increase revenue or take advantage of seasonal crowds to make your big nights even bigger.
Your POS system can also be used to accommodate special menus and prices for these events – which can also be done to your bar’s benefit. For example, happy hour menus can include discounts on high profit margin items and group specials. And different menus can be created for each event so that your employees will be able to easily ring up special menu items without confusion. Other promotional material like vouchers or coupons can be incorporated into your POS screen to keep guests coming back.
4. Encourage upselling
The power of upselling – a very effective marketing method for bars – lies in the hands of your staff. To leverage it, educate and train your bartenders so they are able to give valuable recommendations to your customers. Using your POS reporting feature, determine the items and timeframes that you would like to promote and keep your employees in the loop. Also, be sure that they are concentrating on providing useful information rather than sales pitches – doing so is far more effective with customers.
Teach your staff about food and drink pairings, rare or seasonal items and high margin options. Not to mention, give them a chance to sample your food and beverage offerings so they are familiar enough to make suggestions.
5. Eliminate liabilities
In the alcohol service business, security means everything. It is imperative to protect your establishment from fines, loss of your liquor license, increased insurance costs or even closing. That’s why it’s important to monitor pouring, enforce a strict age verification process and limit consumption on drinks with high alcohol content. Your POS system should be able to enforce these requirements, whether it’s through age verification peripherals or software features that only allow you to ring up a certain number of drinks per tab.
How will you use your POS system to “raise the bar”?
