Sacramento - 1 September, 2003 -

It's quiet in the morning inside the nightclub 815 L Street in Sacramento as Jim Bonfield scans and measures the bottles behind the bar. There are five bartender stations, more than a thousand bottles and an eerie calm. The bar won't open for hours. Bonfield is doing an audit that will tell the owners how much money they lost at the bar. Bartenders can literally pour away the profits from a restaurant or a bar, but it happens less if they are accountable for their shifts. Losses are a given. The goal here is to bring losses down to far less than the industry average of 20 percent. "We put extra money in the owners' pocket because we cut their losses," said Bonfield, owner of the local franchise of Toronto-based Bevinco. Managers and owners for years have gotten more precise in their inventory control. Bevinco's sophisticated system uses gram scales, bar code readers, laptop computers, proprietary software and little stickers to inventory hundreds of bottles of beer, wine, booze -- as well as kegs of beer -- down to less than an ounce. "I probably pay them $8,000 to $10,000 a year, but I end up saving in excess of $30,000," said Keith Simpson, owner of two combination bar-restaurants in South Lake Tahoe. "That leaves me adding $20,000 to the bottom line, and the bottom line is what business is all about. My motto is: Sales is vanity; profit is sanity." Bonfield has 20 or so clients at a given time. Often he's successful in finding a problem, so that his audits are no longer needed, at least for the time being. How it works: The audit is thorough and detailed. It shows not only what was rung up at the cash register, but what is missing from all the bottles. The audit is precise to within 3 grams. A nickel weighs 5 grams. An audit of a large bar can take several hours and cost the owner hundreds of dollars every week, but it catches loss of revenue. Say a bar is losing $400 worth of alcohol. That is not only a loss that the owner has to make up, but it is a missed opportunity of perhaps $3,000 in sales, said Bonfield, who has had the franchise for three years, after his son tipped him off to Bevinco. The elder Bonfield was a semi-retired water-proofing contractor who was looking for something to do without breaking his back. The audits happen early in the morning before opening time, as at 815 L Street. Every open bottle in a restaurant or watering hole gets a sticker on it signifying that the bottle has been measured and giving a reminder to bartenders that the place gets audited. "Not only do I know what is happening, all of the employees know that I know," Simpson said. Bevinco's program creates an inventory for every brand in the bar. It shows, for example, how much of a certain kind of tequila each bartender station sold, how much of that tequila is used, and how much should have been used. "There are three kinds of Patron Tequila. If one of the bartenders is pouring silver and charging for Anejo, that will show up," said Ernesto Jimenez, owner of Ernesto's Mexican Food. "Everything shows up." Where the booze goes: There are many ways drinks or money go missing. Some bartenders pour hard. Others keep cash rather than putting it in the till. Sometimes the kitchen crew raids a bar. Other times a manager cooks the inventory books. There are mistakes and spills. Some barkeepers give out free drinks excessively. "If you have a regular customer, sure you give 'em a free drink now and again," Simpson said. "I just want to make sure they're not giving free drinks out all the time." Many bartenders pour strong drinks assuming it will get them a big tip. That turns out to be a cost to Simpson and may not pay off for the tender. "If you give a customer the equivalent of three drinks in two drinks, the bartender gets two tips and I'm out a sale. If the customer would have had three drinks, they would have tipped three times," Simpson said. Inventory is easy to shun: An outside auditor gives an owner important data that he might be too busy to get for himself. "It is good information," said Jimenez, who opts for Bevinco because he gets detailed inventory and sales information. "Inventory is important, and typically a manager can do it, but inventory doesn't take first priority," Jimenez said. "Human resources take priority -- that's where the emergencies are -- and the inventory gets pushed off." After being pushed off a few times, the inventory becomes just a way of knowing what to reorder, rather than a way of knowing what's happening in the business. Part of the Bevinco service includes bartender meetings, where Bonfield goes over the losses. Typically after a meeting, losses go down. In some cases, Bonfield suggests that bartenders go to measured pours, which means the bartender has to use a jigger or a shot glass for measurement. "They don't like that, but these drinks are based on established recipes," Bonfield said. "If you're not measuring the combinations, you're not putting out the right drink." For Simpson, Bevinco helps put him in command. "It is really a way of having control and information," he said. "It's no good seeing that you have a $1,000 loss. You want to know how and what you've lost."

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