Sometimes waiter theft is planned and sometimes it is merely an oversight that ends up costing a restaurant owner money leaking from his bottom line. For example, the “Soda Pop Game” is a planned waiter scam to move money from the restaurant owner to his own pocket. “Beverage Amnesia” is an oversight when the restaurant gets slammed.
The Infamous “Soda Pop Game”!
This employee theft is not really a game, but here is how it is played with a POS system, by splitting tickets. Only instead of splitting the cost between two people at a table, the drinks are split off to an open ticket.
Let’s say Table #1 orders two meals and two sodas and then pays with cash. The waiter can split off the drinks to a new open ticket and close out the first ticket that now only has food on it. The cash that was paid for the drink portion of the total goes into the waiter’s pocket.
When the next table orders food with two sodas again, the food is added to the open ticket that currently only has the sodas on it. This table pays by credit card and the waiter closes the table out. The first ticket is closed out without drinks because the cash for the drinks is in the waiters pocket and the second ticket is legit.
One busy bar and restaurant in Ft. Worth, TX, was victimized by a group of servers working this scam together using their restaurant’s POS. They pilfered $30,000 over a 4-month period!
I know of only one POS system that plugs this common leak. “Soda Pop Game” pops up on the screen and the waiter has to scramble to correct his theft and get rid of the screen before his manager sees it!
Call us at 505-298-7618 to see a demo!
“Beverage Amnesia”
Picture this example of oversight that can cause huge losses!
Suzy Server has her section, plus she’s covering part of another section because Wally Waiter didn’t show up for his shift. Suzy has seven tables. The wait for a table is up to an hour. It’s going to be a crazy night.
She fires an order to the kitchen for two dinner specials. Then she sprints to the drink station and quickly pours two iced teas and delivers them to the table.
But she forgets to put the drinks onto the ticket. Suzy’s doing the best she can. She’s taking care of her customers, but she’s busy, and occasionally forgetting to add drinks to a ticket is inevitable. But this is also costing you a small fortune in lost revenue! One out of 10 tables is missing drinks and each table averages two guests. Assuming an average of 100 tables per day and a conservative $1.50 per soft drink, that means 20 missed drinks X $1.50 is $30 per day. If the restaurant is open 300 days a year, that means that the owner is losing $9000 a year in revenue!
Our restaurant POS system plugs this leak as well. It doesn’t allow you to close the ticket without a drink order.
With many years of experience in merchant services integrated with quick service and family restaurants, we’ve done a lot of research on the various ways what seem like small leaks, can add up to huge losses in profits!
Let us Customize the Best Restaurant POS System for You
with Integrated Low Rate Payment Processing!
Call us Today at 505-296-2847!
