Beverage Management

In Odds n' Ends, New Jersey Dave went to "Famous Dave's" with a date and forgot his wallet. Chicago Liz's general manager at the Mexican restaurant where she works paid cash in advance for a beer and liquor delivery that never materialized, and the place only had a case of beer....for the entire weekend. Guytano told about a conversation he had with a local town board member, who didn't want to discuss why a new pizza competitor got a parking lot immediately, even though it took years for his restaurant to get one. The board member basically told him to mind his own business, implying that something very shady was going on.

I told two stories, one about the new egg cake cart-storefront that just opened near the dirty old egg cake cart run by an old Chinese guy, who always has a line. While the new cart-storefront is very nice looking, it's $2 for 8 pieces and $5 for 24 -- while the old cart is $1 for 20 pieces. Really, as you can see in the pic, he has a line and the new place got zilch.

I told the story of the Saturday we just went through at the store...an excerpt from my personal blog....

I got in at 4am, after working 14.5 hours in the restaurant then riding about 30 miles round trip to Coney Island for hot dogs and some listening to the waves. The day at the restaurant started on a high note, then slowly slipped away inch by inch until coming to a complete crashing by the end. Friday was long, and nobody got enough sleep to start on Saturday. We open at 12 instead of 11:30 on Saturday, but its still not enough time to prep. L and his family were late by an hour, and by the time they arrived, I had everyone in and prepping, moving along well, got L in a good-ish mood. Then service started, we weren't finished with prep by a long shot, and we got slammed with too many customers, a system where only 1 pizza is made at a time, kept on running out of stuff, prepping to order, L started getting yelly at everyone, and on top of it, for some odd reason the air conditioning decided to not function and the temp in both the dining room and kitchen rose close to 90. We broke for lunch and closed the restaurant for an hour and a half. I had the guys do some prepping, but the dishes were backed up and as it turned out, even with a dishwasher, there wasn't enough dishes -- we had to serve on paper plates at one point in the night! We cancelled delivery, but L took an order for 17 pizzas anyway -- at 8:30pm, at the height of the rush! Things spiralled downwards, with the refrigeration in the back failing because of the excessive heat. Between moving food between units, suffering a lazy dishwasher and a delivery person who was sent back there to help but didn't do shit, L withdrawing and losing his energy and focus, the heat rising, my guys prepping and never catching up, and just wanting to hide in the cold walk-in refrigerated room and drink lemonade until it all just stopped.

And that was that!

The next half of the class was beverage management (during which I got a call from L and spoke for a while, missing a good hunk of the accounting side of this topic). In a nutshell, McDonald's would rather sell coca cola than hamburgers. The soda is a shelf-stable product that is only made when ordered, takes very little special equipment, little training, is made by someone else but is more profitable than the stuff they make. Beverages in a restaurant simply are a huge profit center, often more than food. Liquor licenses maybe hard to get, but they can be worth the hassle.

Beverages are basically broken down into four classifications:

• Beer - fermented grain
• Wine - fermented fruit
• Spirits - fermented and distilled
• Soft - non-alcoholic

And soft drinks are further broken down into:

• Coffee & tea
• Soda
• Juice
• Dairy
• Waters

As with food, one needs standardized recipes to help predict ordering and revenue. A one-ounce pour of wine is a heck of a lot different than a 1.75 ounce pour. Richard discussed a system in which a pourer is connected to a wine bottle, and a magnetic ring is attached. After a pour, the magnetic rind locks the pourer until the drink is rung up on the register. Now THAT is beverage control!

Purchasing can be tricky, especially for a full bar -- people tend to expect their favorite brands, which can add up to a lot of inventory. A place with a specific concept can get away with a shorter inventory.