Operators acquiring a taste for beverage management technology
BY JAMES J. SCARPA
Eager to plug leaks in their beverage cost and rein in bar inventory in an economy that makes
every bottom-line dollar precious,
operators are relying on different
management technologies for enhanced control.
Among the technologies being
pressed into service is the AccuBar
system in use at Cameron Mitchell
Restaurants, a Columbus, Ohio-based multiconcept operator with
25 units under such brands as
Ocean Prime, M and Cameron’s
American Bistro. The AccuBar
technology simplifies inventory
management by using scanner-aided measurement of bottle contents. The data is run through sophisticated back-end software that
calculates pouring cost, updated
perpetual inventory and highlights variances that may indicate
a bartender is failing to ring up
drinks or pouring incorrect
amounts of liquor, so that timely
corrections can be made.
A different approach and technology is found in the Capton Beverage Tracker system employed at
Urban Tavern, a new Mediterranean restaurant in the San
Francisco Hilton operated by C&L
Partners. The Capton package
uses radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology to measure and transmit the amount of
every shot of liquor poured to a
personal computer running specialized software. In addition to
computing pouring cost, that application also records how each
drink was made and how each
transaction was handled in the
POS system, noting discrepancies
that suggest faulty pouring or employee dishonesty.
At Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, using AccuBar from G4
Technologies Corp. of Englewood,
Colo., has helped lower beverage
cost, increase managerial efficiency and reduce dollars tied up
in inventory. Those benefits were
spelled out by Ryan Valentine, director of beverage and operating
partner.
The key is its ability to take a
physical bar inventory that is
more accurate and roughly half as
time consuming as a pencil-and-paper inventory, according to
Valentine, thus allowing managers to be more efficient and effective at their jobs.
“My whole gamble in spending
Operators report that the Capton Beverage Tracker, above,
and the Accubar system, right, allow managers to reduce
costly inefficiencies and also can help training by offering
immediate, individualized feedback for bartenders.
the money on this was whether
managers would use some of the
time they saved on inventory to be
more of an operator and diagnose
their problems,” said Valentine.
“And they are looking more closely
at reports to tackle what’s going
on within their four walls.”
No longer do managers tediously inspect and estimate the
contents of bottles and transpose
the numbers to a spreadsheet, an
error-prone practice. In contrast to
manual systems, with AccuBar,
the manager uses a PDA, or personal digital assistant, to scan the
barcode on a bottle and taps the
touchscreen to enter the fill level.
No data entry is needed, because
the PDA syncs with the restaurant’s back-office computer, calculates inventory and generates reports that can be viewed online.
When AccuBar’s ordering function, which generates orders based
on the bar’s par level and stock on
hand, is used, the entire inventory
and ordering process may be as
much as 70 percent faster, according to Valentine.
At CMR, AccuBar brings welcome clarity to management issues, Valentine said: “If we see
that spirits are way over in our
specialty cocktails, we know either
we’re overpouring or we’re not
ringing them up. If we’re losing
beer out of a storage area, that
means there is a problem in the
back-of-the-house.”
Furthermore, an accurate inventory is the first step to paring
down excess stock and purchasing
more wisely. Valentine said one
store reduced its wine and spirits
inventory by about $20,000 thanks
to the system.
“We didn’t
change the size of
the wine list; we
changed the way we
bought,” he added.
Another benefit
of the technology’s better counting
and accounting is spotting carelessness or dishonesty at the bar. “You
can ask a bartender, ‘Did you break
a bottle of blueberry vodka last
night? Because I’m missing 7/10ths
of a bottle,’” said Valentine. “When
they know you see things like that,
they’re much less likely to take lib-erties.”
Valentine added that AccuBar
4.0, the newest version of the system, has new wine management
features useful with the large
wine lists of CMR concepts like M,
which has 300-plus labels. For one,
it prints a wine list based on actual stock. For another, it can apply bin numbers to wine items to
distinguish different vintages of
the same brand.
Valentine declined to say how
much CMR paid for the AccuBar
system. But according to AccuBar
officials, a system ranges in cost
from $4,000 to $10,000 per unit in
the majority of installations, depending on size and sophistication of
the beverage setup, plus a $100-per-
unit monthly fee for server hosting.
At Urban Tavern in San Francisco, the Capton Beverage
Tracker system from Capton Inc.
of Sausalito, Calif., plugs an RFID-enabled pour spout into each
liquor bottle at the bar. As bartenders free-pour drinks in the
normal fashion, a microchip in the
spout measures the pour and
wirelessly transmits the data to a
hidden receiver and in turn to the
manager’s PC. Each spout is
Ryan Valentine, beverage director for Cameron Mitchell Restaurants in
Columbus, Ohio, said AccuBar’s inventory system helps promote smarter
purchasing and even helped one store reduce its inventory by $20,000.
uniquely identified to track each
bottle individually. The spout,
which looks much like any other
pourer, is a self-contained unit
with a battery, electronics and
transmitter and is water resistant
to permit cleaning.
Larry DuLittle, director of operations for C&L, said he projects
that the system, which cuts down
on overpouring, ultimately will reduce beverage cost “by at least a
couple of points” at the restaurant
that opened in August. He admits
that management took its time in
ramping up use of the technology.
“We started off pretty slowly
with it,” he said. “But in the last
few weeks, we’ve made it a priority
and the results are getting
tremendously better.”
Because the wireless, spout-based system is all but invisible to
guests, it does not intrude on their
bar experience, DuLittle said. Bartenders learn to free-pour consistent 1.25-ounce shots by eye or by
silent count. “There are no gravity
balls on the pour spouts or jiggers
being used,” he said.
Pours, which are measured to
the 10th of an ounce, and events,
like the placement or removal of a
spout, are recorded with a date
and time stamp and transmitted
in real time. Therein is the accountability, as management can
easily track the identity of the bartender and the accuracy of the
pour. In addition, by giving bartenders feedback on pouring, it
serves as a training device.
“A bartender pours a drink and
you can show him the report 30
seconds later,” said DuLittle. “What
happened with this Beefeater?
Sure enough, you poured 2 ounces
for a regular drink.”
The Beverage Tracker system
“is not cheap,” said DuLittle, declining to say how much it cost. “But I
think it will pay for itself in a matter of months, if it’s used right.”
According to Capton officials, a
Beverage Tracker system generally ranges in cost from $10,000 to
$25,000, depending on the number of bars and spouts involved.
The lower figure reflects a relatively simple installation, the
higher one a multiple-bar setup.
Though he was reluctant to
disclose the cost of his Capton system, DuLittle was quick with his
praise for the technology. “I wouldn’t be without it,” he said. “It’s the
best system I’ve seen for accountability of liquor.” ■
