I was curious to see if anyone had a inventory program that they were just in love with? i am looking for a good one, which leads me to part two of this question. I have heard of a lot of people payong managers and staff bonuses to keep down on theft and mistakes and all that. obviously it would be a neccesity to have a good inventory program to track and does anyone offer this kind of thing to thier employees? if so anyone care to discuss in some detail? thanks so much
Paying a bonus to reduce theft? Really???
I don’t think so. If and when I award bonuses, its for exceptional performance.
perhaps i said it wrong. a friend of mine worked for a pizza place that offered bonuses based on profitablility. his exact example was that the bonus got shared around so if anyone were to take anything it would be like taking money from everyone, then in theory you would have more eyes watching out. taking of inventory will tell if anything is walking out the back door of course but this puts more eyes on it. also he always told me a funny story that because of this bonus program if someone used to much cheese or cheese would hit the floor it was like a slow motion movie due to that it costs everyone. profit sharing to help maintain profitablity sorta thing
Unless you are doing the inventory counting yourself, on a regular basis, I would stay away from this type of bonus. When I was an Area Supervisor for Papa John’s, our General Managers were paid a bonus (1% of topline, or 10% of bottom line, whichever is greater). Then their bonus was paid out in 3rds, 1/3 for Positive Comp Sales, 1/3 for Inventory (had to be within .5% of target), and 1/3 for target Labor.
When they handed me two new stores where the AS never came around, it was amazing how many boxes of tinfoil, parchment paper, etc the stores “had”. Obviously I counted myself and found that the manager and area manager (both were tied to inventory) had been floating inventory to make their numbers.
When money is on the table, a lot of people will take the easy way out and cheat the system, so unless you have a neutral 3rd party (either yourself or someone who has no gain either way) verify the inventory at least quarterly, you could have an issue such as that where the food is counted but not really there.
If I ever re-entered the restaurant business the only inventory program that I would consider purchasing would be one that included a module that would calculate my theoretical usage based on my recipes and sales data from a POS system. (Most likely only sold by your POS provider due to the inregration aspect). Without knowing how much product you should have used, your actual physical inventories won’t tell you much other than what your hard food cost is. So I have a 28% food cost based on my physical inventory, that is great but if it was supposed to be 25% than where did that 3% go. Without the theoretical usage it would be impossible to determine.
I had such a system and it was worth more than its weight in gold. Unfortunately, it only integrated with Aloha POS and the company has since gone out of business from what I understand was due to the owners deteriorating health. It was called VIP and the co. was out of Canada.
Josh Davis
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Prism my Mircroworks does the orders/recipe ideal food cost. Not too hard to set up. good tool.