Trusted, helpful staff given too much responsibility by weary owners, and a lack of systems for proper checking. How many times do operators make ‘trust’ their default mode with employees, instead of ‘check and verify’. When you work with cash, food and alcohol and have haphazard security, the thieves will soon find you. It was a bit sad to go through ‘the facts of life’, again, with a couple of new cafe owners…
Your Point of Sales system can be a key element in taking back control. Watching for error corrections and inaccurate use of PLU keys will soon alert you to problems – here are a few to watch:
Open Key – the one that’s used when you can’t find the one to use. A new menu item that hasn’t been added to the system, or there’s a rush and you can’t find Prawn Salad. Disable this key or make strict rules about who can use it – it’s wide open to abuse, and spoils the accuracy of sales data for stocktaking.
Voids, cancels and errors – all slightly different, and can be used to negate an order that has already been made. The end-of-shift report will show how many of these are done – they should be rare and explained.
Over-rings – OMG I ordered 10 salads instead of just one – I’ll tell the kitchen and fix it later! Maybe it wasn’t corrected, and the end of shift sales totals won’t balance with the till. In the struggle to reconcile, it’s easy for deliberate errors to be missed.
Training key – it’s there for training staff on the POS, so their practice transactions aren’t part of the shift totals. But it can be abused – I’ve been given a bill with a tell-tale letter T beside each transaction, and there was definitely no-one being trained.
More on restaurant security in my podcast interview with the Crime Doctor on How to Reduce Employee Theft in Restaurants.
Trust..and verify.
