In this video, we're going to be going over how do you detect people stealing from your
restaurant, and how do you prevent this from happening.
Hey guys, my name is [Wilson 00:00:00:11], and if you're running a restaurant with any
number of employees, then you'll want to pay attention because in this video I'm going
to be sharing with you the templates, the policies, and the contracts that will save
you tens of thousands of dollars.
So make sure you guys stay until the end.
Would you care if your staff school a meal from you?
How about $5 from the pool tip.
How about a hundred dollars?
See, that usually starts really small and escalates really quickly, so if you don't
pay attention to these things and stop it right from the beginning, then it's going
to cost you a lot of money.
The first thing and stopping people from stealing from you is to know when they're stealing
from you.
The first step in understanding how do you detect people from stealing from you is to
study your profit and loss statement.
It is super important and essential for your success as a business owner.
If you want to succeed, you've got to have proper bookkeeping practice.
You've got to have your profit and loss statements every single month updated.
If you're operating your business without understanding how you're doing on a monthly
basis, you're basically working in the blind.
You don't know which levers to pull in order for you to have more profit at the end of
the year.
So at the end of the day, make sure this is a practice that you are already implementing
in your business.
But in the meantime, if you're still getting that in order, you're still working with your
bookkeeper on creating and updating your profit and loss statement, it is still okay.
We're going to be looking in a different way where you can start detecting threats, and
so you can start saving you a lot of money.
For those of you who have your most updated profit and loss statement, a very simple number
to keep an eye on is the food costs in relation to your revenue.
I know every business and every restaurants are completely different, so the percentage
might skew a little bit.
But as a good reference point, 30% is a good benchmark to go after.
So what that means is if you're making $100,000 in a restaurant than $30,000 should be accounted
for your food cost.
Food cost includes anything from ingredients, to spoilage, to anything that is in direct
relationship into how the food is produced.
Those are all included in the food cost.
So if every month your food cost percentage is floating around 30%, and all of a sudden
you hire a new manager and that food percentage heights up to 40%, then you know something
is wrong.
That doesn't entirely mean that they're stealing from you.
It could be because they just have been comping a lot more to the customers to create a better
customer experience, or they're not managing the spoilage of your food properly.
So at the end of the day, this requires us to dig in deeper, to investigate further.
This is the easiest way for you to detect anything that is going wrong is by understanding
your profit and loss statement.
As I was saying previously, if for those of you who don't have your profit and loss statement
up to date, the next thing to look at it is your cash register.
There are many patterns where you can observe from your staff's cash register.
Some people might be spot on, others might have a few dollars up, a few dollars lower,
but at the end of the day, something to keep an eye out on is consistent patterns that
are overage.
And what that means is that when they balance their their cash register, they're always
over by $5, $10.
This is a very clear sign that something fishy is going on.
What most likely is happening is your staff is probably comping meals and voiding checks
and then he's pocketing the cash.
And a lot of times they may be tallying this in their head, and throughout the night they
may lose count.
So a lot of times they much rather be over than under, and which is the reason why if
there is consistent overage with your staff's cash count and and cash register, then something
fishy is definitely going on.
Now that you have determined that there is something fishy going on and that people are
stealing from you, we're going to be looking at ways to prevent this from happening.
Step number one is to make sure that the kitchen does not produce any food or the bar does
not give out any drinks until a ticket is issued, whether it be a custom order, whatever
the case is, you need to ticket before you have any product.
A lot of staff, they take advantage of the ambiguity from the front house to the back
house.
And through this ambiguity, they're able to take advantage and steal from you.
So make sure that your staff understands that there are systems in place, understands that
if there's no ticket, nothing is being made.
This would save you thousands of dollars.
Step number two in preventing theft from your restaurant is to make sure that whoever is
touching the cash is responsible for that cash register only.
Okay.
So a lot of people, because there's multiple people touching the cash and touching the
cash register, there's ambiguity.
They can they can blame it on other people.
So the best way to prevent this from happening is to make sure that each person is in charge
of their own cash.
And by doing this, it decreases the chance of people making dumb decisions.
Step number three, random spot checks.
The majority of the time if people are stealing from you, they are usually keeping a running
tally throughout the night.
It just makes things so much easier.
And then afterwards, they're going to pocket the cash.
So if in the middle of the shift you do a random spot check with them, with their cash
register, with their pockets and everything, it's going to throw them completely off.
And they know for a fact that it's much more riskier, and that you have these policies
in place.
And that would definitely decrease the chances of them stealing from you again.
Step number four, document every overage and underage, and make them sign it.
This acts as a very good deterrent for your staff because it makes the whole process very
legitimate.
It brings to them and allows them to understand that you are paying attention, that you do
care, and that would greatly decrease the chance of people stealing from you.
Step number five, install cameras in your restaurant.
It is something that is super important.
I think at the end of the day, people understand this as a practice already, and people are
not going to be thrown off with this.
But this acts is a great deterrence for people that are actually stealing from you because
they do not know what is being documented and what is being filmed or not.
Step number six, audit the comp and void function in your POS system.
Pull up a report every single night and actually do spot checks of how many items were being
comped and how many items are being voided.
This is a function that is used the majority of the time by people to steal from you, when
they comp items and then they pocket the cash.
This is super easy to do, and this is something that is super easy for people to take advantage
of.
So what as you are printing out these reports, it acts as also a deterrence for people and
your staff to know that you actually pay attention to these things.
Number seven, zero tolerance policy.
In the beginning of each employment, I get all my staff to sign this policy, mainly because
it acts as a great deterrence and lets them understand the gravity of the situation.
If for whatever reason they do decide to steal from us, we will terminate them immediately
and we will be pressing criminal charges.
They understand the gravity of the situation, and they will not dare to steal from you when
you have these policies in place.
If you guys are looking for a policy, I've attached the one that I personally use in
the document below.
Feel free to download it and use it, to get your staff to sign this policy.
It acts as a great deterrence, and it would save you thousands of dollars.
Some scenarios that would throw the numbers off as well is, first of all, if your server
sucks at counting and they're always giving out either extra bills or they're receiving
extra bills, they just suck at counting at the end of the day.
That would throw the numbers off.
Second is if your POS system is really complicated, and there's always a rush, and when people
come by they're just trying to figure out how to balance the math on the spot.
They might be voiding different meals just to make sure that everything is [inaudible
00:08:30] up.
And at the end of the shift, they forget what was happening because they were in such a
rush.
Third, it could be when people are giving them, let's say for example $50 and they don't
want the change back.
And when the server just wants $10 instead of $10.52 cents in tips, they might just take
the $10 and leave the $52 in the pot.
And at the end of the day, and it doesn't balance out.
This is due to pure laziness and just really poor practices.
But at the end of the day, they might not be stealing from you.
So what does this all mean?
Well, if you are suspecting people from stealing from you, the first step is to actually have
a meeting with the suspect and ask them to explain.
Let them come clean.
Never accuse them of stealing from you.
Ask them to explain what has happened and present the facts.
You do not want to detain and restrain them from leaving your restaurant or your office
if you have suspected them from stealing from you because it's against the law to do that.
And at the end of the day, you do not want to defame them because they can press charges
on you.
You also don't want to publicize the fact that they're stealing from you because if
you do not have sufficient proof, they can also press charges for slander on you.
At the end of the day, is it worth pursuing a lawsuit if they're only stealing $50 from
you, $100 from you?
Is it worth your time?
Is it worth your effort?
And Is it worth the team morale to go down because of one individual's actions?
So at the end of the day, have the preventive measures in place, have the policies in place.
As a professional company, your staff would not hate you for that, if all these are given
to them upfront.
On the contrary, they will actually learn to appreciate and respect that, and you're
going to be able to build a great team.
I really hope this has helped you.
I've attached some of the checklist items that I personally use in my business, which
save thousands of dollars.
So, use that.
Communicate with your team as you roll out these different preventative measures.
If you have any questions, leave it in the comments below.
If you like this video, if you find this being helpful, smash the like button.
Otherwise, subscribe along the journey.
I'll see you guys in the next video.