Revolutionize Your Liquor Count Practices with Modern Digital Solutions

Operations
Restaurant
Published on:
November 27, 2024
Read Time:
13
min

Customers usually visit a liquor store because they require something (a bottle of vodka for a party, a way to recreate a great cocktail experience they had at a restaurant, among countless other "needs"), and their reliance on the retailer to fulfill that need is critical. 

If a retailer is unable to locate a specific item, cannot locate it in the backroom, or is unsure whether it has been re-ordered, the customer can opt to look elsewhere. 

Given the possibility, the customer will follow the least resistance (there are other ways to get a bottle of vodka!) and may never return to the store.

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The process of precisely measuring liquor works as a strategic lever because it directly influences the financial success of your bar.

It is a vital step to go through with proper inventory management and cost control. However, the method of traditional liquor counting and manual wayborne counting frequently reduces the planning into a checklist kind of job. 

As a bar manager, you must overcome the difficulties to accurately measure the liquor, but how would you do it?

Current and precise liquor or bar supply counts not only save you time and money by avoiding overordering but also keep your customers pleased by not leaving them hanging. Inventory accuracy not only supports client demand but also drives customer loyalty. 

You can make sure that your customers will become regulars at your business by demonstrating that their favorite items are always accessible. One of the simplest options is to use a liquor or bar inventory software tool to track and manage your liquor supplies. 

This is because liquor inventory is simply one among tens of thousands of goods that your bar purchases and resells.

The volume of the alcoholic drinks market in the United States is estimated to increase by a total of 2 billion liters (+6.25%) from 2023 to 2027.

This sum is still expanding, indicating the increasing importance of maintaining a precise and efficient liquor inventory. Many old approaches appear incapable of handling the expanding market. This is when liquor inventory management software with advanced features and real-time tracking emerges as the key instrument required to keep the market running.

Xenia is one such ground-breaking digital solution ready to transform your liquor inventory management. This intuitive, easy-to-use tool can reduce human error and make counting your alcohol easier than ever. With Xenia's extensive capabilities, you'll have your inventory organized in no time.

In this post, why you should utilize a liquor inventory management solution and how installing Xenia can assist you in streamlining your inventory demands.

Liquor Count: The What and Why

A liquor count involves the counting of alcoholic drinks such as spirits, wines, and beers at a bar or restaurant.

A liquor count's goal is to provide you with a continuous evaluation of the amount of stock on hand. It aids in the maintenance of organized and up-to-date inventory records, supports the prevention of loss or shrinkage, and ensures that any stocking irregularities can be handled.

A continuous inventory check guarantees that your restaurant maintains appropriate liquor control resulting in an operational report that syncs with current data.

Why Liquid Count is Important for Bar Business?

1. Inventory Management

Inventory control is critical to efficiency and accuracy. The use of consistent and precise liquor counts aids in the recording of items in real-time.

The importance of this record accuracy gain efficiency for alcohol inventory management is thus avoiding over and under stocks, unnecessary wasting time counting inventory as stock dries up, and also boosting product supply chains by recognizing the consumption pattern and product familiarity as you count.

2. Cost Control

One of the primary reasons why businesses must do liquor counts is to detect and prevent shrinkage. Shrinkage might occur as a result of theft, spillage, or other occurrences. Businesses that manage to regulate these variables can reduce losses and keep costs under control.

Furthermore, accurate liquor counts allow firms to monitor inventory levels more effectively, reducing waste. This, in turn, can cut expenses associated with any product that has expired or is displaying a lack of mobility.

3. Profitability

Beer is consumed more than most other alcoholic beverages, yet there is a wide range of alcoholic beverages to consider.

This makes dealing with these numerous sorts of drinks much more challenging for businesses.

They require assistance with their inventories, to keep track of everything and generate a profit.

When you are in the bar industry, you must be aware of your company's profitability. Once you know how much of each type of liquor you have on hand, you'll be able to devise price methods that will give you a competitive edge. You can adjust your rates based on the cost. If you know exactly how much an item costs and how many drinks are in stock, you can set an optimized price accordingly.

With real-time data and insights, you can know what types of liquor are popular among your customers, and you can utilize that information to effectively create promotions.

To enhance sales and profitability in the bar sector, promotions, and inexpensive beverages are required. When you have liquor counts that tell you what goods sell quickly in your business, it is easier to design promotions and know what type of campaign to run to eliminate particular items.

Traditional counting methods can be labor-consuming, making liquor counting very prone to human mistakes. The time required to count and the labor necessary to validate real-time amounts can also be difficult. Given the challenges and the complex nature of counting, a more effective approach to liquor counting is required.

Technology-driven techniques, such as the implementation of software in liquor inventory management solutions or automated systems, can assist in overcoming these limits and providing real-time counting, reducing human error, and improving overall operating efficiency.

What is Liquor Inventory Software?

Alcohol inventory software is designed primarily to assist bars, restaurants, and liquor shops in managing their liquor inventory. It allows you to manage and keep track of the liquor you have in stock.

Alcohol inventory software provides a faster and more precise approach to counting your stock than manually inputting all of the data into a spreadsheet or counting everything personally.

Advantages of Digital Solutions for Liquor Count Management

1. Automated Tracking

The liquor inventory software will manage your inventory levels for drinks automatically, eliminating the need to manually count your inventory and saving you time and increasing accuracy.

2. Advanced Calculation

Formulas for tracking bar inventory cost and utilization per drink served each day, week, or month. Based on identified expenses and consumption rates, it is possible to establish ideal drink pricing.

3. Order Management

provides inventory stock levels and expected demand data, as well as assistance in placing new orders. This, in turn, prevents overstocking or shortages, resulting in improved cost control due to more optimum inventory levels.

4.Waste Identification

Waste ID aids in recognizing resource waste throughout the inventory process. At each stage of the supply chain, this might be money, time, or people. Furthermore, Waste ID in the supply chain process may assist in uncovering anomalies and enhance supply chain processes.

5. Efficiency and Profitability Tools

The digitized solution for your liquor counting Increases efficiency by streamlining overall bar and/or restaurant operations. Additionally, it gives important data through tools and analytics, allowing for product Balance modifications that eventually boost revenues.

6. Customer Experience Management

Nobody enjoys being told that the bar is out of a certain beverage.

This feature will ensure that you are always able to satisfy your clients' demands. If implemented correctly, this will not only improve the client experience but will also save your bartenders many hours. If you get the inventory levels perfect, your bar will be on autopilot for years!

How to Choose the Best Liquor Count Management Software?

1. Determine What You Need

Before you assess liquor management software for your bar or club, you must first determine your business's particular requirements.

Determine what's important based on the size of your company. the kind of beverages you sell, workers, and your other venue and clientele requirements. Identifying your needs ahead of time can help you narrow down your options and rapidly eliminate outdated tools that don't match what you want or need.

2. Ease of Use

The interface should be simple to use. Error-prone, complex software can only make your employees hate it. Look for software that is simple to use and appropriate for folks with minimal computer abilities.

3. Real-Time Tracking

 if you know which of your liquor products is popular on your website and is going to sell out regularly, you can quickly purchase more or, if it's less popular than usual, you can reduce the stock. If you are not using a system that allows you to track in real time, making a choice on what stock to order at the proper moment will help you avoid stock difficulties.

4. Integrations

Choose bar inventory management software that works in collaboration with your POS system. The program syncs your sales data with your bar inventory system, eliminating the need for you to manually enter your sales data. This saves time and improves accuracy.

5. Mobile Compatibility

Choose applications that can be accessed from your smartphone.

Why not keep track of your inventory, place orders, and check sales while you're on the go? This helps you to be a more efficient Bar Manager. Even if you are not physically present there, you should be able to manage all that remotely.

6. Barcode Scanning

Any reliable bar inventory management software must have barcode scanning. Barcode scanning technology helps add fresh products to your inventory and maintains stock levels up to current and correct, allowing you to make fewer costly mistakes.

7. Reporting and Analytics

When you utilize reports and analytics to make decisions, you make the best-informed choices possible.

Some features to look for include thorough information on sales trends and inventory turnover, as well as readily monitored supplier performance. This can aid in the optimization of inventory levels, pricing tactics, and even mix.

8. Supplier Management

Effective contact with suppliers is of the utmost importance for stock management since it helps you to negotiate credit conditions and maintain adequate stock levels. Look for liquor inventory management software that has supplier management tools, such as the ability to track supplier performance, manage orders, and receive warnings when stock levels are low.

How does Xenia help in Liquor Counting and Management?

By linking everyday operations, supplier management, and compliance tools, Xenia's suite of software modules transforms traditional liquor inventory management.

As a consequence, you can improve the productivity of day-to-day liquor-related chores, give insight into satisfying compliance standards, and enhance your bar's overall inventory management.

Xenia facilitates liquor inventory management more effectively than the rest of the solutions available due to its extensive set of features such as an extremely user-friendly graphic interface, the ability to operate and track in real-time, and supplier management preforms that will automatically adjust to meet the needs of your clients and/or business.

1. Checklists and SOPs

As a bar manager, you can design customized checklists and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that are particular to the liquor management tasks you need to execute on a daily or quarterly basis.

You can delegate these tasks to teams and workers, and inform them whatever categories, locations, assets, or priority labels your company assigns to them.

To improve accountability, you can track progress and measure task fulfillment.

2. Temperature Monitoring for Liquor Storage

Use a Bluetooth sensor to continually check the temperatures of your alcoholic drinks in the freezer, cooler, and other storage locations.

If the temperature goes outside of your set range, an automated notification will be sent to you. Keep track of your remedial measures to ensure your booze is kept properly.

3. Work-Orders Assignment

When any liquor work order is completed, incident reports can be generated automatically.

To assist users in resolving an issue, operation templates can be added to a work order. Progress may then be followed, and various reports and data can be exported for further analysis.

4. Smart Inceptions

Create recurring work orders for preventative maintenance on a unified calendar to gain higher visibility into future service requirements.

Furthermore, to identify the most critical liquor service needs, use filters by type, location, asset, and priority.

To be entirely thorough in your experience to preventative maintenance needs, use inspections, records, SOPs, and checklists.

5. Liquor Regulation Compliance Audits

Create complete audit features that allow you to carry out HACCP programs and ensure FSMA compliance.

To satisfy liquor industry compliance standards, conduct inspections and audits.

6. Team Communication

Xenia allows for a one-on-one discussion between employees o and team chat inside particular projects.

Users will be able to see business announcements while participating in in-task conversations, making any project collaborative.

You will also be able to access a message record at any time to review earlier conversations, guaranteeing continuous communication.

7. Reporting and Analytics

Employee productivity can be measured using analytics reports by accessing the employee performance dashboard.

To make informed decisions about which liquor assets to acquire, review the work order history analytics report for those assets. Finally, analytics templates are submitted and shown in the template submission dashboards.

The Bottom Line

The rise in per capita alcohol consumption in the United States over the last few decades demonstrates the industry's growing complexity and demand.

With an increase in consumption comes an increase in the complexity of managing liquor inventory for restaurants and bars.

Adopting a digital solution for liquor counting is more than an enhancement; it is a strategic need for restaurants/bars seeking operational efficiency, cost reduction, and increased profitability.

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