Taking stock in a bar is a very important step for any bar employee, as it involves tracking inventory to manage resources effectively. Knowing how to “take stock” ensures that bartenders and staff are aware of the amount of alcohol, mixers, garnishes, and other supplies on hand, which of course, is important for smooth operations. Without proper stock knowledge, a bar can quickly run out of popular items, leading to customer dissatisfaction, lost sales, and potentially reduced tips for the staff.
In this article we will go through some important steps for taking stock in a bar. How to check your stock level before service and taking stock service after service. While these sound very familiar, thy are slightly different from each other. Checking your stock levels is about making sure that you restocked your fridges and bars correctly after the previous service. Taking stock on the other hand, is far more detailed and is what we will be looking at in this article.
What Does Taking Stock Mean?
Taking stock can be defined as “the act of physically checking both the quantities and condition of the items that you are holding in your bar and storeroom“. The most important thing about taking stock is that somebody has to physically do it. In other words, they need to actually be there and see all the stock with their own eyes. This way, whoever takes stock can be 100% sure that the stock has been checked correctly and accurately. Furthermore, stock needs to be checked in both your storeroom and in your bar and fridges.
Quantity and Taking Stock
Let’s have a closer look at quantity and taking stock in order to understand it fully. The first part of the definition of stock-take deals with checking the quantity of all the different items. This means that the person taking stock is looking at how many of each item there is. Why do you think it’s important to know how much of each item you have? Well, simply because by seeing how much you have, you can have an idea of when you are likely to run out of those items and plan accordingly.
For example, if you know that you usually sell 20 beers in an evening and you have 60 beers left, you will understand that will be enough and that after 3 more evenings, you will be running out of beers. Along with checking how many of each item you have left, we can also work out how many items we sold in the last service. This is very useful advice if you want to work out how much money was made. For example, if you know that you had 40 beers before service and after you take stock you find out that you have 10 left, you know that you sold 30 beers during that service.
Another great tip for taking stock is to take small portions of the same drink and put them into a single bottle. For example, if you have 3 bottles of vodka that are all one-third full, put them all into a single bottle together. Just make sure that they are all the same brand of vodka as you don’t want to be mixing brands!
Quality and Taking Stock
Along with checking the numbers of each item, the person taking stock also needs to check the quality of all the different items. In other words, they need to see whether their items are still in a good condition to use and serve to guests. The main thing to look for here is the expiry dates and the freshness of all the different items. This way we will know when an item goes ‘off’ and is no longer good enough or safe to be served to guests. This is especially important when it comes to fresh ingredients such as fruit and vegetables.
How to Take Stock?
There is no one single way of taking stock and every bar will have their own particular way of doing it. Let’s have a look at the basic principles of stock-taking through an example so that when you are required to take stock, you understand it and know how to do it.
How to Count Stock?
The most important items that you will need when taking stock, are a spreadsheet with all of the different items in your bar listed on it, and of course a pencil. This spreadsheet needs to have every single type of item that will eventually be served to guests on it.
Let’s begin with an example where our spreadsheet contains all of the different types of mixers that we have at our bar and also all the different fruits that we use to make garnishes. :
Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Apples, Oranges, and Peaches.
Now that we know the items on the list, we need to count them all so that we know how many of each item we have. For example we do have the final count as below:
- Coca-Cola – 7pcs
- Fanta- 9pcs
- Sprite – 12pcs
- Apples – 5pcs
- Oranges – 6pcs
- Peaches – 9pcs
Now that we have all of this information, we need to use it and make decisions with it. The next step is to check whether the items that you’ve counted are below their minimum level. All that this means is that there should be a rule regarding each and every item, that when you have below a certain number of an item, you need to order more and replenish its stock. In our example, let’s say that our minimum number for mixers is 10 and our minimum number for fruits is 10.
According to our list, what are we going to have to order more of? Well, you are right if you said we need to order more Coca-Colas, Fantas, Apples, Oranges and Peaches. With this information we can inform our manager, what we need to order. If we don’t do this it is very likely that we’ll run out of these items.
How to Check Quality?
The last thing to do when taking stock is to check the quality of all the items in your fridge and storeroom. When it comes to checking drinks and drink ingredients, we need to make sure that their expiry date hasn’t passed. If the expiry date has passed, that drink or drink ingredient is no longer safe and suitable to be consumed by anyone. This means that we need to get rid of it and make the appropriate changes to our stock spreadsheet.
A similar rule applies to the garnishes. We need to look at all our garnishes, with particular attention and our fruit and vegetables, and make a decision as to whether fresh enough to use. If they are not fresh enough to use, make sure that you throw them away and make the changes on your stock-taking spreadsheet. The reason that we pay particular attention to fruit and vegetables is because they tend to go off rather quickly and so we need to make extra sure that they are fresh enough to use.
