Most restaurant and bar owners unintentionally put their bartenders and cocktail servers in positions to “divert” money from the cash drawer (or from customers) to their own pockets.  There are so many temptations during a normal shift.  “If I give this guy a free drink, he’ll leave me a bigger tip” or “that group over there will never notice a few extra drinks on their bill” or “that lady will never notice that it’s not Chivas, but rather our well scotch”.

The only way to prevent these transgressions is to enforce policies and procedures put in place just for this reason.  The trick is to monitor and enforce the procedures – especially when you are not there.  

One of the many ways that restaurant owners can increase pressure on employees is to allow morale to drop.  There are two ways that employee moral can be affected in a restaurant.  The first morale killer occurs when management does not enforce enough controls over servers or bartenders. Over time, this lack of control causes the employees to begin to resent working there.  With inadequate controls and enforcement of procedures, the employees start to think about how easy it would be to give into temptation and basically-honest employees start to feel emotional conflicts.  Under this pressure, they start to rationalize – “everyone else is doing it”, “it’s understood that it is part of my compensation”, “if I don’t make enough money, I won’t be able to work here anymore and the restaurant will suffer” – are but a few justifications to yield to the temptation.

All employees develop patterns and habits - for better or worse.  Some employees follow procedures, while others don't.  New computer-based tools are available which are designed to separate the good employee profiles from the poor or dishonest ones. 

In order to get a complete profile of behavior profiles, a large number of data must be collected from multiple sources.  Data necessary to be collected and analyzed include cash drawer opening sequences, both by key and electronic openings by the point-of-sale system.  All discounts, coupons, gift certificates, open or miscellaneous food and liquor sales, credit card tips must be analyzed.  Voids and no-sales, both before and after being finalized, are compared.  Ratios of bottled beer to draft beer, wine by the glass to wine by the bottle, well liquor to call or premium liquor and even mixed drinks to well drinks must also be compared to other employees performing similar tasks at similar times on similar days of the week during similar seasons or holidays.