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Other Articles on Restaurant Loss Management A Systematic Approach to Employee Loss Deterrence in Restaurants Only Short-term Gains From Video Surveillance? Most Owners Encourage Their Employees to Steal Why Should You Be Concerned About These Activities? How To Find What Didn't Get Rung Up
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The owner of a well-known restaurant noticed that in his POS (point-of-sale) system, a couple of numbers didn't make sense. There was a discrepancy, a leak. He told his manager to find the problem. The manager thought first to use the new digital video recording system they had just bought, but there was no way the manager could baby-sit the surveillance system to find where those 49 unaccounted bottles went. Something was missing. The manager needed another dimension, another way to see what was going on. In*Sight Commander Systems offered him a series of proprietary programs, collectively called POSiwatch, that constantly monitors and analyzes transaction data, looking for behavior patterns that expose the company to profit leaks. Hmm, thought the manager, maybe this extra set of eyes is what we need. Soon, POSiwatch notified the manager. The results were in. Server 9 was ordering over 20 ice waters a night, way more than average. Then the manager used POSiwatch to verify what the Server entered in the order system compared to the video record of what was served for that receipt. |
The evidence was sobering: Server 9 entered ice waters into the POS and delivered bottled Coronas. Here, the manager, reasoned, was the discrepancy. The server had figured out how to order ice water, sell Coronas, and keep the money. When the manager showed Server 9 the ice water order and the Coronas being served, he said he was a slow learner. When he showed him the same sequence from two nights ago, Server 9 had a smile on his face and said, “So you know.”. This is a sobering story that most owners react to by saying, "Can't happen here". Unfortunately it does happen in the real world when real employees with real money pressures are faced with so much temptation. Brian McMillan is Director of Product Development of In Sight Commander System, Inc. a software development company specializing in restaurants and video surveillance systems. He can be reached at (714) 940-9800 or http://www.insightcommander.com/
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