'Alcohol-audit' Franchise Helps Bar Owners Better Calculate Their Losses

In most industries, a 20 percent to 25 percent loss is enough to put you out of business.

In the bar business, such losses are routine.

Beer foams up, and there are spills.

Bartenders pour a little extra into drinks for bar regulars.

Waiters and waitresses discreetly dole out freebies to friends.

And more unscrupulous employees flat-out steal while their employers aren't looking.

But Keith Bowler says a 25 percent loss isn't necessary. He says in many cases, he can reduce that to 5 percent.

More business owners are hiring him to do just that as the economy slows down and the expenses of running a business go up.

Bowler is the owner of Bevinco, which performs "alcohol audits" for bar owners, pinpointing losses and translating the ounces lost into dollars. The business in Wake County is a franchise of a Canadian company of the same name. Bevinco has franchises elsewhere in the state, including Greensboro, Jamestown and Charlotte.

"Our objective is to show them where they can save money," Bowler said. "A lot of times it can be thousands of dollars." Richard "Gus" Gusler hired Bevinco nine months ago when he suspected that employees might be stealing at Players' Retreat bar and restaurant in Raleigh.

"I kept looking at what was going on in the bar and how much I was buying and how much I was selling, and it just didn't compute," Gusler said.

He hired Bevinco without his employees' knowledge, letting Bowler and his staff in during predawn hours to weigh every bottle of liquor and every keg of beer and count the full bottles in the bar.

That data was put into a computer, which compared the amount used with the amount that the bar's computer system said was sold.

The first week, there was a little more than $2,000 in missing alcohol (translation: missed sales). The second week, it was $2,660.

"It turns out, that first week was a slow week," Gusler said. "Twenty percent of what was going out of here wasn't getting paid for. That one week, we lost an entire keg of Carolina Pale Ale." After two weeks of data, Gusler told his staff that he was watching. He eventually fired two people.

In the early-morning hours last week, Bowler and his staff were at Players' Retreat doing their weekly audit.

Again each bottle and keg was weighed. Again, all the full bottles were counted.

"Everything is done in grams, and ... (the computer) converts it into ounces," Bowler said. "We know exactly what the full bottle weighs and exactly what the empty bottle weighs. We know the density of the liquor, all of that." Most bar owners use un­scientific systems for guessing how much liquor they are using, Bowler said, or they calculate "pour cost," dividing the amount they spend by the number of times that liquor is used.

That system is flawed, Bowler said, because it can include liquor that wasn't paid for. "If you miss 2 ounces over 200 bottles, that's a lot of liquor," Bowles said.

Along with showing how much alcohol is missing, the Bevinco system offers detailed information that bar and restaurant owners may find helpful. "See here," Bowler said, pointing to the computer screen last week during the Players Retreat audit, "the Marti Mojito rum is over by 24 ounces, but this other rum is under by 17 ounces. What that tells me is that they changed a recipe or they have a bartender who doesn't know which one to pour." For such services, Bowler charges $150 to $250 a week, depending on the size of the audit.

Gusler said that the fee is worth it. When his audit was done, the Players Retreat's losses were just 3.4 percent, or $363.16.

Any week the bartending staff has a loss of 5 percent or less, Gusler rewards each person with a $20 bar tab. "They make it three out of four weeks," he said.

Bowler of Raleigh started his Bevinco franchise 31/2 years ago after leaving a job selling packaging and storage products to pharmaceutical companies.

Now he has 15 clients that he visits for weekly audits and a staff of two. But he said he hopes that business will expand as word spreads.

He said that the slowing economy has actually been good for business. "I really thought that when the economy took a downturn, we'd have owners who said they couldn't afford it," Bowler said, "but that hasn't happened."

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