Want to Lose Profit?
Bar Restaurant – Spain
After 24 years running my own Bar restaurant on the Costa del Sol, Spain, if I have learned one thing that is more important than anything else, it is this:
Every single time you serve a drink, a portion of garlic bread or say a pizza,
write it down on the customers bill immediately.
And
Train your staff from their very first day to stick rigidly to this system. The system is not only for security, as I talked about in an earlier post.
During my first two years here on the Costa del Sol, Spain, I lost count of how many times I remembered something that should have gone onto a customers bill, after they had paid and left my restaurant and then it was too late to do anything about it.
It’s not a nice feeling to have say cooked a pizza served it washed up and then realize that due to my own lack of a system, I have let the customer leave without paying for it and probably, that meant that I’d made zero profit on that table.
For the following 22 years I have written (and my staff too) every drink every food item down as soon as it is ordered never mind served.
In twenty four years I have never had a customer return to my bar restaurant to pay for something I had forgotten to charge them for.
Don’t Drink Your Profits
Bar Restaurant in Spain
When you and your staff are working you need to drink, but make sure that you are not drinking your profits away.
If you drink alcoholic drinks and you allow your bar staff to do the same over a week it comes to a lot of money and simply stated, is really bad business.
Here’s how we get around the problem
Drink the odd alcoholic drink when you are invited by a customer, but make sure it’s a weak G&T or a shandy or something similar. You don’t want to get drunk whilst you are running a business.
Staff: We don’t allow our staff to drink alcohol whilst they are working.
They are at work and getting paid for it. We do allow them to accept a weak alcoholic drink if a persistent customer insists, but we make it clear that it must be a Tinto de Verano or a small shandy.
Drinks for Ourselves and Our Staff
We drink mineral water and sometimes Fanta or Coke and if we were to use the small 33cl bottles, it would mount up over time, so we buy the big 2L bottles from the cash and carry and we use these solely for staff
If you follow these tips, you’ll make a lot more profit and be sober enough to run your business well.
