EPOS Stock Control for Pubs & Restaurants in Ireland

Managing stock is one of the biggest challenges facing pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants.

Knowing how many steaks are left in the kitchen is relatively straightforward. Knowing how much Guinness should remain in a keg after selling a mixture of pints and half pints — or how much whiskey should remain after selling singles, doubles and cocktails — is considerably more complicated.

Modern EPOS stock control can help hospitality businesses move beyond simple stock counting by connecting every sale with the products and ingredients being consumed.

With Shift4 Dine from ithPOS, hospitality businesses can use built-in inventory functionality for everyday stock management while also connecting specialist inventory, food-cost and beverage-control platforms when more advanced stock management is required.

How Does EPOS Stock Control Work?

At its simplest, EPOS stock control links products sold through the till with the stock available within the business.

For example, a restaurant might start the day with:

• 25 ribeye steaks
• 16 portions of sea bass
• 12 cheesecakes
• 36 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc
• 48 bottles of Corona

Every time one of these items is sold through the EPOS system, the quantity available can be reduced.

Shift4 Dine allows businesses to assign a Quantity on Hand to individual menu items and set low-stock warning levels.

This allows staff to see when an item is nearly sold out.

Once the available quantity reaches zero, the EPOS can also prevent staff from selling the item, helping avoid the frustrating situation where a server takes an order for something that is no longer available.

This works particularly well for products sold as complete units.

A bottle of beer is one bottle.

A steak is one steak.

A dessert is one portion.

Draught beer and spirits, however, are more complicated.

How Do You Track Pints and Half Pints?

Consider an Irish pub with enough Guinness available to pour approximately 120 pints.

If the pub only sold full pints, stock tracking would be relatively straightforward:

1 Guinness pint sold = 1 pint deducted

But what happens when a customer orders a half pint?

A half pint obviously doesn't use the same amount of product as a full pint.

An imperial pint contains approximately:

568ml

A half pint contains approximately:

284ml

If an EPOS system simply counts "Guinness Pint" and "Guinness Half Pint" as two unrelated menu items, it cannot accurately calculate how much Guinness remains in the underlying keg.

For more advanced beverage stock control, the sales information from the EPOS needs to be connected to the actual quantity of product used.

This is where specialist stock-control integrations become valuable.

Shift4 Dine and Backbar

For pubs and bars using Shift4 Dine in Ireland, Backbar is one of the specialist inventory and beverage-control platforms available through the Shift4 ecosystem.

Rather than simply treating each button on the EPOS as an independent stock item, individual menu items can be mapped to the underlying beverage product and serving size.

For example:

This means both a Guinness pint and a Guinness half pint can reduce the same underlying Guinness stock, but by different amounts.

Example

Imagine a pub begins with approximately:

68.16 litres of Guinness

This is roughly the equivalent of 120 imperial pints.

A customer purchases:

1 Guinness Pint

The theoretical inventory reduces by approximately:

568ml

Another customer then purchases:

1 Guinness Half Pint

Inventory reduces by another:

284ml

Rather than simply counting the number of Guinness transactions, the stock-control system can calculate the theoretical volume of Guinness consumed.

That provides a much more accurate picture of beverage stock.

What About Singles and Doubles?

The same principle applies to spirits.

Imagine a bar has a 700ml bottle of Jameson.

The EPOS could contain several different products involving that same bottle:

• Jameson Single
• Jameson Double
• Jameson & Coke
• Irish Coffee

Although these appear as different products on the EPOS screen, they may all consume stock from the same bottle of Jameson.

A specialist inventory platform can associate each sale with the appropriate serving quantity.

For example:

Jameson Single = one measure

Jameson Double = two measures

A double modifier can also be configured so the stock deduction automatically reflects the larger serving.

Instead of simply knowing that "one whiskey" was sold, the business can calculate how much whiskey should actually have been used.

Cocktail Stock Control

Stock control becomes even more valuable when cocktails are involved.

An Espresso Martini might contain:

• Vodka
• Coffee liqueur
• Espresso
• Sugar syrup

Selling one Espresso Martini does not mean one finished product disappears from the stock room.

Several individual ingredients have been consumed.

Advanced EPOS inventory integrations allow recipes to be associated with menu items so that each sale automatically contributes towards the theoretical usage of the ingredients contained within the recipe.

This can give hospitality businesses much better visibility over:

• ingredient usage
• beverage costs
• recipe costs
• gross profit
• stock requirements
• wastage
• product variance

Theoretical Stock vs Actual Stock

One of the most important concepts in hospitality stock control is the difference between theoretical stock and actual stock.

Your EPOS can calculate what should have been consumed based on the products sold.

But that does not necessarily mean this is what was actually used.

Imagine your EPOS records sales equivalent to:

100 pints of Guinness

Theoretical usage would be approximately:

56.8 litres

But when the physical stock is checked, the business discovers significantly more Guinness has actually been consumed.

Where did the difference go?

Possible causes include:

• overpouring
• complimentary drinks not entered into the EPOS
• staff drinks
• incorrect products being entered
• drinks being poured and subsequently wasted
• excessive foam or fobbing
• line cleaning
• incorrect serving sizes
• unrecorded sales

The difference between what the EPOS says should have been consumed and what was actually consumed is known as stock variance.

Identifying and reducing this variance can have a significant impact on profitability.

Even a small percentage of stock loss can become a substantial amount of money over the course of a year for a busy pub or restaurant.

The important question is not simply how much stock is left. It is how much should have been left.

— ithPOS

Draught Beer Monitoring

High-volume pubs may want to go even further than theoretical stock control.

Shift4's hospitality ecosystem also includes specialist beverage-control solutions such as Bevchek.

Rather than relying solely on sales information from the EPOS, draught-monitoring systems can measure the amount of beer actually dispensed through the beer lines.

This creates two important pieces of information.

The EPOS can tell you:

How much beer should have been poured based on recorded sales.

A draught-monitoring system can help determine:

How much beer was actually dispensed.

Comparing those figures can provide extremely useful insight into draught losses.

For busy pubs selling large volumes of Guinness, lager and other draught products, even relatively small differences between recorded sales and actual pours can have a significant financial impact.

Restaurant Stock Control With Nory

The stock-control requirements of a restaurant group can be very different from those of a traditional pub.

For restaurants and multi-site hospitality operators, Shift4 Dine also integrates with Nory.

Nory combines EPOS sales information with wider restaurant operations and can provide functionality around:

• ingredient inventory
• recipe costing
• food costs
• supplier purchasing
• invoice management
• wastage
• stock counting
• forecasting
• labour management
• multi-site reporting
• gross profit management

This allows sales information generated by the EPOS to feed into a much broader hospitality management platform.

For example, if a restaurant sells 100 burgers, the system can calculate the theoretical consumption of the ingredients associated with those burgers rather than simply recording that 100 finished menu items were sold.

That might include:

• burger buns
• beef
• cheese
• sauces
• onions
• garnish

This provides a much deeper understanding of food costs and stock usage.

Other EPOS Stock Control Integrations

The Shift4 hospitality ecosystem also includes a growing range of specialist stock-control and restaurant-management platforms.

Depending on the needs of the business, options can include:

Backbar

Focused particularly on bar and beverage inventory, including serving sizes, cocktails, spirits and theoretical stock usage.

Nory

A wider hospitality management platform combining inventory, recipes, purchasing, forecasting, labour and operational management.

Cactus

Provides food and beverage inventory management, recipes, invoice processing, purchasing and food-cost analysis.

Yellow Dog

A powerful inventory-management platform particularly suited to larger or more complex hospitality environments.

Bevchek

Specialist draught beverage control, helping operators compare what is being poured with what has been recorded through the EPOS.

The right solution depends heavily on the type and size of hospitality business.

What Type of EPOS Stock Control Does Your Business Need?

There isn't one stock-control solution that is right for every hospitality business.

Café or Small Restaurant

Built-in EPOS inventory may be sufficient where the majority of stock consists of individual products and portions.

For example:

• sandwiches
• cakes
• bottled drinks
• individual meals
• desserts

Read more about café EPOS systems.

Pub or Bar

A pub dealing with draught products, spirits and cocktails may benefit considerably from connecting its EPOS with a specialist beverage inventory platform.

This allows different serving sizes to reduce the same underlying stock product.

Read more about pub and bar EPOS systems.

High-Volume Pub

A high-volume draught venue may benefit from combining EPOS sales information with specialist draught monitoring.

This allows the business to compare theoretical sales against actual product dispensed.

Restaurant or Hospitality Group

Larger restaurants and multi-site hospitality businesses may need more advanced capabilities around:

• ingredients
• recipes
• supplier management
• purchasing
• wastage
• forecasting
• gross profit
• labour

A wider hospitality management platform such as Nory can provide this additional level of operational control. Read more about restaurant EPOS systems.

EPOS Stock Control Is About More Than Counting Stock

Modern hospitality stock control is no longer simply about knowing how many bottles are sitting in the stock room.

The more important questions are:

What should we have in stock?

What did we actually use?

What should each product have cost us?

Where is the difference?

How much is stock variance costing the business?

By combining EPOS sales data with the right inventory and hospitality-management tools, pubs, bars and restaurants can gain much greater visibility over what is happening throughout their business. Detailed business intelligence reporting makes that sales information far easier to interpret.

Shift4 Dine EPOS From ithPOS

ithPOS provides Shift4 Dine hospitality EPOS solutions to pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants and hotels across Ireland.

Shift4 Dine combines EPOS, integrated card payments, order management, kitchen operations, reporting and a growing range of hospitality integrations within one connected ecosystem.

Whether you require straightforward menu-item stock tracking or more advanced food, recipe and beverage inventory management, ithPOS can help you identify the right setup for your business.

Your EPOS should do more than simply process transactions.

It should help you understand what's selling, what's being used and where your margins are going.

Talk to ithPOS today to find out how better EPOS stock control could help your hospitality business.

Related Reading

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