Bar inventory control: how to monitor your draft beer stock

Holding draft beer inventory is an investment of your bar's cash, and every real spent on stock is money you can't put toward other costs. Buying draft beer without monitoring it is a huge risk. It can make you lose a lot of money and hurt your bar's long-term profitability.

If you are one of the many bar owners wondering "how much beer is still left in the keg" or “which draft beer sells the most?”, here is a guide prepared for you!

What is draft beer inventory control?

Before diving into the heart of how to monitor your draft beer stock, let's define what it is.

The term refers to the processes and practices you put in place to manage the draft beer inventory at your bar. It involves tasks such as tracking drink sales, measuring drink levels and reconciling all of it with your inventory records. Ultimately, the goal of draft beer inventory control is to reach ideal stock levels, where you have the right amount of draft beer at any given time.

This matters because having too much stock on hand ties up your capital and takes up too much space. On the other hand, not having enough of the right beers can reduce customer satisfaction. You need to find the right balance at your bar, and good inventory control practices will help you do that.

In simpler terms, monitoring draft beer stock is the process of counting everything you have twice. After that, you will find out how much you sold over a certain period, known as inventory usage calculation. Based on your inventory usage, you can calculate other important things. All of these metrics are crucial to running a profitable bar.

Why do you need to monitor your draft beer stock?

Inventory is the driving force of your bar, and not monitoring your draft beer stock can be extremely harmful. If you monitor it badly, your profits will evaporate and, if you do it well, you will increase your bar's profitability.

As in any other industry, inventory monitoring can seem hard and like a monstrous task, and it is even more challenging when you manage more than one establishment, as with franchises. Factors such as waste, theft and free drinks are things you need to take into account because they can significantly affect your profit margins.

For this monitoring to always be correct and up to date, it must be checked every day to make sure inventory and reports are right. Monitoring draft beer stock has become much more complicated with the rise of craft beer. It pushes you and many other bars to expand your beer options - especially draft.

Some bars offer as many as 50 different options on tap. Others simply prefer to rotate their taps more often. It is common for bars to keep about half of their beers always the same while rotating the other half of the taps.

How to implement efficient draft beer inventory control

Besides monitoring your draft beer stock, you also need to record all of it and follow up regularly. After all, what is the point of counting all your draft beer inventory if you aren't writing those numbers down?

If you prefer pen and paper, this work will be slow and tedious. It's not impossible to do by hand, but it will still be a complicated part of management. Do you know what will make everything easier? A smart system like PUBit, developed by myTapp.

Using technology in your favor is an effective way to keep your inventory monitored quickly and accurately, turning the manual counting process into simple digitization. Having a smart system like PUBit will give you countless other benefits.

Want to learn more about these benefits and ensure the best experience for your customers? These were just some of the information that you can find in full in our free-download e-book.

[Free e-book] How to monitor your draft beer stock

And also, to help with your bar inventory control...

Use PUBit to take care of your draft beer inventory. The calculations associated with inventory are not very hard. What's hard is doing it regularly, for every product, accurately, over and over, and recording that data so you can make decisions with it.

That's what PUBit does. It speeds up counting, automatically adjusts your stock levels in real time and keeps a continuous flow of historical data. All of this helps you make the best decisions possible.

PUBit is hardware + software, meaning a small module that is quick and easy to install generates powerful information that will transform your business!

No more lifting kegs at the bar, no more spending nights guessing how much draft beer you have, no more headaches. PUBit is the best software for monitoring draft beer stock!

Want to know more about myTapp and how we can bring technology to your establishment? Request a contact!

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