I once met a man who earned a great deal of money by running a bar.
Gather around and I shall tell you all a story -
The new owners of a bar were totally mystified by turnover that was about half what it should have been. The bar was part of a large and prestige hotel and one of the hottest singles bars in town. It was packed most nights and on weekends, it was jam-packed. The hotel had been sold to a group and the new manager knew from experience that the bar should be making more money.
He was no fool and soon realised that the bar staff were up to something. The barman was a young student-type in his early twenties, the rest of the staff of about six were a mixed crowd, but mostly females in their twenties and early thirties. They certainly did not look like a shifty crowd, but more like the usual collection of youngsters and housewives that one usually finds working in a bar in a quiet provincial town.
Although this was in the days before networked IT systems and the widespread use of credit cards in bars, a new generation of electronic tills, which stored their data on a floppy disk, as well as doing a roll print-out, promised to put an end to bar staff dipping into the cash. The manager got one of these, so at the end of each evening, the till roll and a record of each and every sale on a floppy disk was sent to management, together with the evening’s takings in a locked cash box.
He visited the bar during the week and watched the till. Business seemed to be remarkably good, but when he inspected the till roll and looked at the turnover in the morning, it was less than half of what he was expecting.
The hotel manager put one of his assistants into the bar and told him to watch out for all the usual tricks, not closing the till, so that the money can go into the pocket of the waitress, ‘private’ beer kegs, bottles and cola syrup cylinders being brought in, waitresses taking orders at tables and then not ringing them through the till and so on.
The assistant stood all night right next to the till and watched every drink being poured and every cash payment being rung through the till. Business seemed to be good and there was just nothing he could see that looked as if the staff were cheating. All the drinks were paid for and all the payments seemed to be going through the till.
At the end of the day, the assistant took the roll, floppy and cash with him and he and his manager went through them the next day. Turnover was even lower than usual - but everything matched.
The money in the box matched the roll and the floppy had exactly the same entries as on the till roll. Day after day, the same thing happened. The bar was full, the drinks looked as though they were selling well, but turnover remained stubbornly lower than expected. The manager then went through the inventory for the past few weeks and months. Again, everything matched. All the drinks coming in matched the amounts being sold.
This went on for several months, until the manager gave up and rented out the bar for considerably more money than they were making.
Years later, he was to discover the truth - the entire staff were in on the scam and that it had been already running in one form or another for some years.
The staff had their own beer kegs, wine and shorts and stretched the soft drinks with too much ice. Husbands and brothers took it in turn to deliver these ‘private’ supplies during the day and they even had a proper supply truck with the name of the wholesaler on the side. With all the comings and goings of a large hotel, nobody ever noticed these extra deliveries.
The elegant part of the scam was the till roll, floppy and cash box. The system was, like all good systems, simplicity itself! The key to the whole scam was of course the barman. He may have looked the student type, but he came from a family that owned night clubs, brothels and sex shops and he had been working in the bar trade since childhood. He knew the business inside out and a great deal better than the new manager or any of his assistants.
He certainly earned considerably more, thanks to that scam!
The barman had access to any one of many tills through his family. He brought the evening’s takings, with matching till roll and floppy, with him to work each evening. At the end of the evening, one of the waitresses would take the real cash and till roll with her, leaving the barmen to hand over the carefully prepared cashbox, roll and floppy to the assistant. The staff all met up at a car park outside working hours to divvy up the loot!
That was the first and the last time that I met anyone who earned a great deal of money by running a bar!
