How To Prevent Cash Register Theft In Your Restaurant

Owning a eating place tin exist an incredible experience – serving delicious food and building a team that works hard to evangelize an splendid invitee experience. And often, this is the case. Just what y'all don't see through this rose-colored lens is a very real threat to your business – employee theft. This is why it's crucial to brush upwardly on your noesis of restaurant loss prevention and put a strategy in place to protect your business organisation.

Eating place employee theft is more common than you may think. In fact, it accounts for 75% of all inventory shortages and 4% of sales, according to the National Restaurant Association. To make matters worse, nigh three-quarters of staff steal from their workplace on at least one occasion – a fact that's jump to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

In this guide to restaurant loss prevention, yous'll learn how to curb employee theft in restaurants to brand your business safer and more profitable. We'll comprehend:

What is loss prevention?
Common types of restaurant employee theft
11 restaurant loss prevention tips

Stressed restaurant owner using a laptop

What is Loss Prevention?

Let's first by answering a bones question: what is loss prevention?

Loss prevention refers to your eating house's efforts to reduce whatever and all revenue losses. This includes taking simple steps, like ensuring y'all don't society also much produce and ending upward with excessive nutrient waste.

Reducing losses can also strike a more serious chord, including restaurant theft prevention tactics to combat dine-and-nuance situations, credit card fraud, and employee theft in restaurants. Permit'due south plough our attending to the terminal point.

Common Types of Restaurant Employee Theft

Unfortunately, theft occurs ofttimes in restaurants, and the saying "one bad apple spoils the barrel" rings true here. Research shows that the likelihood of one server stealing increases if a co-worker is stealing. And if a new hire sees a co-worker stealing inside their get-go five months on the chore, chances are they'll go far a addiction, too.

With that in mind, here are some of the nearly mutual types of employee theft in restaurants to familiarize yourself with so you can spot them and stop them.

i. Short Ringing

Also known every bit under-ringing of sales, here'southward how short ringing typically plays out. A customer pays in cash at the bar for a $xv 2-oz cocktail, just the bartender enters the order into your POS system as a $10 1-oz cocktail and pockets the other $five, leaving no newspaper trail of the theft. Talk most an unhappy 60 minutes.

2. Greenbacks Register Skimming

Skimming greenbacks from the register involves staff stealing cash from sales that aren't recorded in your eating place's books. For instance, a client orders a piece of pie from your dessert counter and the server gives them the pie just doesn't ring information technology in, and so keeps the cash instead of putting it in your register. In other brazen cases, skimming tin can besides include stealing minor amounts of cash outright from your annals.

iii. Comping Too Many Orders

Giving guests complimentary nutrient and drinks (comping) is standard practice in most restaurants. Withal, if this starts happening likewise often, you need to accost it in your restaurant loss prevention strategy. Yous don't desire your overly generous employees giving gratis appetizers to their friends every time they eat at your restaurant.

four. Voiding Sales Later on Closing

Don't let your guard down but because it's the cease of the 24-hour interval – theft can and does occur after hours. For case, your supervisor on duty could sneakily void 1 item from several orders and pocket the total instead of including it in the nightly cash-out.

xi Restaurant Loss Prevention Tips

If you've experienced a situation at your restaurant like the ones we've just discussed, information technology's undoubtedly tough to handle. The silverish lining is that since employee theft in restaurants is a mutual problem, there are a number of strategies you tin can employ to accost the issue. Let's walk through these eating house loss prevention tips together.

1. Pay Staff Well and Provide Benefits

While some employees may steal simply for kicks, others may turn to theft because they're having trouble making ends come across. As tipped workers, restaurant staff are often paid low wages and rely on the actress cash they receive from customers. Nevertheless, over eighty% of restaurant workers have reported a decrease in tips during the COVID-19 pandemic, and almost two-thirds of those workers accept seen their tips slashed at to the lowest degree in half.

Past paying your employees a solid wage and providing health benefits, you'll help them weather tough times and protect your eating house against theft driven by desperation.

ii. Create a Clear Employee Meal Policy

Staff perks like discounted or free meals are an expectation in most restaurants, merely they accept several benefits for you as a restaurateur, too. Offering employee meal deals can boost morale, help staff get more than familiar with your cuisine, and discourage theft. Why steal nutrient when you're getting a sweetness discount?

Just recall to continue track of employee meals with a specific policy including a discount pct and dollar corporeality allotted per calendar month, and monitor the arrangement to make sure your staff aren't abusing the perk.

three. Offer Proper Onboarding and Training

Your team is the main ingredient in the recipe for your restaurant's success, which is why it's crucial to take a solid onboarding procedure in place. When it'south done well, onboarding tin can help you keep your restaurant turnover charge per unit low and date loftier – and enable you to prevent restaurant employee theft. Simply how do yous go information technology right?

Creating a new hire checklist for eating place employees can assist you streamline the onboarding process and ensure all of your new hires take a clear agreement of the rules and procedures at your restaurant – including the repercussions of theft. Having these conversations upfront tin can assist you avoid worse situations in the futurity.

4. Refine Your Greenbacks Treatment Procedures

It seems like Biggie knew a matter or two near the restaurant industry when he said, "mo' coin mo' problems." As a restaurateur, yous don't want too much cash in your annals at whatsoever given fourth dimension. Creepo upwardly the volume on your eatery loss prevention strategy by placing drop boxes close to your register so it won't be alluvion with bills and at take a chance for skimming.

You can also amend your cash handling practices past separating cash management duties and then that multiple employees are involved. This way, no unmarried staff member will be able to fudge their sales figures.

Male restaurant employee stealing cash from the register

5. Arrange Staff Settings and Controls

A restaurant POS arrangement makes it easier than ever to control what employees tin and cannot practice when punching in orders and taking payments. With the option to set upwardly each staff member with specific permissions based on their role, y'all can have greater oversight and ensure your cash is going into the register – and not into anyone'south pocket.

A POS with customizable controls tin can help you avoid sneaky scams. For example, a bartender opens a table, punches in 3 rounds of drinks, and prints the bill without sending the drinks to the bar. And so, they delete a round of drinks before closing the bill, keeping the cash. A POS with staff settings and controls would easily stop theft like this because manager permission would be required to print the check with unsent items.

vi. Review POS Reports

But having a great POS organisation isn't enough to forestall employee theft in restaurants. You also need to review your POS reports regularly to identify where theft is happening and where profit is leaking from your business concern. Every bit part of your eating place loss prevention strategy, employ transaction reports to run into if any transactions were removed or modified afterward they were finalized. If you spot a transaction that was deleted, follow up on it with your staff.

You should also run reports on how many voids and discounts were performed, how many times the cash drawer was opened, and who was responsible for each instance. In addition, a credit card tips report will show tips entered, allowing you to nip in the bud anyone trying to pad their pockets on the customer'due south dime. This sheds light on employees' actions and holds them accountable.

seven. Implement Proper Inventory Tracking

Near restaurateurs know that inventory tracking works all-time when information technology'south consistently and correctly monitored, and past comparing what items have been sold to what's in and out of stock. Using a POS-integrated inventory tracking solution can help you lot monitor your stock and take hold of any instances of employee theft in your eating place.

For instance, y'all may notice that a few orders of chicken wings get missing from your physical inventory every couple of weeks on Friday nights. Y'all can compare your inventory report to your shift report to see who was working during those times, so talk to them to detect out what's happening to the disappearing late-dark snacks.

viii. Monitor Employee Operation

Theft can extend beyond staff stealing inventory. This is why it'due south essential to evaluate your employees' attendance vs. scheduled hours, likewise as break times, to ensure they're non "stealing time." A POS with a setting that tracks these changes tin exist helpful to spot anyone attempting to be paid for hours they didn't piece of work.

For example, allow'due south say i of your kitchen staff left at x p.k. on Midweek night and clocked out, but then a shift supervisor went into their hours and inverse the clock out time to 2 a.m. If your POS tracks these changes, at that place would be a annotation indicating that the shift was modified, leaving a visible tape, and making it like shooting fish in a barrel to arroyo the offending parties to asking an explanation.

9. Reevaluate Your Accounting Practices

Restaurant theft tin also occur during end-of-day reconciliations and even involve managers' underreporting earnings. Reviewing your accounting procedures and making certain you have the right technology to support your restaurant'southward financial health is a wise move. Y'all may as well want to consider getting a third-political party expert to review your eating house bookkeeping to identify theft and protect confronting future revenue losses.

10. Upgrade Your Security Procedures and Technology

While you don't want to create an unwelcoming environment, in some cases you'll need to get yourself a scrap of backup past installing security cameras in your restaurant to deter would-be thieves. It's likewise a expert thought to upgrade your eating place'southward tech so you can manage keys and swipe cards with digital records, instead of the sometime school way.

11. Promote Open up Advice

Don't forget the man element in your eating house loss prevention strategy. Being an approachable boss can become a long way to shut down employee theft in restaurants. Promote a positive work surroundings where your staff feel comfortable asking for help when they need it, and create a culture of accountability to help keep everyone honest.

Level Upwards Your Loss Prevention Strategy

You lot now take an answer to the question, "what is loss prevention" and 11 solid loss prevention tips to assistance you guard against eating place employee theft. Your next step? If you don't have one already, a POS that offers control and insight into your staff's actions is the nigh important tool you tin leverage for restaurant loss prevention.

by Andrea Victory

Andrea was a Content Marketing Specialist and Editor at TouchBistro where she wrote virtually eating house and dining trends, restaurant management, and nutrient culture. A cocky-affirmed food geek, Andrea devours cookbooks and food blogs. She also knows how to make a killer kale salad.