While retail industries typically run at a five per cent loss, the hospitality industry has come to accept losing 20 to 25 per cent of its product as the norm.

“Liquor needs to be recognized as an owner’s liquid cash,” says Krista Recoskie, marketing manager at Bevinco Corporation. “A bartender wouldn’t give a customer $5 out of the register, so why give them a $5 drink at no charge?”

Loss of product can occur from a number of causes – theft, waste, portion control. Food and liquor costs are a key component in running a restaurant or bar and every restaurant owner must analyze and control his or her inventory year round. It’s clear that inventory control is important.

But which system is right for your establishment?

The answer should not only consider the cost of the system, but also on the cost of operating that system correctly, says Craig Bednarovsky, director of sales and marketing at Action Systems.

There is always increased payroll cost associated with implementing an inventory control system. Staff must be paid for the time it takes to process orders, post invoices, track deliveries and enter data and variances resulting from physical inventory counts.

In the same way that a basic POS System becomes useless if servers only use it sometimes to ring up some sales – or managers only use it sometimes to authorize some voids – an inventory control system is useless if it isn’t used correctly and consistently, says Bednarovsky.

In other words, if you don’t pay staff to correctly operate an inventory control system, there’s no point in investing a penny in that system.

While it’s important to control year-round, it’s especially important to consider your inventory control options over the holidays because as volumes increase, the potential loss is greater.

Here, we examine three products in the marketplace, their cost, benefits and expected return.