A Common Tragedy
When I was in college at the University of Missouri I worked my way through school as a line cook at several establishments, but mostly at a decent sports bar on the edge of downtown, in Columbia, Missouri. On more than one occasion I would notice the Budweiser delivery guy taking a couple of cases of beer to a fellow line cook’s car in exchange for an amount of cash that was well below the retail value of the beer. My interest was perked. I asked my compadre about the exchanges I had seen and having made some transactions for cash with this gentlemen before, which we won’t get into here, I knew he wouldn’t be too shy to explain the scam taking place.
The line cook, we’ll call him Johnny, told me that he had been doing business with this wonderful Budweiser delivery driver for years (apparently he had previously dealt in Coors products), and it was well known around town amongst the line cooks, bartenders, and various other restaurant types that this gentlemen was your on call service provider for cheap beer. Being relatively new to the ins and outs of the restaurant and bar business I was perplexed about the logistics and marketing of the situation. How could this guy just sell beer off his truck to anyone and everyone? Who was floating the bill? Budweiser? Hell no, why would they? The driver himself? Surely the distributor did not give away enough free cases of beer to their drivers for him to make the profit of setting up a small business worth the trouble. Anyway, the distributor wants to sell beer to stores who will then sell to the consumer, therefore fattening the bottom line. Who was paying the supply cost of Bud Man?
After giving this situation some serious thought, it finally hit me. It wasn’t Budweiser or the wholesale distributor paying for the product, it was Timmy, the small restaurant owner down the street. Timmy was so busy everyday that he often times didn’t have a chance to place an order with Budweiser (delegating this task to the delivery driver or salesman), much less check it in when it was delivered in the middle of the Thursday lunch rush. He would simply let Bud Man stroll in with his hand truck and cases and kegs of beer. Toss him the keys to the cooler (if there were any) and let him off to do his thing. And what would Bud Man do. Easy. He would go in the walk in and move a few things around and see what Timmy had so much product in stock that he wouldn’t run out for the week. Then he would just leave those items on the truck and walk up to Timmy and hand him the invoice. And what would Timmy do? We know he didn’t check the product in, he has eight req tickets hanging on the wheel. Instead he grabs the check book and writes out a check for the total amount. Poor, poor (and I mean that in the literal expression of the word) Timmy. I heard Timmy’s out of business…too bad I liked the guy.
I had a similiar experience a few years ago. I was working in a bar before they opened and saw the beer delivery guy wheel the beer into the cooler. I was doing my own thing and just happened to look up about five minutes later to see the same delivery guy wheeling three or four full cases back out – and not even his brand! I ran outside and watched him load them onto his truck! I couldn’t believe how brazen the theivery was!
As soon as the owner came in, I told him about it. He reviewed the video and, sure enough, the evidence was clear that the beer guy had stolen all that beer.
That was the last time the owner allowed anyone into his beer cooler unsupervised.
Hey Nathan, I have been in the business for almost 9 years you never really think that a beer guy would do that to your business….but it does happen especially to the bar owners/managers that are really busy and don’t always have time to check in the orders! Since we introduced Bevinco to our business, I have learned a lot about common tragedy’s like this. That is one more reason why we think Bevinco is great for our business and for others. Thank you!!!!!
Denise
Hi Denise,
Thanks for reading the blog and the kind words. I don’t feel that this is just about beer guys but raising the awareness levels in our businesses on a general level and I will talk more about that in my next post. It’s also about managing our businesses in more efficient ways so we can have more time to spend with our families, friends, and doing what we want instead of spending 80 hours a week at work like many bar and restaurant owners/managers do.
Keep up on the blogs the next one will be out Sunday evening or Monday morning, and thank you again for the opportunity to audit Sonny’s on a weekly basis. It has been an absolute pleasure and meant a lot to my business and confidence that this can be done successfully in Eugene and Springfield.
I cringe when I think of all the years I allowed the beer guys to write up, deliver, and get paid for thousands of cases of beer and I never checked on them. “Trust us, we’ll make your day easier”. Well after so many befuddling shortages of beer I finally figured out that not only was my staff causing shortages, but the beer guys were shorting me, pulling partial kegs off line, overstocking me at the end of the month to meet their sales quotas, etc etc. This is why I no longer do business with Budweiser or Western Beverage. All the beer distributors did this, but Bud was the worst. Now my walkin is locked, the staff and I set the pars, the staff checks in the deliveries, and I have a measured bucket to catch tray spillage. Everything is checked and double checked. It’s not perfect, but I can relax and go on vacation knowing not EVERYONE is ripping me off. Bevinco is like a dream!
Jo Dee,
Thanks for the comments, I had a feeling I could depend on you to contribute to the discussions I hope to spur using this blog.
As I mentioned in my reply to Denise, I don’t want this to be a finger pointing session at one distributor or another, and I don’t think that is what we are doing. Rather, we are just sharing experiences that we have had. The problem definitely goes beyond one company or another and well beyond the boundaries of Eugene, or Oregon for that matter. My example occurred 2500 miles away and over eight years ago. My next two post talk a lot about accountability and auditing and why they are really the missing links in many otherwise successful operations. I love your commitment to double checks and I think you can contribute more over the next couple of weeks in the form of discussion. Hopefully, I can get as many hits as I got this past week on the blog. It will also be nice if some new faces start to emerge in the discussion forum. It would be nice if some non Bevinco clients would chime in and I would definitely welcome the comments of the vendors, OLCC representatives, ORA reps, etc. on the ideas that I bring to the table in this blog. As always thank you for the business and for being a real brand champion, someone I can rely on to back up the things I do and say out there in the field!