Everyone thinks that pub and bar owners are all raking it in. What they fail to realise, however, is that the drinks in a pub are usually the least profitable thing they have. Even though the 10-15% profit margin is higher than that of food, the numbers themselves are much smaller. This leaves pub owners and operators everywhere looking for ways to boost their overall profits. After all, a 10-percent margin won’t make you very rich when you’re contending with the costs of running a space in downtown Melbourne or Sydney.
So, how can they do it? How can bar and pub operators give their profits the shot in the arm that they need?
1. Automation
Nowadays, the best pub POS management systems are so much more than just digital cash registers. These systems are seriously smart, and can become the central part of automating the key areas of your business. For example, with the help of additional software and hardware tied in, they can closely monitor your inventory, and ensure that the money taken in matches the amount of liquor, beer and other products sold.
While monitoring your inventory, they also keep track of when your busy periods are, becoming able to anticipate when you will likely run out of certain products and then ordering them in advance to ensure you don’t ever have to tell your customers that you’re out of your flagship items. This kind of automation also prevents waste and cuts down on over-ordering.
2. Serving Food
As we touched on in the introduction, serving up food doesn’t deliver a higher profit margin — often just 3-5 percent — but bars can maximise profits from food sales by doing things a bit differently from restaurants. First of all, they don’t need to employ high-end chefs, since bar food is typically simpler. They therefore don’t need to spend more on fine or expensive ingredients, nor run an advanced food kitchen with high overheads.
So, armed with their simplified kitchen, decent but inexpensive line cooks, and unfussy foodstuffs, bars can create menus that promote great profit margins on all food sold, but also are the kinds of foods that promote more drinking — salty, cheesy, spicy, savoury items, for instance. Food keeps bar-goers at their tables longer, and ensures they order more.
3. Invest In Equipment
Another way to boost profit is by investing in the best-possible bar equipment. When you cheap out on your beer taps, cocktail gear, fridges and other gear, your drinks will also taste cheap and nasty. For instance, beer taps that help to keep beer cold, bubbly and with a nice head will ensure every pint in your pub looks gorgeous to new customers walking in, as will bright and full fridges, cutting-edge ice machines, and professional-grade cocktail making gear.
4. Create an Effective Happy Hour
Building a great happy hour to boost business is a balancing act, but when you get it right, it can be a huge boost to profits. Some bars make the mistake of running longer and longer happy hours, selling drinks at discounted rates so much that those lower costs are what customers start to expect to pay, and they start to wince at the idea of ever paying the regular price.
Having specific drink specials on certain days, or a limited happy hour at a time when people are rushing to bars after work or at the weekend is the best approach. Your happy hour draws them in with a great deal, but not so much greater that when it reverts to your original prices that they all scurry off elsewhere.
