Understanding the fluctuations that impact your bottom line is the first step to controlling the costs of your alcohol.
In the alcohol industry, we’re no stranger to the term “controlling costs.” Control the cost of your products, control the cost of your labor, control the cost of promotional efforts. Even control the cost of time spent doing things like ordering or reconciling your alcohol purchases. All so you can spend more time and money on analyzing ways to further “control costs.”
Here at Fintech, we were left wondering – what does that really mean? What does it truly mean to control your costs and maximize your margins, both within your beverage alcohol category and in your business as a whole?
Maximize your beverage alcohol margins
You know what you anticipate to pay for every product you have behind the bar or on the shelf, and you take the time to set consumer prices that support these projections. Understanding the fluctuations that impact your bottom line is the first step to controlling the costs of your alcohol. Track your purchases – are you paying the same price for a product every time you buy it? Are you missing discounts because of split cases? Once you know your locations’ purchase habits, you can manage them more effectively by forming better order habits or working more closely with your distributors. Fintech works with hundreds of thousands of alcohol retailers to bring clarity to these fluctuations – so much so that we identify nearly $32 million in potential lost savings every month! Once you understand that you’re spending too much on certain products, you can better control the cost to your business.
Maximize your labor savings
It’s often said that time is money, so don’t throw hours down the drain doing things like counting out cash or organizing invoices. Automate! Utilizing a partner like Fintech for electronic alcohol invoice payments reduces delivery time and pays your invoices using EFT, so you can just sign the invoice and get back to business. Plus, automating payments moves your invoices online, so you don’t have to waste time organizing or entering the data from paper invoices – the information will be available at your fingertips anytime you need it AND can be imported automatically into your back-office system. Fintech also reduces the labor hours you spend analyzing this information with analytic reports to highlight margin eaters. Save time and get better data? Win-win.
Maximize your promotional efforts
Do you have an easy way to monitor brand consistency, quantity discounts, and margin-eating purchasing habits? Once you gain top-down control of the costs and purchasing inconsistencies of the products delivered to your locations, you’ll be able to assess when discrepancies are affecting your bottom line more accurately. Automate this visibility and be confident when launching any spirit, beer, or wine promotion and know you will achieve the desired results. Do you know when one of your locations is taking advantage of promotions or case discounts, and others aren’t? Fintech does! Receive automated reports that highlight information important to your business and gain complete control of your alcohol category.
Once you gain control of your alcohol category using automated tools, you will have time to fine-tune your bar operations, maximizing profitability keeping you firmly in the green. So, what can you do with all the extra time and effort you’ll save from really controlling these costs? We have a few ideas!
- Run a promotion on social media: Set up an ad on Facebook or Instagram to showcase your new bucket specials.
- Work with your head chef to create a one-of-kind dish: Make something delicious for your patrons and be the first to taste test. Better yet – pair the meal with a craft beer or cocktail!
- Help run food or serve drinks: Supporting your staff should be a key priority. Jumping in when your location gets busy will be helpful and meaningful!
- Work on cutting costs in other areas: Now that you have extra time, call up your entertainment or media provider and get a better deal on your cable package.
- Visit with guests: You have regulars that stop by every day, but how often do you get to chat with them? Hopefully, after controlling the costs of your alcohol program, the answer is more than before! Go sit with your customers, suggest your new menu item, and build a relationship that makes them want to come back.
No matter how you choose to spend your time, do something that’s meaningful to your business and creates an engaging guest experience. After all, loyal customers are what matter the most.
Want to learn more about Fintech or the topics covered in this blog? Contact us today!
