Express News: Couple Help Bars And Restaurants Keep Tabs On Alcohol Inventory

(Saturday, December 27, 2003) - Bar patrons who get a "really good" drink at the hands of their favorite bartenders could cost an establishment thousands of dollars a month in lost revenue.

So say Roger and Donna Hopkins, owners of the Bevinco, a company whose services help San Antonio nightclub, bar and restaurant owners control their inventory and improve the bottom line.

When Bevinco is called in, an audit usually finds that 15 percent to 30 percent of revenue is disappearing by the shot or the draft beer.

When bar owners follow their advice, they say they can consistently keep the lost inventory to less than 5 percent and boost profits for the small business, Roger Hopkins said.

The Hopkins operate in the San Antonio area and have the rights to sell more franchises within Texas on behalf of Toronto-based Bevinco.

The company has 200 franchises in the United States, Canada and 20 other countries.

Roger Hopkins is a former vice president for Canteen, a large food service company.

And Donna Hopkins worked in telecommunications, including for AT&T, for 25 years.

But after stints in the Houston area and living a decade in Tennessee, they decided to go into business for themselves and get back to San Antonio, which they consider home.

The couple now work on an ongoing basis with about 15 bars in the San Antonio area including Matisse, Snoops, Links, Rita's and Mag Dog's, a River Walk bar and restaurant.

A typical day for the Hopkins begins early in the morning.

Recently at Fiasco, a North Side bar, the Hopkins weighed liquor bottles on precision scales and counted beer bottles.

The measurements were then compared to what should be in inventory, giving the Bevinco auditors a read on just how generous the bartenders were, unwittingly or not.

"The bartender is giving away something that doesn't belong to them," said Marilyn Anderson, who co-owns Fiasco with her husband, Bill Bateman.

She said that Fiasco, on Thousand Oaks Drive, was losing from $800 to $1,000 in revenue a week, or about 20 percent, when they called in Bevinco.

That was a year ago. The bar had almost no loss the first weeks of December.

That was after Bevinco and the owners worked together to train staff and control inventory with better record-keeping on each drink sold.

Losses at a bar can occur in various ways, from outright theft to poor controls.

When theft is involved, numbers are skewed and the problem is remedied only when the person is caught.

Access to valuable liquor and the cash register are too much temptation for some workers, Roger Hopkins said.

At one San Antonio bar, entire bottles of expensive liquor went missing.

A secret audit by Bevinco pinpointed which employee was at fault and provided a paper trail that backed up the actions the bar owners decided to take against the thief.

But in most cases, the reasons for lost inventory and revenue are less than nefarious.

Earlier this year, Roger Hopkins said. he was trying to convince a disbelieving bar owner that his staff was being a little too generous with customers.

With the staff called together, Hopkins called for a shot-pouring contest.

A young woman who volunteered to go first poured her usual shot. Weighed on the scales it came in at 1.75 ounces, a half-ounce over the bar's standard.

When told it was wrong, she replied, "Well, the customer got a good deal, didn't he?"

"Here you had a bartender who was totally oblivious to what she was costing the bar," Roger Hopkins said. "The idea isn't always to get rid of somebody. Most people want to do the right thing."

Anderson said they take shortages out of the paychecks of the bar staff, but most haven't suffered financially once they got the hang of the procedures.

The Bevinco franchise charges a fee for its services and Roger Hopkins said they can usually improve revenue by two to five times the amount of the fee in a year.

The Hopkins say there is a lot of potential in the San Antonio market and that they have barely scratched the surface after a year in business.

Another 10 clients and, the couple said, they will have to start hiring.

"The losses for bars will never be zero. ... It's a liquid commodity and hard to track," Roger Hopkins said. "But it gives us great satisfaction to help business owners improve their bottom line."

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