Hello, I'm using SfR for my taphouse with 32 frequently rotating taps. Here's my current method of managing/tracking beer:
How I Do It Today:
- Each tap/beer is listed as an item in Square, i.e., "02. Ciderboys Peach County"
- Each of those items has 4 variations, i.e., "5oz" "8oz" "16oz" "64oz Growler"
- I have a "Drafts" menu-grid in Square, and all of those items are listed on a single page in a 4x8 grid by tap number/name.
- I use Evergreen for managing my digital board for customers, and it's integrated with Square. So, when I add a new beer to the board or the on-deck list, I have the option to also load that item and its variations and prices into Square.
- After I move an item from "on-deck" to "current" in Evergreen, I go into the Square menu, and remove the previous item, and add the newly tapped keg.
- For reporting, I export sales data "Summary" in CSV, import it into Excel, then perform magic (and cumbersome) transformations in order to guestimate how many ounces of each keg I've sold, and COGS/profit, etc.
Current challenges:
- Changing a keg means updating my Evergreen digital menu (via mobile app or browser), then updating my Square menu (via browser only). This makes it klunky for a bartender to update the taplist and menu in the middle of service since it requires using a full browser (rather than iPad available at the bar), therefore I'm doing it myself. I would love to see this integration improved such that I can manage the Square menu from Evergreen as well. I haven't figured out a way to enable my staff to do this without my intervention.
- Inventory Reporting is challenging, since I'm selling "x units of 16oz" and "x units of 5oz," which means I have to use spreadsheet formulas to calculate actual ounces sold in order to track inventory and rate of sales/keg. This is time consuming, and quite honestly should be reviewed at least every other day in order to know what kegs are going next.
- It's almost impossible to track inventory on a per-keg basis if I have two of the same kegs in a sales period, because there's no way to link item-sales data to a single keg from which it was dispensed. In other words, I want to know that I sold a pint of "Ciderboys Peach County" cider on Monday from keg 1, and a pint of that same cider from keg 2 on Tuesday.
- Tracking waste and tasters is exceptionally challenging as it's 1oz at a time, and it takes far too long for a bartender to register a taster in the POS for inventory tracking, so it just isn't done, which means the amount sold never matches the total amount available in a keg and it can be off by 20%.
Wish List Items:
- I wish we had a way to swipe a card and keep a ticket open for a customer. It's ridiculous that this very standard feature isn't supported yet in SfR.
- I wish I had a way to track beer inventory at a keg-level. For example, I would like to add a keg to inventory with 1984 ounces, and when a single pint is sold, it would remove 16oz from that inventory.
- I wish there was a field in the item for tracking the cost of that item. I would use this for reporting only, so that when I export sales data, it would include the cost of items -- this would make COGS so much easier. For example, if a chicken sandwich COGS was $2.50, that information would be included in my sales data, so that I could easily look at the total cost for all 254 sandwiches sold, without having to manually merge sales data with cost data from another spreadsheet. Combine this with keg-level inventory tracking, and I'd be able to have the cost of that keg, the total ounces available, and see my per-ounce cost vs. net-sales per-ounce.
Open Discussion:
I was really hoping to hear from others who are utilizing SfR to manage a tap list, and to learn how I can improve my system and processes. While things are generally okay right now, we still have lots of room for improvement, and I'd really like to learn how others have configured Square to solve some of my challenges. I'm still very new at this (we've been open for 8 weeks), and I have no prior experience in the restaurant industry.
Also, I've evaluated several other digital boards and inventory tracking systems, and haven't really found anything that meets all my needs for a reasonable cost (Digital Pour, SteadyServ, Untappd, BevSpot, etc.). I'd love hearing suggestions for systems that others have found.
Slainte!
Chad
