How to Audit Your Own Bar and Restaurant: The 30-Question Self-Assessment Every Operator Should Run

You don't need to hire somebody to audit your bar. You need to sit down for twenty minutes and answer a set of straight questions about your own operation. The ones you answer cold, you've got handled. The ones you stall on, or guess at, or have to go dig for, that's where the money's hiding. Run these on yourself. Nobody's grading it but your bank account.

Inventory and pour cost

• What was your pour cost last week, to the point?
• When did you last take a real count, and how long did it take?
• Do you know your variance by category, or is it a gut feeling?
• What's the par on your top ten movers, and are you ordering to it?
• Did a vendor raise a price on you last month, and did you catch it?

Labor

• What's your labor percent this week, hourly and salaried together?
• Is anyone walking into overtime you didn't plan for?
• Do you build the schedule to a sales forecast, or to last week's guess?
• Are your tips and tip credit right before payroll, or fixed after?
• What's your revenue per labor hour, and is it climbing or sliding?

Shift and cash control

• Is every drawer counted and reconciled, or do you eyeball it?
• Who's over or short the most, by name, over the last month?
• Are voids and comps logged with a reason and who signed off?
• How many tabs walked last week? Do you know the number?

Profit

• What's your prime cost, and is it under the line you set?
• Which single leak is costing you the most right now, in dollars?
• Are your menu prices keeping up with your food and pour cost?
• Did every sale that rang actually land in the deposit?

Revenue

• What's your check average, and is it moving up or sitting flat?
• Which servers are upselling and which are coasting? Can you name them?
• Which menu items lose money on every sale, and are they still on the menu?
• When did you last reprice a low-margin item?

Cash

• You're profitable on paper. Is the account tight, and do you know why?
• How many weeks of cash could you cover if sales dropped tomorrow?
• How much cash is sitting on your shelves in over-par stock?
• What's safe to spend today without touching your reserve?

The books and the events room

• Do you close the books every month, or scramble at tax time?
• What's your weekly break-even, and did you clear it last week?
• Are you working private events like a pipeline, or off the cuff?
• Is every event deposit collected, or do you find out the night of?

If that was uncomfortable, that's the point

Every question you couldn't answer cold is a number you're running blind on, and blind numbers are where the leaks live. You can chase all of it by hand with spreadsheets and a good memory, or you can let it get scored for you. Bar Cop runs this same audit off your own logged numbers, hands you a score by area, ranks every gap by the dollars on the table, and tells you the one to work first.

Want to see it read a real bar? Walk the live demo, a full operation already loaded, and watch the audit find the leaks.