4 Types of Restaurant Employee Pilferage or Theft and How to Prevent Them

In restaurants, where almost everything is consumables, there are many loopholes for employee theft or pilferage. Hence, it is important to take proactive steps to protect your restaurant’s revenue and assets.

Here are some common types of restaurant theft:

• Stealing raw materials
• Undercharging
• Voiding cash bills
• Misusing of staff discounts

Stealing raw materials

For retail businesses, stock levels are easily tracked as they are quantifiable. However, in restaurants, most raw materials are not quantifiable making it a loophole that can be exploited.

How to prevent raw material theft?

By using a POS system that allows you to track material costs against revenue, you can monitor your restaurant’s monthly expenses on raw materials. If the cost goes above the usual range and there is no proportional gain in revenue, something could be amiss.

Undercharging

This is done by charging customers the actual price of an item but entering a lower price in the POS system and pocketing the difference.

How to prevent undercharging

The user access controls in your POS system can be used to prevent staff from editing the price of an items or using the open price function where they are able to enter any price for the bill.

On top of that, you could use a customer display that shows the dish name and its pricing to your customers for them to check the bill. This way, your customers can point out any pricing discrepancies before paying.

Voiding of cash bills

The staff will bill customers as per normal. After collecting the cash payments, the staff will void the bill keep the cash collected for themselves.

How to prevent voiding of cash bills

By configuring your POS system’s user access rights, you are able to restrict voiding of bills without authorization.

On top of that, your POS system provides reports on voided bills and orders so that you can easily pinpoint fraudulent transactions.

Misusing staff discounts

This is a rather common type of employee theft whereby staff utilize their staff discounts to reduce bill amounts for people they know.

How to prevent misuse of staff discounts

Keep tabs on your POS system’s discount reports. The reports help you easily identify staff that are constantly using their staff discounts, which is a red flag.

You may also use your POS system to preset automated discounts to be applied to the bill when the conditions are met. This will prevent unauthorized discounts from being applied manually.

Getting a secure POS system

If you are interested in getting a POS system for your restaurant that is able to protect your restaurant assets and revenue, click here to get a free demo.