Outdated Menu Cost: Log It One Incident at a Time

An outdated beer menu costs a bar the pours it comps or dumps, the price gaps it honors, and the time guests lose ordering beer that isn't there. At 2 wrong-board pours a week at $8 each, the dollar part alone comes to $832 a year at menu price.

The sections below cover the math for your own bar, a 1 line log for each incident, the 5 causes that keep entries comparable, a rule for fixes, a filled example weekend, and how to read the log each week.

What does an outdated beer menu cost a bar?

An outdated beer menu costs a bar whatever leaves the bar because someone acted on a wrong line, plus the guest time that goes with it. The dollar part comes in 3 kinds:

• A comped pour. The guest ordered a beer the board listed, it was gone, and the house poured a free taster while they picked something else.
• A dumped pour. The wrong beer went out and came back.
• An honored price. The board listed a lower price than the cost sheet, and the house charged the board price.

Here is the math on comped and dumped pours at $8 each. Swap in your own count and price.

Menu price is the simple rule, and it keeps every line on the log comparable. If you'd rather count the cash cost of the beer, use your cost per ounce sheet instead. Say the sheet has an IPA at $0.140 an ounce and a 16 oz glass holds 14 ounces of beer:

Cost of 1 dumped pour  = 14 oz x $0.140 = $1.96
2 a week for 52 weeks  = 2 x $1.96 x 52 = $203.84

Your number lands somewhere between the 2 results. It sits near menu price on a keg that would have sold through anyway, and near cost on a slow keg.

Why does a wrong price keep costing?

A wrong price costs money on every pour sold under it until someone changes the line, while a kicked beer usually costs 1 pour per guest who orders it. Here is a 10 oz pour listed at $4 when the sheet says $5, with the house honoring the board for everyone:

Gap per pour:                  $5 - $4 = $1
10 oz pours sold per night:    20
Nights before anyone notices:  2
Cost = $1 x 20 x 2 = $40

Whether you honor the board for every guest or only for guests who point it out is a house rule. Settle it before the shift, the same way the routine for a keg that kicks mid-shift settles sub prices ahead of time.

What stays out of the dollar column?

Guest time stays out, because it has no honest dollar figure. A table that waited on a second round, or a guest who left without ordering, goes on the log in words. Don't guess a number for it.

Labor stays out too. The minutes spent fixing the board are wages, and they belong on the chalkboard labor cost worksheet, so nothing gets counted twice.

What counts as an incident on the log?

An incident is any time the board said something untrue and someone acted on it: a guest ordered off it, a server took an order from it, or a bartender quoted it. Outdated covers more than kicked beers:

• A beer still listed after its keg kicked.
• A price that doesn't match the cost sheet.
• A line that went up before its keg was tapped.
• 1 board fixed while another board, or the website, stayed wrong.

A wrong line caught before anyone acts on it just gets fixed, with no full line on the log. Give it a tick mark next to its cause anyway.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's incident investigation guidance is written for workplace injuries, but the habit carries over. OSHA encourages employers to look into close calls, sometimes called near misses, as well as incidents where someone got hurt. A row of ticks next to 1 cause shows you a problem before it costs a pour.

What goes on each line of the log?

Each line holds 1 incident, written the same shift by whoever caught it or by the shift's board owner. Put this header across the top of the page:

STALE BOARD LOG
When | Tap | Board said | What was true | Cost to guest | Cost to bar | Why | Fix decided this shift | Who, by when | In place

Fill the columns like this:

Copy the board line exactly. "Price was off" helps nobody next month, and "10 oz $4, should be $5" tells the next person what to check.

For Cost to guest, the usual entries are ordered twice, waited, paid more than the board said, got a beer they didn't order, or left. For Cost to bar, write the comped pour, the price gap you honored or the pour you dumped. When nothing was poured, write what the incident took instead, such as a server's extra trip. A guest who walked out gets "walked, no order," never a guessed dollar figure.

Which causes go in the Why column?

The Why column takes 1 of 5 house causes: Missed change, Too early, Wrong source, Other board or No owner. A short fixed list keeps weeks comparable, so add a cause only when nothing fits:

1. Missed change: a kick, a new keg or a price change the board didn't follow.
2. Too early: the board changed before the bar did.
3. Wrong source: the line was copied from something out of date, like an old price list or memory.
4. Other board: 1 board got fixed and another didn't.
5. No owner: nobody had the board, during a break or at the shift change.

Names stay out of this column. OSHA's incident guidance says investigations that focus on identifying and correcting root causes, not on finding fault or blame, also improve workplace morale. Its Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs add that a good investigation doesn't stop at a worker's error. It asks whether the worker had the right tools and time, enough training, and proper supervision.

At a bar, a bartender who missed a kick while swapping another keg had 2 jobs at once. The Why is Missed change, and the fix goes after the 2 jobs.

What makes a fix count?

A fix counts when it passes 3 tests:

1. You can point to it. It changes a card, a sheet, a checklist or a house rule. "Be more careful" and "talked to staff" fail.
2. It would stop the same incident with a different bartender on.
3. It's in place before the next shift that could hit the same problem.

Decide the fix before the shift ends, while the people who saw the incident are still in the building. If nobody can settle on one, write "open" and the manager's name. That still counts as a decision, because it names who owns the problem now.

Many fixes end up on the shift handoff card. The board owner's name and any open lines pass from 1 shift to the next there, which is also where a No owner cause usually gets fixed.

What does a filled log look like?

Here are 4 made-up incidents from a made-up weekend at a 16 tap bar. Prices come from the bar's cost sheet, and the In place column stays off until each fix lands.

Each fix goes after a cause and leaves people out of it. On tap 9 the board owner was busy on a swap, so the fix covers who marks the line when the owner can't. The kick routine stays the same, and the log changes only the step that failed. On tap 10 the bartender followed the kick card, and the card was wrong.

Three rows carry a dollar cost: $3 for the taster, $1 for the honored price and $8 for the dumped pint, or $12 for the weekend. If every weekend ran like this one, the dollar column would reach $12 x 52 = $624 a year.

The tap 6 incident comes from a list that shows what's coming next. The on deck tap list post covers how to word those lines so nobody orders them early.

How do you read the log each week?

Read the log once a week, down the Why and Fix columns. Look for 3 things:

• A cause that comes back after its fix went in. That fix didn't work, so replace it instead of announcing it again.
• A fix with nothing in the In place column. The board can still go wrong that way tonight.
• A card that keeps growing. If the kick card keeps picking up "and also" lines, rewrite it from scratch.

A cause collecting tick marks is due a fix too.

Add up the Cost to bar column once a month for a dollar answer to what the outdated menu costs, and keep that total out of the weekly read. A total tells you incidents happened, while the Why column tells you what to change. When a fix works, its cause stops showing up.

Which causes does a digital board take off the log?

A digital board mainly removes Other board for screens that share 1 list, and it makes Missed change quicker to close. On a TapDisplay board, 1 list can be split across several screens, or each screen can show its own sections, so the patio screen and the main screen both draw from the list you edit.

You change a line from a phone, a tablet or a computer behind the bar. Each connected screen checks for changes every 30 seconds, so the edit shows on every connected screen within about 30 seconds.

A kicked beer stays on the board, struck through. The business type sets the label: keg menus such as a brewery, bar or cidery say KICKED, and coffee, wine or cocktail menus say SOLD OUT.

Staff accounts can edit the menu, so the bartender who calls the kick can mark it without finding a manager. The activity log records who changed what, and undo reverses an edit made to the wrong tap.

The other 3 causes stay with the house. A line put up before its keg is tapped is wrong on a screen too, a price copied from an old list is wrong anywhere, and a board with no owner for the shift waits on somebody to notice. Those fixes still come from the log.

A chalkboard on the patio, a printed menu or the list on your website still counts as another board. Keeping the website tap list current covers the website check.

How do you start the log tonight?

Start tonight with a blank page clipped next to wherever the board gets changed. Write the header line and the 5 causes across the top, and leave a strip at the bottom for tick marks.

Fill in the first line the next time a guest points up at the board and says, "But the board says." If you aren't sure how often the list should change in the first place, how often to update your tap list covers the 4 triggers.

The bottom line

An outdated beer menu costs a bar the pours it comps or dumps and the price gaps it honors, which at 2 pours of $8 a week comes to $832 a year at menu price, plus guest time that has no honest dollar figure. Log each incident the same shift with 1 cause and 1 fix you can point to. Read the Why and Fix columns every week, and when a cause stops showing up, the fix worked.