Notes on running a bar on evidence
Operational writing rather than content marketing. Where a piece makes a claim about how bars behave, it is either traceable to our published research or it is labelled as opinion.
6 Oct 20264 min read
A Bar Shift Handoff Checklist the Next Manager Can Use
The close of day report tells you what happened. The handoff gives the next manager unfinished work with an owner and a check time.
Read itMore writing
4 min read
How to Track Comps and Voids at a Bar Without Accusing Anyone
The loss hides in the comps and voids nobody can explain, and you only see those in the pattern.
4 min read
How to Keep Drinks Consistent Across Every Bartender
Four things that actually hold a recipe when nobody is watching.
4 min read
The Data to Action Gap in Bar Software
Five product categories, one shared ceiling. They all stop one step before the thing that changes the shift.
4 min read
Bar Management Software Is Solving the Wrong Problem
A decade of getting better at measurement, and almost none spent on execution.
3 min read
How to Calculate Bar Variance, and What to Do the Same Night
A worked example, and the four causes one variance number cannot tell apart.
2 min read
What a Pour Cost Report Does Not Tell You
One number, averaged across everything that could have caused it.
3 min read
Reports and Action: The Question to Ask Any Bar Tool
A short buying test you can run in any demo, including ours.
3 min read
How to Manage a Bar Without Wearing Every Hat
Three failure modes, and what has to be true for none of them to be your job.
3 min read
Bar POS Reporting: Useful, and Where It Stops
What the register genuinely gives you, and the three questions it cannot answer.
3 min read
The Real Cost of an Inconsistent Bar
The expensive half of inconsistency is invisible by construction.
3 min read
Multi Location Bars: Running One Standard Everywhere
Both sites end up acceptable, and different. That is the failure nobody braces for.
3 min read
Standardised Pours Without Becoming the Pour Police
Same numbers, opposite outcomes, depending entirely on who the finding is addressed to.
3 min read
Why Two Good Shifts Post Two Different Numbers
Averaging two Fridays into a weekly total destroys the only signal worth having.
3 min read
Bar Inventory Software and Bar Execution
If you bought inventory software and nothing moved, the tool is not underperforming. You had a different question.
3 min read
A Simple Weekly Operating Rhythm for Bars
Most operational improvement fails at repetition, not at diagnosis.
4 min read
Why Most Bars Fail, and Why the Statistics Are Not Reliable
We are not opening with a failure rate, because the ones in circulation cannot be sourced.
3 min read
What Happens When Your Best Manager Quits
Three costs, in order of size. Nobody counts the third one.
3 min read
Institutional Knowledge: The Asset Bars Keep Losing
Losing a fact is cheap. Losing a pattern is not, and patterns are made of facts nobody recorded.
3 min read
The Owner Dependence Trap
The test takes a week off and looks at the same numbers.
3 min read
Beyond Amplified Spreadsheets
Three questions worth asking of any tool in this category.
3 min read
How to Reduce Liquor Cost Without a New Inventory App
If you already know your variance and it is bad, counting again will confirm it rather than change it.
3 min read
The Three Ways Bar Owners Struggle
Visibility is upstream of the other two. That is a claim about sequence, not about pain.
3 min read
What Integration Actually Means for Bar Software
A vendor who answers all four plainly is telling you something. So is one who answers with a logo grid.
3 min read
Training on the Floor: Every Shift as Development
A dozen specific corrections a quarter is more development than any induction delivers.
3 min read
How to Onboard a New Bartender in Half the Time
They retain whatever they used in week one. Everything else gets taught again later.
3 min read
Training Against Real Events, Not a Binder
The obstacle is not disagreement. It is retrieval.
3 min read
The Skills That Compound Behind a Bar
Speed finishes improving. Judgement does not.
3 min read
Why Guest Experience Is the Owner's Real Job
The measurable half is the half with limited upside.
3 min read
Guest Experience Analytics for Bars
Ask a vendor what their product cannot see. It is the most informative question available.
3 min read
From Alert to Action: Handling a Cost Spike Live
Three alerts a night is less useful than three a week, because the three a night get dismissed unread.
3 min read
How to Read a Bar Profit and Loss Like an Operator
Revenue is not a lever. It is the output of every lever.
3 min read
Accountability Without Micromanaging
Not is this person doing their job, but did this thing happen and what followed.
2 min read
How to Give Feedback That Sticks Behind the Bar
Specificity decays with time, which is why the two failures are really one.
3 min read
The Micromanager's Dilemma in a Twenty Hat Business
Checking bundles three things together. Only one of them needs the owner.
3 min read
Fair, Visible Accountability Beats Chasing People
A venue that chases has accountability that varies with a manager's mood.
3 min read
What a Great Bar Culture Actually Looks Like
Culture is what happens by default when nobody senior is watching.
3 min read
Customer Experience Analytics and Guest Feeling
The tell is precision. A sentiment score with a decimal point is a design decision.
3 min read
How to Reduce Bar Staff Turnover
Fix the recurring irritations first, because they are the fastest to demonstrate.
3 min read
Setting Par Levels That Match How You Sell
Setting a par from the average guarantees the variable products run out.
3 min read
Real Time and End of Month: When Bar Decisions Should Happen
The cost of a finding rises with its age. Here is roughly how fast.
3 min read
Dashboards Do Not Run Bars. People Do.
The disappointment arrives around month three, with a beautiful live view and nothing running differently.
3 min read
The Complete Guide to Bar Performance Management
Most venues have a live view and a monthly review, with the useful interval missing in between.
3 min read
How to Choose Bar Software
Seven questions, and an afternoon long test you can run on every vendor at once.
3 min read
Bar Operational Intelligence: A Definition and a Playbook
Four clauses. Each one rules something out.
8 min read
Consistency Is a System, Not a Personality
The same room, the same recipes and the same prices still produce two different nights. That is not a people problem.
If you want the underlying study rather than the commentary, that is at research: 13,063 guest reviews across 41 Texas venues, classified twice by separate models and checked against state alcohol tax filings.