Beverage Dynamics is the largest national business magazine devoted exclusively to the needs of off-premise beverage alcohol retailers, from single liquor stores to big box chains, through coverage of the latest trends in wine, beer and spirits.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/282869
Playing Defense 60 Beverage Dynamics • March/April 2014 www.beveragedynamics.com is just going to get worse," said Bregar. And employee theft is very common. According to the Hayes survey, one out of every 40 employees was apprehended for theft by their employers in 2012. Bregar, who, over his 20+ years in loss prevention, has personally conducted over 2,300 employee-theft investigations, said, "When someone says to me, 'Oh, no! My em- ployees would never steal from me,' then I know the employees are stealing, because the employer has stuck his head in the sand and isn't looking for it." Bregar has seen family members and childhood friends steal from retailers. WHAT CAN BE DONE? "The biggest mistake retailers make is that they don't start talking about loss prevention right from the very be- ginning," said Bregar. "They're not establishing the employee's mindset correctly from the beginning." When hiring, retailers should tell potential hires that they are going to be doing background checks. "And then they should actually do it," said Bregar. "Things like criminal records checks are easy and cheap to do." Sherlock's has been certifi ed by the state of Georgia as a "drug-free workplace." In ad- dition to having a written substance-abuse policy, educating both supervisors and em- ployees about the subject and giving them lists of free drug-treatment and counseling centers, Sherlock's is able to drug-test its employees at the time of hire and then randomly after that. "Someone who has a drug problem often develops a money problem, which can then lead to a theft problem," explained Maske. (Workplaces that have been certifi ed drug-free in the state of Georgia also receive a 7.5% reduction in their workers compensation premiums.) To combat theft, retailers need to run a tight ship and let their employees know that they do. "You have to have a system of checks and balances," said Maske. At Sherlock's, there is a blind balancing system. At the end of a shift, a cashier counts his or her drawer down to $100 and drops the rest into a drop safe. Then, another person will balance the drawer, counting the money and checking that the cash, credit-card and check sales all match, and then a third person, a manager, will review and enter the data into the store's accounting system. Sherlock's point-of- sale system, from Atlan- tic Systems, "has good management controls," Maske said, and Sher- lock's makes full use of them. Transactions such as no sales, voided sales and taking and returning keg deposits require two people, one a manager, to avoid creating opportuni- ties for theft. Linking the POS transactional data with video footage from cameras over check- out lanes is becoming more common. With systems like these, the transaction data, what the cashier is ringing into the system, is su- perimposed on the video footage from the camera trained on the check-out lane. "To everyone around them, it may look like they are ringing up a bottle of Grey Goose, but they could really be entering a void or a no sale," explained Bregar. If a retailer notices discrepancies in his operation's cash or inventory, he or she then has the video and the POS information nicely linked up to examine. Some security systems, such as the ones from3xLogic (3xlogic. com), can even be set to send certain kinds of transactions to the system's "dashboard," so a retailer can just click on a button for "no sales" and literally watch all the "no sales" that have been rung. 3xLogic systems can even be programmed to send an alert to the retailer's cell phone, with the foot- age attached, any time a certain kind of trans- action is rung, so that the retailer can review it seconds after it's occurred. ALL HANDS ON DECK In terms of fi nancial loss, shoplifting is the other big concern for retailers. According to the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (shopliftingprevention.org), a nonprofi t organization, one out of every 11 people has shoplifted. And these shoplifters Various brands with security caps from Loss Prevention Systems. American retailers lose, on average, 1.5% of their sales to theft. The two main sources of loss: employee theft and shoplifting. Craig Maske, general manager of Sherlock's, a fi ve-store operation head- quartered in Marietta, GA, holding a bottle with a security cap. Maske says of store security, "You have to have a system of checks and balances."