The club bar: stock counts, FIFO costing and real profit

Bar revenue is easy to see — it's in the till. Bar profit is harder: you need to know what each bottle you sold cost you, and purchase prices change from one delivery to the next. Bar stock and FIFO costing for clubs come down to three habits: cost each sale by FIFO, count the shelf regularly, and price on purpose. Here are all three, with a worked example.

Bar revenue is not bar profit

If the notebook says "bar today: 300,000 UZS", that's revenue. Profit is what's left after you subtract the cost of the goods you sold. Rent, wages and electricity come out later, but to judge the bar on its own, start here.

Without proper records, a bar usually leaks money in three places:

• Prices go stale. The supplier raised prices, the menu didn't change. The bar keeps selling, but each bottle earns less.
• Shrinkage stays invisible. Sold, given away, broken, expired — in a notebook it's all the same "gone".
• Cash gets stuck in stock. Slow items sit on the shelf for months, and the money in them isn't working.

What FIFO is and why it matters

FIFO means "first in, first out". In your books it means the cost of an item sold is taken from the oldest batch you still have; once that batch is gone, from the next one. The shelf should work the same way: old stock at the front, new stock behind it. That also stops products from expiring at the back.

Why not just use the latest purchase price? Because your stock often holds batches bought at different prices, and one price for everything makes profit look higher or lower than it is.

Example: two batches, one week

Say your club sells a 0.5 l soft drink for 10,000 UZS.

• Batch 1: 24 bottles at 5,000 UZS each — 120,000 UZS in total.
• Batch 2: the supplier raised the price, 24 bottles at 6,000 UZS each — 144,000 UZS in total.
• During the week you sell 30 bottles: revenue is 30 × 10,000 = 300,000 UZS.

Cost by FIFO:

• first, all of batch 1: 24 × 5,000 = 120,000 UZS;
• the remaining 6 bottles from batch 2: 6 × 6,000 = 36,000 UZS;
• total cost: 156,000 UZS.

Gross profit: 300,000 − 156,000 = 144,000 UZS. In stock: 18 bottles from batch 2, 18 × 6,000 = 108,000 UZS. Check: 156,000 + 108,000 = 264,000, exactly what both batches cost.

The same week costed at a single price:

The key lesson comes the following week. Batch 1 is gone, so every bottle on the shelf now cost 6,000 UZS. If the selling price is still 10,000, each one earns 4,000 UZS, not 5,000. The owner may still think "I make 5,000 on every soft drink", but that is no longer true. FIFO shows you exactly when it changes.

Stock counts and shrinkage

If nobody counts the shelf, the stock exists only on paper. A practical routine:

• Count on delivery. When the supplier arrives, check the goods against the invoice item by item. Two missing bottles turn into "shrinkage" later, and by then the cause is impossible to trace.
• Quick count at shift change. Counting the 5–10 best-selling items at every handover takes a few minutes and ties any gap to a specific shift.
• Full count. Everything, once a week or once a month, while the club is closed.
• Record write-offs separately. Broken, expired, given to a guest on the house — each with a reason. Then "unexplained shrinkage" really means unexplained.

For example, the records say there should be 18 bottles on the shelf and you find 15. That's 3 bottles short: at cost, 3 × 6,000 = 18,000 UZS lost; at the selling price, 3 × 10,000 = 30,000 UZS of revenue you never took. Once is a small amount; every week is a reason to dig.

The usual causes: sales that never went through the till, free drinks for friends, mistakes on delivery, theft. Counting by shift ties a shortage to a time and a person, which is part of staff control — more in staff and cash control.

Pricing: markup and margin

Don't mix up two terms:

• Markup is what you add on top of cost, measured against the cost.
• Margin is the share of the selling price that is profit.

For example, cost 5,000 and price 10,000 UZS: the markup is 100% (5,000 on top of 5,000), the margin is 50% (5,000 out of 10,000). Same price, but cost rises to 6,000: the markup is about 67%, the margin 40%. A rule like "we mark up the bar by 100%" stops being true the day your supplier raises prices.

What else to weigh besides cost:

• The nearby shop. Customers know shop prices. Charging more in a club is normal — the drink is right at the table. But if the gap is too big, people bring their own.
• Round prices. 10,000, not 9,700 — faster change, fewer mistakes.
• A review with every new batch. If the purchase price went up, decide on purpose: raise the price or accept a smaller profit.
• Low-cost items. Tea and coffee cost little per cup, so they can bring in a good part of the profit.

What to stock in a billiard or PlayStation club

A club bar isn't a restaurant. The goal: customers buy without leaving the game, stock turns over quickly, and money doesn't sit on the shelf.

• Drinks: water, soft drinks, juice, tea and coffee. This is the core.
• Snacks: crisps, nuts, chocolate bars, biscuits — packaged and long-lasting.
• Few items, all fast sellers. Fifteen items beat fifty: less cash tied up, faster counts.
• Watch expiry dates. Don't buy slow items in large batches.
• Protect tables and equipment. By a billiard table, a capped bottle beats an open glass: a spilled drink ruins the cloth. In a PlayStation room, sticky drinks and greasy crisps end up on the controllers, so put napkins out.

Hot food, alcohol or tobacco may come with separate requirements and permits — check with the public services centre or an adviser before you start. PlayStation clubs see many young customers, so also ask which products you may sell to whom.

What staff should see

A bartender or admin needs to sell and see stock levels, not purchase prices or profit. Supplier prices are the club's commercial information, and profit figures can steer wage talks the wrong way.

In ClubTime the bar and stock live in one place: stock levels, FIFO cost and real profit. With a PIN lock, staff can sell but can't see cost or profit. Reports show bar revenue separately from tables, purchases are recorded as expenses, and the owner gets a Telegram message for every sale.

How much of your revenue the bar brings

Treat the bar as a separate business inside the club. Two simple numbers are enough:

• Bar share: bar revenue ÷ total revenue. For example, in a month the tables bring in 20,000,000 and the bar 5,000,000 UZS: 25,000,000 in total, a bar share of 20%.
• Bar revenue per hour played: bar revenue ÷ table hours sold. For example, if 500 hours were played that month, 5,000,000 ÷ 500 = 10,000 UZS per hour.

The second is more useful: it adjusts for how busy you were, so a quiet month compares fairly with a busy one. If two shifts are about equally busy but one has clearly lower bar revenue per hour, look for sales that skipped the till. Added a new product? Check whether the number went up.

There is no "right" bar share — watch how yours changes month to month. For the other key figures, see the numbers every club should track.

In short

• Bar revenue is not profit: subtract the cost of the goods sold.
• FIFO takes cost from the oldest batch and shows when rising purchase prices cut your profit.
• Count on delivery and at every shift change, do a full count at least monthly, and record write-offs with a reason.
• Don't confuse markup with margin, and review prices with every new batch.
• Track bar share and bar revenue per hour played, month by month.

You can run a bar from a notebook, but working out FIFO by hand takes time with every delivery. Try ClubTime's bar, stock and PIN lock free for 15 days, no card needed. Pricing depends on the number of tables: plans.