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Keep Fraud Off Your Restaurant’s Menu

In the restaurant industry, where long hours and thin profit margins are the norm, owners and managers often lack the time and resources to focus on fraud. Unfortunately, restaurants can provide crooked employees, customers, and vendors with plenty of opportunities to steal. So, you need to be able to recognize and prevent fraud threats before they lead to heavy financial losses.

Opportunity on the house

Many restaurants have high transaction volumes but lack the technology linking point-of-sale, inventory and accounting systems. This leaves gaps for fraudsters to exploit. Employees could, for example, provide food and drinks to friends without entering the sales or ring up only a portion of friends’ bills. They might issue voids or refunds when there was no original sale and pocket the proceeds,  or they could overcharge customers by, say, charging for premium beverages but serving cheaper alternatives.

Although its less common, intangible property theft is another risk. Your restaurant may use proprietary recipes and confidential marketing plans to contend in the competitive world of food service. If a departing employee takes such secrets to a rival, it could threaten your restaurant’s survival.

Back-office book cooking

Owners often employ bookkeepers to manage back-office operations but may neglect to give proper oversight. Such an environment provides criminals — or even ordinary people experiencing unusual financial pressures — with opportunities to cook the books. In one frequently seen scheme, the bookkeeper creates a fake vendor account, submits and approves fraudulent invoices, then directs payments to a bank account he or she controls.

Even when bookkeepers are honest, the invoices they process may not be. It can be hard for managers to keep track of the daily stream of food, beverage, and supply deliveries. Vendors might exploit such chaos by inflating their bills to reflect more or pricier items than they actually delivered. When vendors collude with restaurant employees, particularly receiving or accounting staff, theft can exact a heavy financial toll.

Ingredients for success

Successfully combatting restaurant fraud takes a multipronged approach. If you have not already:

  • Integrate your accounting, inventory, and sales systems
  • Use loss prevention technology to detect suspicious transactions such as excessive voids
  • Process credit cards with EMV (chip) readers
  • Conduct background checks on new hires
  • Train supervisors to recognize red flags
  • Set up a confidential fraud reporting hotline
  • Install video surveillance throughout your restaurant

Also engage a CPA to review your financial records at least once a year for errors and discrepancies and consider having this outside expert conduct occasional surprise audits. Contact us for assistance.

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