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With the average revenue per pizza restaurant estimated to be $448,000 per year, and a high percentage of this revenue coming in cash, there is an irresistible temptation for some employees to skim a little extra off the top for themselves, and they aren't alone.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75% of all employees steal at least once, and that half of these steal again and again. The FBI calls employee theft the fastest growing crime in the U.S. These statements are more than enough to make any business owner cringe, especially when you are dealing in a high-cash environment.
However, while often ingenious and difficult to detect, there are common ways that theft occurs in pizza restaurants, and a variety of behaviors that owners and managers can look for to help them detect and prevent it. The 10 most common methods of employee theft we hear about from our customers involve:
- Under-reporting delivery sales taken over the phone.
- Taking personal calls during business hours.
- Turning the POS system off or not entering orders into the system.
- Under-ringing sales at the counter and pocketing the cash.
- Voiding out paid tickets.
- Making false returns or refunds.
- Having an order prepared by the kitchen as a remake or a favor so that when the customer comes in to pick it up, the employee simply pockets the cash.
- Claiming that the pizza was damaged or the customer refused delivery and pocketing the cash.
- Closing the store early.
While these are common methods to look for, there will always be opportunities that are specific to the employee or pizza operation. In addition to these, there are a variety of one-off opportunities that we haven't included in this list, but that owners should know about. These include taking money from the petty cash change bank and stealing food products and food supplies.
While pizza businesses have successfully used video surveillance and many other techniques (including careful screening of potential employees, having employees sign in for the cash drawer, and using the buddy system) to limit employee theft, one of the best ways to detect and control it, and a solution that would immediately identify each of the five methods listed above is automating a company's telephone sales operations.
By automating their phone orders and leveraging advanced speech recognition technology, a pizza business can significantly improve the performance of a telephone sales operation. Additionally, a comprehensive automated telephone ordering system can help owners and managers identify issues and detect theft by:
- Recording and saving all incoming calls for the past 30 days
- Automatically highlighting problem calls and suspicious employee actions
- Offering extensive analytics and reports on a regular basis
- Tracking calls versus orders
- Matching each phone order to what was actually entered into the POS system and reporting any discrepancies
By using an automated telephone ordering system, one customer we work with recently noticed that orders suddenly dropped to 50% of calls during a certain time period when they were normally at 85%. This helped them track specific employees and shifts to detect an employee who was working around the POS system and stealing thousands of dollars.
Since employee theft can be expensive and often difficult to detect (some estimates claim that it takes on average 18 months to identify), automating phone systems can save companies thousands of dollars in each case. The right phone system will not only find the theft and allow management to take action, but it can also prevent further theft because employees now realize that the system is going to make it much harder to steal without getting caught. While not all employees steal, being vigilant about looking out for employee theft just makes good business sense. And, with new technology like automated phone systems, you truly can have someone minding the store 24/7.