Bar inventory by weight
Put each open bottle on a kitchen scale and read what's left in it to the millilitre. Count the shelf in minutes, see what the bar poured against what the till rang, which bottles run heavy and by how much a pour, and what to order.
Help and background Back to the tool
How it works
- 1 Put your bottles on the shelf, in the order you walk the bar. Weigh one empty and, if you can, one sealed: that's once per bottle, not per count.
- 2 To count, put each open bottle on a kitchen scale and type the grams. The page reads it as the millilitres left. Count the sealed ones beside it.
- 3 Put in what came in since the last count (it fills from the deliveries in your price book) and how many pours the till rang, or paste the till's item sales report.
- 4 The page works out what the shelf used, against what the till rang, for each bottle: in pours, and in dollars at cost from your price book.
- 5 It shows the bottles furthest off first, what each pour really came to, and what to order to get back to par. Save the count, and the next one starts from it.
Free, with a free account. Costs come from your price book, for bottles you buy by the mL or the L. Signed out, you can try a made-up example, and nothing is sent or kept.
Good to know
- Why weigh, not eyeball?
- Guessing tenths of a bottle by eye is off by a pour or two a bottle, and that's the size of the gap you're looking for. A kitchen scale that reads to the gram is enough. Take the speed pourer off, or put in what it weighs and the page takes it off each open bottle.
- Do I have to weigh a full bottle?
- For a spirit, no: the page estimates the full weight from the empty one, taking a spirit at about 0.95 g per mL. That's close for most spirits around 40% alcohol, and a sealed one on the scale is truer. Liqueurs, wines and ports vary too much with sugar to guess, so weigh one sealed for those.
- What's a pour?
- Whatever you ring a drink as. A new bottle starts at 29 mL (1 oz) for spirits and liqueurs, 142 mL (5 oz) for wine and 85 mL (3 oz) for fortified wine, the standard servings in Ontario's liquor licence regulation (verify for your province and licence). Change it to your own pour, and a double rung counts as two.
- Where does a gap come from?
- Usually heavy free pours, comps and staff drinks not rung, spills, a till key rung on the wrong bottle, or a delivery not put in. A bottle that shows more than the till accounts for is nearly always a delivery or a borrowed bottle. It points to where to look, not who to blame. To price a drink from what a pour really costs, use the pour cost calculator.
- Where are my counts kept?
- Your shelf and counts are kept in your LocoTap account, for you alone, never in a link or our logs. The till report you paste is read on the page, not sent. Each count keeps the millilitres its weights came to on the day, so changing a bottle later doesn't rewrite it. Remove a bottle or a count any time.
A guide to where the pours go, not accounting advice.
Where it fits in a restaurant
Every week Prices in, margins checked, the counts against the sales, and next week's pars.
Its work comes from
A hand-off only moves when you press it, and never through a link: signed in, the next tool reads your account's book; signed out, it waits in this browser until the next tool picks it up.
Every week
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