Cut out Chaos

I had a few meetings last week with different bar managers and owners.  One bar manager recently took over a business that had no P&L statements or inventory history.  To make things worse, the staff wouldn’t do what was asked of them.  Even though this bar is one of the best looking bars in the area and has a great product, it's absolutely impossible to make money running a business like this.  If the staff knows you aren't watching every little thing that’s going across the bar they will rob you and leave you with pennies.

You need systems in place to operate a profitable business.  Whether you are just opening a bar or trying to make a bar profitable you must have systems in place for everything. The best business book for learning how to create systems in business is The E Myth, by Michael E. Gerber.  Here's an example of a staff organizational chart he includes in his book:

This chart shows how operations should be structured for a restaurant/bar business and who reports to who.  Obviously you may not need some positions (i.e. cloakroom attendant or valet) , but this chart should give you a solid starting point. 
You must assign every job on the chart to someone in your bar.  This means that one person could be the general manager, head of administration, and so on, but every person must answer to somebody.  You also need to write a detailed job description for every position with their key responsibilities.
 

The bar business is chaotic enough, so spend the time now on developing solid systems.  I guarentee you will thank me later.  

Here's how I ran my bars: I was in charge of operations and marketing, while my business partner was in charge of finance.  The head bartender was in charge of schedule, inventory, and ordering of products.  If the bar ran out of something I knew who to talk to.  If somebody didn’t show up for a shift I knew who to talk to.   This helped me give more responsibility to other staff members - for example if the bartender had a problem with something, they go to the head bartender.  If the head bartender can’t solve the problem, they go to the head of operations.  Everyone should know what they are in charge of and who they report to.