The Bottle You Bought For One Guest

A regular asked for something specific. You ordered a case because that was the minimum. They drank two, then stopped coming.

Four bottles are still there. So is your money.

Why this accumulates in one direction

Stock arrives for a reason and leaves only if somebody sells it. Nothing removes it automatically.

Each individual decision was sensible. Order for the guest, take the case discount, keep a backup of the popular one, accept the deal the rep offered. The accumulation is not the sum of bad decisions — it is the absence of a decision that removes things.

That is why it grows in every venue regardless of how carefully purchasing is done.

The four piles

Special orders that outlived the request. The clearest case and usually the easiest to shift.

Minimum-order surplus. You needed two and the minimum was twelve. Ten of those are financing.

Deal stock. Bought because the price was good, not because it sells. ⚠️ A discount on something that does not move is not a saving; it is a purchase.

Discontinued from the list. Removed from the menu, still on the shelf, now unsellable by policy rather than by demand. Frequently the largest pile and the most avoidable.

The count

Once, an afternoon.

Every item on the shelf: how many, and when did one last sell?

The second number is what matters and the one nobody has. A count without dates tells you what you own; a count with dates tells you what is stuck — and those are different questions with different answers.

⚠️ Anything that has not moved in ninety days is not stock. It is money in a bottle, and it needs a decision rather than a shelf.

What to do with it

In order of what usually works:

Put it on the list. The simplest fix for the "discontinued but still held" pile, and it costs nothing. If it is drinkable and the shelf holds it, sell it.

Make it the feature. A special, a package, whatever fits. It moves at a lower margin, which is better than sitting at zero.

Give it to staff, where that is allowed. ⚠️ What is permissible here varies by jurisdiction and by your licence, and there are tax and licensing implications — confirm before you make it a habit. But where it is allowed, goodwill on something otherwise worthless is a genuine return.

Write it off and stop counting it as an asset. For anything genuinely unsellable. The write-off is not the loss — the loss already happened. The write-off just stops it distorting your numbers.

Preventing the next one

Three rules, none of which requires a system:

Special orders get a plan before they get ordered. Who drinks it besides this guest? If the answer is nobody, order the smallest quantity available even at a worse price.

A minimum order is a purchase of the full quantity. Do the arithmetic on twelve, not on the two you need. If twelve is not worth it, the deal is not a deal.

Removing an item from the list includes a plan for what is held. ⚠️ This is the one that produces the largest pile and it is entirely avoidable — the decision to remove and the decision about the remainder should be the same conversation.

The number that shows the shape

Value of stock that has not moved in ninety days, as a share of total stock value.

One number, checked quarterly. If it is rising, the accumulation is faster than the removal, and no amount of careful purchasing will fix that on its own — you need something that removes.

The bottle is not the cost

The bottle  a known amount, and small
What it teaches  that the arrangement is available on request

⚠️ One special order becomes an expectation, and the expectation is what carries the cost forward.

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Three ways it goes wrong

It does not sell to anyone else  and sits there
They stop coming     and it sits there permanently
Somebody else asks for theirs  and now there is a policy

⚠️ The third is the expensive one and it is entirely predictable, because the first request was visible to everyone.

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Do it, but change one thing

Bought speculatively  the risk is yours
Bought against a commitment  the risk is shared

⚠️ Ask them to take the first of it on the night it arrives. 　 ⇒ That single condition converts a favour into an arrangement, and it 　 　 is almost never refused by someone who genuinely wanted it.

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Write down whose it was and when

Unrecorded  in six months nobody knows why it is there
Recorded  it can be moved on, or offered to them again

⚠️ The bottle outlasts the memory of the request, and unlabelled stock is what makes a stocktake meaningless.

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The version to refuse

Requested loudly, at the bar, in front of others

⚠️ Agreeing there sets the policy for everyone within earshot, and that is a far larger commitment than the bottle. 　 ⇒ Take it privately afterwards if it is worth doing.

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The check at three months

Still unopened  the arrangement did not work
Opened and repeated  it did, and it is worth offering to others

⚠️ Either answer is useful, and neither is available unless it was written down at the time.

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Three to hold

Days since last sale, per item. The number that separates stock from stuck.

Value of ninety-day-plus stock. The money not working.

Minimum-order surplus created this quarter. Catches the cause while it is still recent.

Where the record has to sit

If sales are in the till and stock is on a clipboard, "when did one last sell" cannot be answered, and the shelf gets counted by quantity rather than by movement.

tasteck records what sold and when against the items you hold, so the ninety-day list is a query rather than an afternoon with a torch and a notebook.

Nobody bought dead stock. It was all live when it arrived — and nothing was watching the date.

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Read next

• The Stock You Never Count
• Stock Shrinkage Behind the Bar: Finding the Real Number
• Par Levels and the Money Sitting in Your Store
• Your Pour Cost Is a Schedule Problem
• The Item You Cannot Drop
• The Year Has A Shape