Every back bar has a row of bottles nobody orders. They were bought for a reason that no longer exists, they are counted every month, and the money in them is money you are not using.

There is a section of your back bar where nothing moves. Three or four bottles, sometimes a dozen, that have been counted at every stocktake since spring and are at exactly the level they were.

Each of them was bought for a reason. A guest asked for it once. A supplier included it in a deal. Somebody thought the range looked thin. The reasons were all sound and none of them are still true, and the bottles are still there because taking something off is a decision and leaving it on is not.

Why a range only ever grows

Four forces, all pushing the same way, and nothing pushing back.

Adding is easy and removing is a decision

⇒ ⭕ Nobody has ever been criticised for carrying something. Delisting requires somebody to say a thing is not working, which is a judgement with a name attached to it.

The exception becomes the range

⚠️ One guest asked, so it was ordered. ⭕ A single request is data about one night, and it becomes a permanent line on the back bar.

⇒ The Bottle You Bought For One Guest

The deal that came with three others

⇒ A discount on a case, a new listing bundled with a favourite. ⚠️ The saving was real and the two extra lines are now permanent, which was not part of the arithmetic anybody did.

⇒ The Supplier You Have Used For Ten Years

And nobody looks at the range as a whole

⭕ Individual products are ordered by individual people at individual moments. Nobody has ever sat down with the entire list at once, which is the only vantage point from which the problem is visible.

What it actually costs

The bottle sitting there looks like it costs nothing. It costs four things.

The money is not available

⚠️ ⭕ Stock is cash in a different shape. A back bar with a large slow-moving tail is a venue running tighter on cash than it needs to, every week.

⇒ The Profitable Month That Runs Out Of Cash

It is counted every month, forever

⇒ ⭕ Every slow line adds time to every stocktake, and stocktakes that take too long stop being done properly, which costs far more than the stock.

⇒ The Stocktake That Never Balances

It takes the space the movers need

⚠️ Speed rail, fridge, cellar, the reachable shelf. ⭕ Slow lines occupy the positions that make fast lines fast, which shows up as service speed rather than as stock.

And it degrades

⇒ ⭕ Open bottles oxidise, labels fade in the light, some things pass a date. A slow line eventually becomes a write-off rather than a sale, and the loss lands in a month with no obvious cause.

Finding them, which takes twenty minutes

You do not need a system. You need one list and one comparison.

Take the last two stocktakes

⇒ ⭕ Anything at the same level in both is not moving. That single comparison finds almost everything, and most venues have never made it.

Sort by how long the stock would last

⚠️ ⭕ Not by value — by weeks of cover. A cheap bottle with two years of stock is a worse line than an expensive one with three weeks.

Separate never-sold from slowed-down

⇒ Something that has never sold is a listing mistake. Something that used to sell and stopped is a different problem — usually a price change, a recipe change, or a member of staff who used to recommend it.

⇒ The Price You Have Not Changed

And check it is actually on the menu

⭕ ⚠️ A surprising number of slow lines are slow because nobody can order them. They are behind the bar and not on any list a guest sees.

⇒ The Menu Nobody Has Read In Two Years

The four things to do with one

Once identified, there are only four options, and doing nothing is not one of them.

Sell it deliberately

⭕ The best outcome and the least used. A featured serve, a staff recommendation for two weeks, a place on the board. Most slow lines are perfectly good products with no advocate.

⇒ The Training That Happens On The Floor

Use it somewhere else

⇒ Into a mix, a batch, a house serve. ⚠️ ⭕ Check the recipe economics before doing this — putting an expensive slow line into a cheap house drink converts a stock problem into a margin problem.

Stop reordering it and let it run out

⭕ The simplest and most commonly skipped step. It requires no decision about the existing bottle and it stops the situation getting worse.

⚠️ ⭕ This is where the delisting actually happens, quietly, and it is worth being explicit that it has happened so it does not get reordered by habit.

⇒ The Delivery Window Nobody Set

Or accept it, on purpose

⇒ ⭕ Some slow lines earn their place: the thing one important regular drinks, the bottle that signals the bar is serious, the one required by a supplier agreement. Keeping them is fine. Keeping them without knowing why is what costs.

The lines that look slow and are not

Worth checking before delisting, because two of these are easy to get wrong.

The one bought for a specific person

⚠️ ⭕ Delisting this is a relationship decision dressed as a stock decision. Know which one you are making.

⇒ The Regular Who Brings Everyone

The seasonal line

⇒ ⭕ Something that does nothing for eight months and everything for four is not a slow line. Compare it to the same period last year, not to last month.

The one holding a price point

⭕ A range needs an anchor at the top and something at the bottom. ⚠️ Some lines earn their place by making other lines look correct, and their own sales are not the measure.

And the one that is part of an agreement

⛔ ⚠️ Some listings come with supply agreements, rebates or exclusivity terms. Check what you have signed before removing a line — this is a contract question, not a stock one.

Stopping the next one arriving

The tail regrows unless something changes at the point of listing.

One in, one out

⭕ A hard rule is easier to keep than a judgement. Adding a line means naming one to go, which forces the conversation at the only moment it is cheap.

Give new lines a review date

⇒ ⭕ Three months, written down when it is ordered. Most slow lines would have been removed at the three-month mark if anybody had been prompted to look.

Decide who can add a line

⚠️ ⭕ If anybody can order anything, the range is the union of everybody's individual judgement. One named person, or a short conversation, is enough.

And look at the whole range twice a year

⇒ The Report You Open Every Monday

What good looks like

The two-stocktake test

Compare the last two counts. ⇒ Anything identical in both is your list. If you cannot do this comparison, the counts are not being kept in a usable form.

The cover test

⚠️ Ask how many weeks of stock the slowest line represents. A number means somebody looks. "We've always had it" is the answer this page is about.

The review-date test

Working     — every line added this year has a date when somebody will look at it
Not working — lines are added and never revisited until a stocktake gets long

Three to hold

1  Adding is easy and removing is a decision — that asymmetry is the whole mechanism
2  Sort by weeks of cover, not by value; a cheap line with two years of stock is worse
3  A slow line with no advocate is usually a good product nobody recommends

Where the record has to sit

What was bought, when it was last sold, what the count found and when the line was added — together, so that two stocktakes can be compared in a minute rather than reconstructed from memory. Kept there, twenty minutes twice a year keeps the range honest and the cash working. Kept nowhere, the range only grows, the stocktake gets slower every quarter, and the money sits on a shelf at eye level where everybody can see it and nobody can spend it.

⇒ The Stock You Never Count

The Bottle That Has Not Moved Since March