Today, I attended a luncheon seminar for restaurant owners and decision makers.  The topic was how does the restaurant staff steal.  It was an interesting talk in that servers, bartenders, etc. are always looking for an angle to steal.  Sadly, I think employees will look to steal if no one is looking.  Stealing from an employer in a restaurant environment is usually a team game as it requires several to be in cahoots to pull off a legitimate scam and to keep this scam going.

That is the name of the game...keep the scam going.  No one gets rich by onesie-twosie stealing.  Rather, a good scheme is one that is not too aggressive so that it is identified by the owner or manager.

Michael Viola, CPA, MBA, is the president and founder of PURE Restaurant Solutions, an accounting firm that specializes in restaurant accounting. PURE is located in Orange County, California, but with the help of cloud computing, PURE's clients are nationwide. With nearly 14 years of service in the industry, he has worked with some of the leading restaurant concepts as an employee, auditor (through his "Big 4" audit clients) or as a Controller/CFO. Michael is passionate about restaurants and enjoys seeing concepts succeed. He can be contacted at blog [at] go-pure.com.