The case study interview with Jason Stock, General Manager of Stillife in Montreal, highlights the transformative effects of implementing WISK for inventory management at the bar. Stillife faced significant challenges with their previous inventory methods, which included pen-and-paper records and Excel spreadsheets. These manual processes were inefficient, prone to errors, and were compounded by unreliable app trials, leading to what Jason described as a frustrating "yo-yo effect."
Upon adopting WISK, Stillife experienced a rapid, streamlined setup, with inventory up and running in just a few hours using only a mobile phone and a Bluetooth scale. This transition not only eliminated the back-and-forth inefficiencies of manual tracking but also cut the time required for inventory tasks in half. WISK’s system offered critical advantages in visibility, allowing Jason and his team to monitor profitability in real time, track missing or overstocked bottles, and check daily variance reports. These daily reports provided immediate insights into nightly performance, enabling faster decision-making and clearer financial assessments.
WISK also simplified the invoice management process. Instead of manual data entry, invoices could be captured with a photo, instantly integrating into the app, saving time and reducing errors. Additionally, WISK’s digital record-keeping helped streamline data sharing with staff and partners, ensuring records are accessible, organized, and permanently stored.
In summary, WISK provided Stillife with a user-friendly, efficient, and reliable inventory solution that optimized their operations and saved time, which Jason enthusiastically recommended for other bar and restaurant owners.
Before WISK, inventory was kind of a drag with a huge Excel sheet and over a hundred products, making it hard to manage. I was initially scared about WISK's worth and investment, but we saved a lot of money as there's no more stealing, no more free promos, and we can check the balances easily. It helps a lot, time-wise and labor cost-wise. Since using WISK, I don't need to do inventories anymore because my staff can handle it, which is way easier. It saves me time and reduces labor and product costs.
With WISK, Lucille's Fairview experienced a smooth transition from daily Excel spreadsheet tracking to a user-friendly inventory management app. The seamless integration with our POS system provided all the numbers, including recipes, reports, costs, and markups, which helped improve our profitability. Training was efficient with WISK's step-by-step tools and training videos, eliminating the need for extensive one-on-one sessions. Our staff now enjoys counting inventory, and the support from WISK feels like having a personal assistant. WISK reduced the time and stress of daily operations, allowing us to focus on other aspects of the business. It's user-friendly, saves time, and is highly recommended for any restaurant or bar operator.
Before WISK, inventory was kind of a drag with a huge Excel sheet and over a hundred products, making it hard to manage. I was initially scared about WISK's worth and investment, but we saved a lot of money as there's no more stealing, no more free promos, and we can check the balances easily. It helps a lot, time-wise and labor cost-wise. Since using WISK, I don't need to do inventories anymore because my staff can handle it, which is way easier. It saves me time and reduces labor and product costs.
When I first started using WISK, I realized that it was a lot more simple than I had anticipated. It was pretty much a quick download, a 20 minutes tutorial, and then the first button to click is “start first inventory”, and the very first thing I did was scan a bottle. That bottle was located immediately and I just put how many I had and then I moved on.
It does give me peace of mind that I can log into the interface online and just see what's happening with my money, with my drinks. Do I need to change vendors? Do I need to get a different alcohol? Do I need to price my drinks differently? So it definitely helps having that data there at all times.
So when I started using WISK, it just made everything streamlined. Anything I need to know, I can just search up what's in my inventory for when I do my future orders, all that. It's all very streamlined and integrated. It works perfectly. - Alec
Some of our wins was cutting our inventory tremendously and also knowing what product we do and don't have on the shelf whether that was over ordering, under ordering, seeing where we fell on those levels. - Ariana Arzate
WISK has a really cool feature where you can actually put in all of your ingredients to make a cocktail and it'll give you a margin of what the cocktail should be priced at. Let's say you want to go over or you have a certain budget in mind, you can kind of spec out, hey, instead of using one ounce, you should be using 0.5. That makes it really easy and user friendly on front of house like bar backs and bartenders. When we are making large portions of cocktails, it'll kind of proportion everything out. - Ariana Arzate
I think we are into almost three months now since we started WISK. And like I said, it's just getting better and better every week. And my managers are happy, I'm happy, and the reports that we are looking for, it's amazing.
There's so many different ways to look at the reports, and it's so quick, even if you make any mistakes, I mean, you can quickly go back into the back of the house, fix it immediately, and rerun the report, which is amazing. We are happy because it cut our inventory time more than half. That was the main reason my managers, like I said, can spend more time somewhere else. But it needs to be not all day into the inventory.
And also the organization that WISK has, if you look at it and the way you can see the reports, also, it's very robust. The usability of the software, it's so integrated in the detail. Like, even if you want to see one single item, that way you're actually losing money or not making enough money, or your cost of goods sold are higher.
You can literally see each and every item and see where your money is actually going. Also, another thing I like is you can also set up the cost of goods or your price that you purchase, and you can set an alert for that. So if it raises prices on you, you know that you can also adjust your prices accordingly into your selling price.
The overall shrinkage, the over pouring, understanding where the product is going in store.
With WISK, we were able to dial that in so much tighter and keep people accountable. Also being able to customize the inventory system for each concept and still being able to honor those partnerships and have the right brands present at each venue, despite the different concepts and the different menus.
The relief that I felt once I was able to understand the simplicity of being able to onboard a new account, make introductions, get the training scheduled. Just the overall onboarding process that WISK has put together is second to none. It is absolutely painless and so easy to become a customer.
Being able to have the line of sight on the inventory on a daily basis at each restaurant and understand how they're pacing in the month, how to curb appropriately, if we're running into, over costs or over budget. That's one thing that we saw right away.
" Inventory time is always a win for us on the management side, because it gives us obviously the information to know if our business or our sales are successful or not.
What’s great about WISK is that when the chefs or the managers would hand in their cost projections on new items and new products it might not have been real-time information. With WISK, it’s updated all the time.
So even if it does take us a month to implement new products, we can see the percentages at the time, across all the time periods. "