Stock control
Dead stock: the cash sitting on your shelves
Every venue has them: the bottles gathering dust at the back of the optics, the case of something a rep talked you into last year. That is not stock — it is cash you cannot spend.
10 September 2026 · Craig Haugh, Apex Stocktaking
What dead stock really costs
A slow line costs you three ways. The money tied up in buying it. The shelf space it occupies instead of something that sells. And the risk it carries — every week a product sits is another week it can go out of date, get damaged, or quietly walk.
Add up every slow line in a typical bar and it is common to find a four-figure sum sitting still.
How to spot it
The test is simple: compare what you counted this period against what you counted last period and what you bought in between. A product with the same count, period after period, and no purchases moving through it, is dead. A product selling a unit or two a month when you hold a case is slow.
This is exactly what our slow movers and weeks-of-stock reporting does automatically — every product ranked by how long the current holding will last at its actual usage rate.
What to do with it
Sell through, don't reorder: put the slow line on a special, build it into a cocktail or a staff incentive, and let it run down to zero. Stop the reorder at source — dead stock usually arrives because a standing order or a rep visit was never questioned.
Then set a simple house rule: nothing new comes in without a plan for how fast it will sell. One case to trial, not three.
The exception worth keeping
Some slow lines earn their place — a premium whiskey you keep for two regulars, or a liqueur that makes one popular cocktail. The point of the report is not to strip the shelves; it is to make those decisions knowingly, with the cost of the shelf space in front of you.
Want this handled for you?
Apex takes stock in bars and kitchens across Ireland — managed stocktakes, or our lower-cost Self-Count model — with the full report in your hands the same day.