Restaurants and Coupon Fraud

[Nicole Hurley]

Hello Everyone,

After working in the restaurant industry for 10 years, I know the ins and outs of the business, and I also know that as a server it is EXTREMELY easy to work the coupon system to put money in your own pocket. I am trying to obtain data to support this and have created a survey to do so. What do you think the best way to get food servers to participate in taking my survey would be? If you manage or operate a restaurant and would like to help me out, you can find my survey here: As a former food server for over 9 years, I know the ins and outs of the business and role. I understand that there are certain ways to cheat the system to make more money and I saw it happening around me every day! Your honesty would be much appreci (http://kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=NHDIMI_cdf9686e)

Ideas on how to spread this survey to get participants that I need would be extremely helpful!

Thank you!

[Patrysha]

I do work in a restaurant...I started to take the survey, but realized about halfway through that I have no clue what you are talking about. I don't see how a person would game the system to make any money off of accepting coupons the way we work them...

[Nicole Hurley]

I know that some servers will obtain coupons one way or another and use them for guests that pay cash. For instance, a Buy One Get One coupon goes out in the local newspaper; Servers I used to work with would go around town and buy as many of the newspapers that they could get their hands on. Then, when a party of 2 or more would come in and pay CASH for their meals, the server would put in the coupon before cashing the bill out. Does that make sense?
It happens ALL the time.. I have worked in 4 different locations for one restaurant, and then have worked for 3 other restaurants, and it happened at all of them. Sad but true. These servers were making hundreds of dollars. I never would... either because I didn't have the guts or because I thought it was wrong... but let me tell you, my co-workers were ALL about it!

[Patrysha]

I would have never in a million years thought of that.

It would be kind of difficult to do here...the free breakfast coupons are given out at a couple of local hotels and have the guest room number on them, none of the other one's out there are of significant value. No BOGO's for sure...There's the punchout cards for lunch...but those would be difficult to game I think...

[Nicole Hurley]

You seem safe.. but you never know, you would be surprised. Servers are SNEEKY!

[Patrysha]

Some may be, but I haven't found that as an overall rule. All the restaurants I've worked for have had much more of a team attitude than a screw the boss one though...so that may play a role in the types of servers I've met...

[Nicole Hurley]

Probably so... all the restaurants I have worked for were corporate... we all thought "screw the boss... who ever that may be!"

[Patrysha]

There might be the difference, the only corporate one I worked for was Chi-Chi's..all the rest were locally owned, family run type places. Also, from the stories I've heard wait staff have it far harder in the states because of minimum wage variances and stuff...

[Nicole Hurley]

Most definitely... I was getting paid $2.65/hour plus tip when I left Michigan about a year and a half ago!

[cbscreative]

Many years ago, I worked in a couple restaurants as a server and never heard of anyone doing this. Maybe it was a different era where workers didn't have such attitudes, or maybe it's just the work ethic in my area, I don't know. If anyone was doing this, they certainly didn't talk about it. The places I worked at were well managed and the servers were very team oriented. These were also above the centerline on price so the work environment was different than what I heard it was like working at lower end places. I suppose all these factors could make a difference.

I do have to agree though, this is highly unethical and the fact that so many employees have this attitude makes a sad statement about what our culture and workplaces have become. Whenever someone trades their integrity for money, no matter how much money, they're getting a raw deal.

[tylerhutchinson]

I know many people who have done this. It seems they eventually got caught and fired.

As far as getting people to take the survey, I am not sure the best approach. Honestly, if I were one of those people doing that, I would not take the survey, which would leave only honest people taking it and that will give you inaccurate numbers.

I am not sure if you have a site you can put it on currently, but I would suggest promoting it on sites with a "complete survey for a chance to win" sort of thing and offer a potential reward. Other then that I think your best bet would be to reach out to restaurants, and have them give them to their servers and then they give them back to you. Just make sure you put on them that it is confidential and the owner cannot view, or fire based on results sort of thing. I still do not know how much participation you would get.

[Harold Mansfield]

I worked in bars, clubs and restaurants for 15 years and I know exactly what you are talking about. I have probably seen every scam out there and there are a million of them. You are right, servers are sneaky.

On your original question, you can't stop servers from getting coupons on their own and applying them to cash customer checks. Especially if the coupons are readily available to the general public like in a newspaper or mailer, and the servers act as their own cashiers. There's just no way.

However, you can spot check the honesty of your staff by requiring a managers OK on all coupons before they are cashed out. Just a simple initial or stamp and asking which table it's for (and put that table number on the coupon with your initial) , should do the trick. That way the floor manager can do random "table touches" disguised as marketing polls to talk to the customer and ask where they heard about you and found your coupon. It's important that the coupons be approved before they are cashed in by the server.

This will make it much harder for servers and make the scam a bigger risk for the possibility of being caught in a random spot check.

Of course you will still have a certain amount of servers, especially when it's busy, that will try the old "it was too busy and I couldn't find you", more times than the average person. The really sneaky ones will wait until there is a crisis that takes the floor manager away from the floor, or will only do it when it's really busy thinking it's easier to hide the deception. That just makes your job easier because you know who to watch.
Since it is unlikely that a floor manager will touch every table with a coupon, and your good scammers will know exactly when to use the scam at the most opportune time when a table touch is unlikely, you can compare who gets more coupons than others, by tracking which sections or tables have a high amount of coupons and comparing that to the server that works those sections.

Be on the look out for :

Servers who always seem to get your signature as the table is leaving.
Old or outdated coupons.
Checks with staples in them, but no coupon attached. ("it must have fallen off").

You get the picture.

[Harold Mansfield]

People that say that they have never heard of servers doing things like this as a rule, may be the exception, but in my life working in hospitality, there was always someone that had a scam going. Especially in a cash business where servers act as their own cashiers.
Some restaurants have a cashier in the kitchen for the servers to cash out their checks.. that pretty much cuts the scamming out.
But I have never worked anywhere where everyone was completely honest and I'm covering corps like General Mills ( Olive Garden, Red Lobster), TGI Fridays, Bennigans, Chili's, Chi Chi's, and Macyo in Michigan, Ohio, S. Florida, and Las Vegas including major hotels, and multi million dollar night clubs.

Some scammers are light and only get you for a few dollars a night..$10 here, $20 there and some are major that can hit you for $100's to thousands a night depending on how busy the establishment.

I've caught servers running credit card scams in upscale restaurants, to bartenders padding the drawer in busy nightclubs. I knew servers that would work certain places because they were easier to scam.
Family owned and mom and pops are easy targets because they seem to trust their employees like family, where as corporations tend to cover as many bases as possible including using secret shoppers.
It definitely is a huge part of the industry, but it's very hard to get away with it for any long period of time these days.

I could talk about this for days.

[billbenson]

Kinda reminds me of my days in Sears security during college 30+ years ago eborg. Employees had discounts for them and direct family. We were forever catching employees buying things for friends. They were pretty obvious and were fired in most cases. Gotta be real easy these days with cameras. I'd be very interested to see how WalMart does it because they manage their employees by camera. In this economy, my former account manager at my bank ended up working at WalMart. She was afraid to talk to me for more than 30 seconds. The eye in the sky was watching her.

Once my boss told me I had to watch my girlfriend in jewelry. Another employee saw her steal a gold bracelet while I was there talking to her. She was using me to steal. That was an eye opener at 19 y/o.

Fortunately I'm not in brick and mortar retail. If I was, I'd use the hell out of cameras. I'd watch employees for minor ethical violations, the friends they keep, if they are looking suspicious at tiimes, credit history, police record etc. Its sort of profiling... It will give you a short list of people that you want to keep an eye on to be sure they are people you want working for you.