Bar Man Control was conceived by gentlemen’s club pioneer David “Slim” Baucom and his son, Walter, as a Swiss-Army-type software system for the everyday challenges unique to this industry’s club owners and operators. Our cover story offers five specific ways Bar Man Control can help improve the way your club operates today.
— story by Kelly Skillen
“If what you need doesn’t exist, invent it yourself.”
That was the philosophy that inspired David “Slim” Baucom and his eldest son, Walter “WD” Baucom, to create Bar Man Control, the one-stop-shop of adult club software systems. Bar Man Control is, in part, all of these things: POS, inventory program, CRM, entertainer tracking software, HR manager, club cash print-on-demand — and more. Originally conceived for its creators’ nine clubs, Bar Man Control is now commercially available to the adult entertainment industry for the very first time.
If the name Slim Baucom sounds familiar to you, it should: Slim is the owner of MAL Entertainment, the leading provider of adult nightlife in the greater Charlotte area for 30-plus years and counting. So, the first thing you need to know about Bar Man is that it was designed for operators by operators, to address the very specific needs of gentlemen’s clubs.
The back-end is tailored to the idiosyncrasies of our industry. If you’ve ever tried to explain to Micros how you want surcharges on “club cash” reported, how to split revenue on a VIP dance or how to structure a drink commission, well, you’ll appreciate the operational expertise the creators of Bar Man bring to the table.
“For a company like Micros or Aloha, there’s not much incentive to spend hours customizing and developing features for adult clubs, because it’s considered a niche market,” explains WD. “But for us, it’s what we do.”
The result is a system that goes well beyond what even best-of-breed POS companies provide. Here are just some of its key elements.
A POS with speed of service and ease of use
If your club is plagued by high turnover and the questionable work ethic of the dreaded “millennial,” you certainly aren’t alone. While there are many serviceable POS systems on the market, the Bar Man point-of-sale module is designed specifically with your employee in mind—the one who may have little experience, whom you’ve had to throw onto the floor on a Friday night without the comprehensive training that takes place in that idyllic strip club in the sky.
Meanwhile, the back-end is tailored to the idiosyncrasies of our industry. If you’ve ever tried to explain to Micros how you want surcharges on “club cash” reported, how to split revenue on a VIP dance or how to structure a drink commission, well, you’ll appreciate the operational expertise the creators of Bar Man bring to the table.
Inventory control in real time
“For those of you who aren’t taking inventory, shame on you,” admonishes Slim. Yet, the dearth of viable inventory products on the market makes this common oversight understandable.
“The issue with most inventory systems, even point-and-click apps, is that they lend themselves to monthly, maybe weekly inventories, which is better than nothing,” WD explains. “But you wouldn’t count your safe once a week, right?”
It’s a sound point; the liquor behind your bar constitutes currency, every bit as much as the stacks of bills lined up in your safe. Bar Man Control offers an integrated scan-and-weigh system designed to be performed at every workstation, after every shift, literally in minutes. The reason is accountability; by pinpointing your variance in real time, you’re able to hold your bartenders financially or professionally accountable for mistakes, and/or deter them from making the same ones going forward.
Entertainer tracking with legal compliance in mind
It’s the 800-pound gorilla in every room, the specter that haunts us all, whether we’ve been involved in some form of independent-contractor-vs-employee litigation to date or not. So, it should come as no surprise that Bar Man Control was conceived specifically with today’s treacherous legal landscape in mind.
Whether you’re using a strict independent model, employee model or an amalgamation of both, whether you pay your entertainers, or they pay you, Bar Man can track the specific information you need to defend yourself in the event of a worst-case scenario. But even without all that gloom and doom, Bar Man is set up to seamlessly track a dizzying number of full-time, part-time or transient individuals—with or without schedules—through interconnected House Mom, VIP and DJ Modules. Entertainer profiles allow you to upload contracts or waivers, as well as store whatever activity is relevant to your operation—or required by your accountant and/or attorney.
Membership and client management
Whether it’s a legal necessity or an optional hospitality feature, Bar Man Control is designed to store and manage your guests’ information via a built-in ID scan.
As Bar Man’s inventors explain, in North Carolina, nightclubs must be structured as private membership establishments. To meet this requirement, Bar Man was designed so that the admissions module is fully compliant while dispensing with arduous applications and forms. In short, a new member can be created in seconds.
Even if your club is not burdened with this particular requirement, however, the ID scan ensures your guests are of age and provides you with a guest’s personal information in the event of a legal issue or financial dispute. The “notes” also allow you to add information such as liquor or entertainer preferences to your guest’s profile, which will alert your staff the moment a VIP hits the floor, paving the way for a superior guest experience.
Real metrics you need to make informed business decisions
“One of the advantages of Bar Man Control is that it’s all-in-one, no comparative reporting,” says WD.
The thoroughly customizable reporting module is configured to provide clients with the specific information they need—whether granular or enterprise—to make the right decisions regarding your business. Admissions details, variance & cost analyses, entertainer earnings, performance summaries, hourly or time period reports, menu item mixes, revenue reports by employee, station, shift, date, range, property or organization … it’s all a few clicks away.
As the elder Baucom says, “If there’s anything we should know by now, knowledge is power in this day and age; you cannot bury your head in the sand.” That is the power Bar Man Control aims to provide.
For more information, visit barmancontrol.com or call (704) 926-1504.
