Star Pubs line check: the weekly routine that stops leaks

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most Star Pubs licensees are losing between £3,000 and £5,000 a year without knowing it. Not to theft—to measurement error, over-pouring, line waste, and forgotten spillage. A single weekly line check catches this before it becomes a problem that eats your GP margin. I’ve been running pubs for 15 years, and I can tell you the difference between a licensee who does a proper Star Pubs line check and one who doesn’t shows up in the numbers within a month. This is not complicated stuff, but it is non-negotiable if you want to actually make money from your tenancy.

What is a Star Pubs line check and why it matters

A line check is a weekly count of every spirit bottle, draught cask, and partial keg in your pub, reconciled against till data to spot where stock is going missing or being wasted. It’s called a “line check” because you’re checking every line of stock—not just headline figures, but the actual contents of every open spirit bottle and every line in your cellar.

Star Pubs tenants are handed a standard stocktake schedule by the pubco, usually monthly or quarterly. That’s too infrequent. By the time you see the monthly variance, the damage is already done. A weekly line check means you catch a £50 leak in week one, not a £800 leak in week four.

The real number that matters isn’t the total stock figure your pubco sends you. It’s the wet GP by line. Spirits hide losses in free-pouring (a 25ml measure poured by hand is often 32–35ml in reality). Draught hides it in poor cellar temperature and line cleaning waste. Most of what looks like “theft” is actually measurement error and forgotten wastage. A proper line check sorts fact from fiction.

I was running my own pub on a tangle of spreadsheets, still losing track of partial kegs and spirit measures. I built a simple count routine around a dipstick and a set of scales, and the weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could trust within a fortnight. That’s when I started actually spotting real losses instead of chasing ghosts.

The actual line check routine (30 minutes, once a week)

Pick a day. Monday morning works best for most licensees—before the week gets busy and before the weekend stock shifts throw everything off. Thirty minutes. That’s all this takes if you’re disciplined.

Step 1: Count every open spirit bottle

Weigh each open spirit bottle on a set of kitchen scales. Record the weight. Compare against last week’s weight. If a bottle of vodka went from 900g to 750g, that’s 150g of loss—roughly six 25ml pours. Was that six pours recorded on your till? Check. If not, that’s your leak.

Why weigh instead of eyeball? Because pouring by eye is how you lose £2,000 a year without noticing. A free-poured spirit is consistently 30–40% over measure. Scales are ruthless and honest.

Step 2: Dip every cask and partial keg

Use a simple dipstick (you can buy one for under £10). Mark the cask or keg at the bunghole. Dip it. Record the level. Compare against last week. If you lost more draught than the till says you sold, you’ve got a line problem—temperature, line cleaning waste, or a slow leak.

Temperature matters here. If your cellar is running warm (above 55°F), you’re losing gas and volume without selling it. A proper line check catches this because your volume loss won’t match your till pours.

Step 3: Record partial kegs separately

Partial kegs are where most licensees fall apart. A half-used keg of lager sits in the corner, gets forgotten, and ends up being written off as waste three weeks later. Record it. Weigh it if you can. Know what it’s worth. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Step 4: Reconcile against till data the same day

Don’t wait. Do this on the same day as your count. Pull your till records for the past week (or since last check). For each product line, compare what the till says sold against what your physical count says left the premises. The gap is your variance.

Variance under 2% is normal and acceptable. Variance over 3% means you’ve got a real problem that needs investigation. The number that matters is wet GP by line, not a single headline stock figure.

Equipment you actually need

This is where most people overthink it. You don’t need an expensive cellar management system or software at the outset. You need three things:

• Kitchen scales—£15–20. Weigh your open spirit bottles. That’s it. Digital, with 1g accuracy.
• A dipstick—£8–12. Marks cask levels so you can track volume loss. You can order one online or get it from a drinks supplier.
• A spreadsheet or a proper stock app—see below, but start simple. A spreadsheet with last week’s figures is better than nothing.

Do you need fancy equipment? No. Do you need discipline? Absolutely.

If you’re serious about running a tight operation across multiple products, the StockTap pub stock app removes the manual entry and gives you variance warnings automatically, but that’s a step you take once you’ve proved you can do this routine consistently. Most of the value is in the routine itself, not the tool.

The line check mistakes that cost you money

Mistake 1: Checking only spirits, not draught

Draught is where most small losses hide. A warm cellar, a leaking line, or a dirty tap head can cost you 5–8% of your draught volume before you notice. If you’re only counting spirits, you’re blind to your biggest leak point. Dip every cask, every week.

Mistake 2: Checking weekly but reconciling monthly

If you wait a month to check your till against your count, a £200 variance four weeks ago looks like £800 now. You won’t know where the leak is. Reconcile the same day. Takes five minutes. It’s worth it.

Mistake 3: Treating the line check as busywork

Some licensees run a line check because the pubco told them to, not because they care about the number. That’s money left on the table. If your variance is consistently between 1–2%, you’re running a tight ship and you’ll make an extra £1,000–2,000 a year in clawed-back GP. That’s real money.

Mistake 4: Not accounting for line cleaning waste

When you clean your beer lines, you lose product. Proper line cleaning should cost you about 0.5–1% of draught volume per week. If your draught variance is higher than that, you’ve got another problem. Track this separately so you know what’s normal waste and what’s a leak.

Mistake 5: Ignoring the brewery stocktaker’s figures

Star Pubs will send a stocktaker round. That’s their job, not yours. Your job is to catch leaks before they see them. A licensee who runs weekly line checks and catches variances early looks competent to the pubco. A licensee who relies entirely on the stocktaker to spot problems looks careless.

How to reconcile against till data the same day

Pull your EPOS till data for the past seven days and compare pours against physical stock loss by product line—if the gap is more than 3%, investigate the specific product before closing your books.

Here’s the actual process:

1. Export your till sales report (or print it if it’s still paper-based). You need product-level pours, not just revenue.
2. For each spirit line, compare this week’s count weight against last week’s weight. The difference is what left your pub.
3. Subtract the till pours from the physical loss. If you’re short, that’s your variance. If you’re over, that’s usually a data entry error on the till side.
4. For draught, do the same with dip levels. Cask went from 60% to 20%—that’s 40% volume loss. Did the till show 40% of that cask’s capacity sold? If not, you’ve got waste or a leak.
5. Record it. Keep the numbers. Spot patterns over four weeks.

The SmartPubTools system does this comparison automatically and flags variances over 2.5%, but the principle is the same whether you’re using spreadsheets or software: count, reconcile, investigate, record.

Why a proper system beats a spreadsheet

I’ve run both. A spreadsheet works if you’re disciplined. Most licensees aren’t.

The real problem with a spreadsheet is that it doesn’t talk to your till. You count on Monday morning, you export your till data on Tuesday, you spend Wednesday trying to line everything up, and by Thursday you’re wondering why last week’s numbers look weird. By the time you’ve got clarity, the week is over.

A proper stock app connects to your till, suggests what the variance should be based on pours, and flags it if something looks wrong. You still do the physical count—scales and dipstick are non-negotiable—but the reconciliation happens in seconds, not hours.

The number that matters is whether you can trust your weekly variance figure. If that takes three hours to calculate, you won’t do it weekly. If it takes 10 minutes, you will.

If you’re serious about tight stock control, the StockTap system is built by a working pub landlord (me, actually) and it costs £97 once—no monthly fees, no subscription. It has a built-in cellar tracking screen, beer line logs, wet and dry GP split, and daily reconciliation. But honestly, even with just scales, a dipstick, and a spreadsheet, a disciplined weekly line check will claw back 1–2 GP points within a couple of months. The routine matters more than the tool.