Dead Stock

What dead stock actually means

Dead stock is the bottle of melon liqueur your old bartender ordered two years ago that nobody drinks. It is the case of craft gin your distributor pushed that nobody orders. It is money that could be in your bank account sitting on a shelf collecting dust.

In a bar, dead stock usually lives on the back bar or in the basement. Every dead bottle is working capital you cannot spend on something that actually sells.

How it is used on the floor

Managers find dead stock during quarterly deep counts. The tell: a bottle with the same fill level as last month, or last quarter, or last year. If nothing poured, nothing moved, the bottle is dead.

The decision is always the same: run a special to burn it off, dump it into a punch, trade it with another bar, or eat the loss and pour it down the drain to free up the shelf.

How to spot it

A SKU becomes dead stock when its usage rate drops near zero for 90 days or more. A practical rule: if a bottle has not moved in three inventory cycles, it is dead.

Example: you have 6 bottles of a cordial that cost $22 each. That is $132 sitting still. If you rotate it out and replace the slot with a brand that turns weekly, you free up cash and shelf space that actually generates revenue.

Why it piles up

Dead stock happens for predictable reasons. Distributor reps push new products. Bartenders get excited about a one-time cocktail menu. Seasonal specials never finish burning off. A regular customer who loved Fernet moves away.

The fix is ruthless menu engineering and honest SKU reviews. If it does not sell, it does not belong on the shelf.

How PourIQ handles it

PourIQ flags any SKU with zero usage across your last three counts as a dead stock candidate. It shows you the dollar value sitting still, the shelf slots it is taking, and suggests whether to run a promo, move it to the well, or dump it. You stop paying rent on bottles that do not work for you.