Loss Prevention

Protecting your business is of paramount importance not only to you, but to us as well. Owners who implement effective loss prevention practices will establish a solid foundation for making loss prevention a driver of profitability.  Loss prevention must be more than a program on a shelf, it must be embedded into the stores’ day-to-day operations to be effective.  We cannot succeed as a system if the proper loss prevention controls aren’t in place.  

Below is the Internal Audit team’s suggested course of action to ensure your store is compliant with EA’s policies in the Franchise Agreement. Please feel free to contact our Internal Audit Department if you would like to discuss any of these items in greater detail.  

Employee Training:   

All employees must be trained on proper order-taking procedures:  

• All customer orders must immediately be entered and tendered only in SMS at the time of sale. 

• Customers must be handed a receipt or emailed a receipt directly from SMS at time of sale.  

• If your staff makes additional products to be sold to walk-in or other customers, they are required to be entered immediately as Fast Fruit in SMS and tendered only in SMS.  

Policies and Procedures:    

In addition to the SMS procedures outlined in the Operations Manual and nSpire videos, Franchise Owners should develop and implement specific policies and procedures pertaining to, but not limited to, the following:  

• Safeguarding cash  

• Access to cash drawer (without a sales)  

• Access to store safe or other locked mechanism  

• Access to safe key  

• Handling cash  

• Recording customer orders in SMS, Edible’s Store Management System  

• Preparing and making bank deposits  

• Processing Voided, Canceled, Refunded, and Complimentary Orders  

• Processing Barter Transactions (if permitted)  

• Preparing and tracking manual sales tickets when SMS is down  

• Receiving orders for delivery (performed by drivers when manual tickets are involved)  

• Authorizing and clearing House Charges  

• Processing employee orders  

• Receiving, recording, tracking, and accounting for perishable and non-perishable inventory  

• Counting inventory  

• Authorizing and disposing of fruit and damaged/unusable inventory items  

• Recording and monitoring Employees’ and Drivers’ time  

• Reimbursing employees and drivers for out-of-pocket business expenses (supported and unsupported expenditures)  

• Code of Conduct and Business Ethics  Consequences of non-compliance with established policies and procedures should be clearly documented.