Where the money goes · six claims, with sources
Where the money in your business actually goes
Short version: this isn't a list of tips. It's six places where the revenue of a bar, coffee house, summer bar or canteen leaks away, each with a source you can check yourself, and what FirstPour does about it.
Where a figure is foreign, or needs a caveat, that's stated explicitly.
Claim 1
The tab you can't legally collect
A customer has a drink at the bar and leaves without paying. You know exactly who it was. Yet you can't take that tab to court.
The Decree-Law of 14 November 1939 on curbing drunkenness excludes a claim for payment of drinks consumed on the premises from the courts (art. 17). The right to payment still exists: someone who pays voluntarily can't reclaim it. But you can't summon the non-payer. Was food involved? Then that exclusion doesn't apply: even a small cheese board on the table makes the difference. VRT NWS reported this in 2022 together with prof. Sofie Royer (KU Leuven).
You can never enforce those euros. The only thing you can protect is that the tab never grows unnoticed.
That's why FirstPour keeps named tabs that survive the day's close, visible in Management, with the outstanding amount per customer. No notebook that goes missing.
Source: VRT NWS (20 July 2022), with prof. Sofie Royer (KU Leuven), on the Decree-Law of 14 November 1939, art. 17.
Claim 2
What you don't count, you can't miss
Stock loss rarely feels like theft. It's an addition of perfectly normal things: a glass that breaks, a line that sits too long, a keg that's not quite empty when the next one needs tapping. That's exactly why nobody sees it happen.
A Flemish or Belgian figure for this doesn't exist. What does exist: ABN AMRO calculated in November 2022 that Dutch hospitality throws away 15 to 37 million litres of beer a year, 4 to 10% of all beer poured, through incorrect tapping, lines left standing too long and loss in opened kegs.
That's beer only, and it's the Netherlands, not Flanders. Translate that pattern to wine, cocktails, coffee or the glass you pour yourself, and the core stays the same: loss sits in the small things nobody logs, not in one big theft.
At FirstPour, every sale comes off stock automatically. You count once a week, and the loss report translates the difference per product into euros, so you know where to look.
Source: ABN AMRO (November 2022). Figure for Dutch hospitality; no Flemish equivalent available.
Claim 3
The threshold that decides if you need a white cash register
Thousands of businesses think they need an expensive certified till, when they don't. And the ones that do fall under it would rather know upfront than after an inspection.
According to FPS Finance, the GKS obligation only applies from €25,000 in annual revenue from meals, excluding VAT. Drinks don't count toward that threshold. Stay under it, and the requirement doesn't apply to you.
FirstPour is built exactly for that first group: businesses where drinks drive the revenue, not the kitchen. Not sure whether you're under the threshold? We'll tell you honestly. Our GKS guide explains the full rule.
Source: FPS Finance, geregistreerdkassasysteem.be.
Claim 4
The business that's slowly emptying out
Energy prices aren't yours to steer, and neither is your lease. What happens inside your own business is, provided you see it in time.
Research bureau Locatus calculated that the number of Flemish cafés fell by 32.2% between 2013 and 2023. That left 5,763, with an average of 274 closing every year. VRT NWS published those figures in September 2023.
Horeca Vlaanderen added a caveat to that kind of reporting in 2024: fewer cafés than before, but the sector remains just as driven. For its own sector analyses, the organisation itself uses figures from Graydon and Statbel, not Locatus.
Whichever figure you go by, the closure rate is outside your reach. What is within reach is whether your own numbers are visible in time. FirstPour seals the day at close and has the numbers ready at 08:30 in your morning email. You don't have to go looking for them.
Source: research bureau Locatus, via VRT NWS (22 September 2023). Caveat: Horeca Vlaanderen (2024).
Claim 5
The contract that fixed your margin before you opened
Part of your margin is already fixed before you open the door in the morning: in your lease, and often in a supplier contract too.
Café Au Daringman in Brussels closed at the end of 2024. The building had been sold to Horeca Logistics Services, which wanted to impose a brewery contract on operator Martine Peeters: all drinks bought exclusively from one supplier, at a fixed rate. She refused, and closed instead. VRT NWS reported it on 7 December 2024, BRUZZ placed it within a wider practice ("café operators aren't lemons"), and in February 2025 BRUZZ reported that the government wants to tackle these kinds of contracts. In March 2025, café operators and their customers protested against those same contracts on Brussels' Beursplein, with the closure of Au Daringman as the trigger.
FirstPour doesn't break any contract, and that's not the point either. What we do: show, for every glass, what it costs you and what it earns, so you immediately see the piece of margin you can still act on. Cost price per product, margin per sale, and a target margin that flags the moment a product drops below it. A supplier raises their price? You see the effect on your margin right away, instead of months later.
Sources: VRT NWS (7 December 2024); BRUZZ, on the wider practice; BRUZZ (12 February 2025); VRT NWS (1 March 2025), on the protest on Beursplein.
Claim 6
When it goes wrong, your team is the one who pays
Fewer businesses go under than before, but more people depend on one when it closes. Seeing your numbers in time isn't just your own interest, then.
GraydonCreditsafe recorded 4,210 lost jobs in hospitality over the first ten months of 2025, a rise of 26.5% and, in their own words, never this many before. The number of bankruptcies itself fell slightly over the same period, by -1.02%.
FirstPour doesn't prevent bankruptcy. What it does: the day's numbers are ready at 08:30, margin is shown per product, loss is stated in euros. Early enough to correct course, instead of finding out after the fact.
Source: GraydonCreditsafe, bankruptcy study October 2025 (published 3 November 2025).
One call. No sales pitch.
We come by, look at your business with you, and tell you honestly whether FirstPour is a fit.
No newsletter, no spam. One call or email to set a time. Nothing more.