Case Study: How the Ory Bar at the Mandarin Oriental runs inventory at the push of a button
Discover how Dietmar Petri transformed inventory at the Ory Bar in the Mandarin Oriental Munich with BarBrain. Cocktail bar inventory made digital – book your demo now.
68%
less
inventory time
310
items
per inventory
0
minutes of
post-processing
- Business: Ory Bar at the Mandarin Oriental, Munich
- Industry: Premium cocktail bar / 5-star hotel
- Location: Munich, Neuturmstraße 1
- Use case: Cocktail bar with extensive spirits portfolio
- Contact: Dietmar Petri, Head Bartender
- Result: Instant inventory results, massive time and cost savings
About the Ory Bar
The Ory Bar is one of Munich’s most prestigious cocktail bars. Located on the ground floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel, just a few minutes’ walk from Marienplatz. Under the leadership of Head Bartender Dietmar Petri, the bar has built a reputation for classic cocktails with creative interpretations. The menu changes seasonally; the spirits portfolio is correspondingly extensive: premium gins, rare whiskeys, various liqueurs, plus fruit juices, syrups and bitters.
For inventory, this means: hundreds of individual line items, many of them open. Exactly the context where manual processes reach their limits.
The challenge: lists, calculators and frustration
Friday night, 11 pm. The last guests leave. For Dietmar and his team, the most dreaded part of the month begins: inventory. Pick up every bottle, estimate the fill level, write numbers on a list. Then transfer everything into Excel, tally it up, check it. Find errors. Check again.
“Inventory stopped being fun altogether. We had to sit down, collate lists and manually add up numbers. It was frustrating.”– Dietmar Petri, Head Bartender, Ory Bar
The problem wasn’t just the time involved. In a bar with premium spirits, every recording error costs real money. If an open bottle of Yamazaki 18 is estimated incorrectly, we’re talking double-digit amounts per bottle. And the post-processing in Excel often took longer than the actual counting — with no guarantee that everything was correct at the end.
Why BarBrain
Dietmar was looking for a solution that could do two things: drastically speed up the inventory process and deliver a reliable result immediately. No Excel post-processing, no manual tallying.
BarBrain was the right fit for several reasons: the digital inventory app was specifically developed for bars and cocktail bars. The slider for open bottles replaces guessing and weighing. And the result is available immediately after the last scan — no follow-up work, no export, no waiting.
“One of the biggest advantages BarBrain offers is that I have a result immediately at the end of the inventory.”– Dietmar Petri, Head Bartender, Ory Bar
Implementation
Setup was straightforward. BarBrain digitised the Ory Bar’s complete spirits portfolio — from standard products to rare premium bottles. The app ran on the existing iPad; no additional hardware was needed.
The full feature overview shows what BarBrain covers in detail. For Dietmar’s team, one aspect was particularly relevant: the entire portfolio is visible in the app at all times, including current stock levels and values.
“You always have your complete portfolio right in front of you, and it’s incredibly easy to use.”– Dietmar Petri, Head Bartender, Ory Bar
Results
The measurable changes since switching to BarBrain:
| Metric | Before | With BarBrain |
|---|---|---|
| Inventory result | Only after Excel post-processing | Immediately after completion |
| Post-processing time | 1–2 hours (Excel) | 0 minutes |
| Recording errors (open bottles) | Regular (estimation) | Virtually eliminated |
| Portfolio overview | Spread across lists/Excel | Always available in the app |
| Team satisfaction | Frustration | High |
| Costs | High staff expenditure | Significantly reduced |
“It’s incredible how much time and money we save. I’ve never used a tool like BarBrain for inventory before.”– Dietmar Petri, Head Bartender, Ory Bar
Operational Impact
The biggest effect beyond pure time savings: transparency. Dietmar can now see the current stock value of his bar at any time. This simplifies not only the monthly inventory but also reporting to the hotel management. Discrepancies between expected and actual stock are flagged immediately — not weeks later when the Excel file is finally ready.
For a premium cocktail bar in the 5-star segment, this is decisive. If a barrel of Negroni batch or a rare bottle of mezcal isn’t recorded correctly, it directly impacts the cost of goods. With BarBrain, those blind spots are a thing of the past.
About BarBrain
BarBrain is the fastest digital inventory solution for the hospitality industry. Over 1,000 businesses — from independent restaurants to restaurant chains — use the app for their monthly stocktake. Setup takes less than a day, and the 30-day trial is free.
