Syrup pump

Delivers a repeatable volume of a thin product on each full stroke, which is the unit every flavoured-drink recipe and every flavoured-drink cost is actually written in.

• Measure your own pumps rather than adopting these figures, and measure them the way these were produced: prime, deliver ten full strokes into a graduated cylinder, divide by ten. The reason for ten is the reason the number is worth anything — one stroke's error is the whole reading, across ten it is a tenth of it, and that is what makes it reproducible when the pump is worn or replaced.
• One pump per open bottle, always, and no exceptions for the quiet flavours. Beyond cross-contact, a pump that moves between bottles cannot be trusted to be the pump the recipe was written against, and a bar carrying several makes of pump on one rail has several different volumes pretending to be one.
• Write every sweetened recipe in strokes and put the stroke count on the drink card, not in a training conversation. This is the unit the costing engine holds and the unit a manager can audit by watching, and it is the only way a flavoured drink tastes the same across a team.
• Decide the changeover level and write it down. A pump draws differently when the bottle is nearly empty, so a rule that says a bottle is changed at a marked level rather than at the last stroke removes a predictable under-delivery from the end of every bottle — and it is a rule that costs nothing except the discipline to hold it.
• Plan the crust. Sugar syrup dries wherever it is left, and a pump that is not rinsed at close is stiff by the end of the week and inaccurate before it is stiff. The cleaning routine that keeps the pump moving is the same routine that keeps the measurement true, which is why maintenance here is a costing issue and not a housekeeping one.
• Position the rack so every pump discharges over the cup, in the order drinks are built. A thin syrup drips after the stroke, and a pump sited over the counter loses a little product and gains a sticky patch that attracts everything the bar is trying to keep off it.
• Re-measure whenever the make changes. A replacement that fits the thread is not the same equipment, and a bar that has quietly accumulated three makes of pump across one shelf has three recipes for the same drink.