The business case, in your numbers
Hand-polishing is a real line item hiding inside your labour cost — it just never appears on a P&L by name. This calculator makes it visible. Enter your hourly wage, your daily glassware or cutlery volume, and your operating days; it shows what manual polishing costs you per year, and what the same work costs through a StemShine or SilverShine.
If you're a dealer or evaluating for a client, send them this page — the math is theirs to run.
What is hand-polishing costing you?
Enter your wage and nightly volume. The calculator compares the labour cost of polishing by hand against running a StemShine or SilverShine — over a full year.
Industry standard: about 60 glasses per hour by hand.
Estimate based on the labour time displaced at your inputs. Machine throughput varies by glassware type, load, and operator workflow.
Assumptions, stated plainly
Labour cost per year = (daily volume ÷ items polished per hour) × hourly wage × operating days per year. Operating days = days open per week × 52.
Hand rate: we default to 60 glasses per hour — the widely used industry figure for careful hand-polishing with a steamer and cloth. If your team is faster or slower, change it; the comparison stays honest.
Machine rate: the StemShine Pro GP5 processes roughly 350 glasses per hour; the eight-brush GP8 doubles that. Machine time in the model represents the attended loading/unloading time at that throughput.
What the model leaves out — deliberately, because they all favour the machine: breakage at the towel, replacement glassware budgets, injury risk, and the revenue value of consistent presentation. Treat the calculator's number as the floor of your savings, not the ceiling.