Insights & resources for liquor store owners

Ask any liquor store owner what's on their mind heading into 2026 and you'll hear the same themes: Costs are up, customers spend less per visit, and younger shoppers want something different than what their parents bought.

If you sell beer, wine, or other canned alcoholic beverages in certain states, bottle deposits are part of your daily operations — whether you’ve fully figured them out or not.

A customer walks in and asks for a full-bodied red under $30 that pairs well with lamb. You know the perfect bottle. But when you ring it up, your system crashes. The inventory count is wrong. You're not sure if you even have it in stock.

Running a liquor store is a nonstop job. Between providing shoppers with top-shelf service, managing the constant flow of bottles in and out of your store, and keeping up with the other day-to-day demands of running a small business, you might feel stretched thin.

A last-minute knock on the door from a liquor authority inspector is rarely something you expect. But unannounced inspections are standard practice, and every liquor store owner should be ready for one at any time.

If you've read the news lately, you'd think the entire liquor industry is about to join Blockbuster in the graveyard of American commerce.

Every week, liquor store managers handle a steady stream of deliveries and invoices. It’s a tedious process of writing checks, logging inventory, and hoping nothing slips through the cracks.

Five years ago, the ready-to-drink (RTD) cooler was mostly filled with hard seltzers and maybe a few premixed margaritas. Now it's one of the fastest-growing sections in liquor retail — and if your RTD section still looks like it did in 2021, you're behind.

Most liquor store owners accept breakage as part of the job. A bottle here or a damaged shipment there is just the cost of doing business. But here’s the problem: If you never stop to add it up, you don't realize how much it's actually costing you.