Are your store’s liquor license, reputation, and bottom line at risk?
Selling alcohol to underage customers can be disastrous for your business, leaving the door open to costly fines, the loss of your liquor license, the closure of your store, and even jail time for you and your team members.
While visually checking customers’ IDs is a good first step to preventing underage alcohol sales, there’s too much on the line to leave it up to chance. That’s why we recommend investing in age verification technology.
In this blog, we’ll explore why you need an ID scanner for your liquor store, plus the top four options to consider.
The Best ID Scanners for Liquor Stores
Before we dive into our list of top options for liquor store ID scanners, let’s establish why ID scanners are vital hardware your liquor store needs.
Liquor stores must uphold laws and regulations around responsible alcohol sales to stay in business and maintain compliance. Age verification is one of the most critical of those laws and regulations. A single failed sting or violation results in steep fines for your store, and repeated issues risk permanent liquor license revocation. Manually checking IDs is a start, but it’s not enough to keep your store compliant.
Instead, you need automated validation via barcode or magnetic stripe to lock down compliance.
Protecting your business and associates starts with an ID scanner stationed at checkout. Top options scan driver’s licenses or other federally-issued IDs in seconds, instantly authenticating birth dates against the current date to approve or deny sales by age. Instead of squinting at tiny text or guessing based on appearances, use these tools to eliminate doubt and human error from your age verification processes.
Armed with these scanners, your staff can focus on customer service without wasting time and energy worrying about customer birth dates. In this way, these ID scanners for liquor stores help build an atmosphere of friendly guidance that is more likely to drive customer loyalty than awkward manual card inspections ever could.
While a quality scanner maximizes ID checking, liquor stores manage far more than age verification alone. Robust point of sale (POS) systems centralize sales, inventory, and reporting for smoother operations. Security cameras monitor for internal theft while powering external monitoring if incidents occur.
With this in mind, let’s examine some top options you might consider when selecting an ID scanner for your liquor store.
1. Ambir Technology
The first selection you may consider is the Ambir Technology ID scanner. This ID scanner for liquor stores delivers 600x600 dpi resolution for crisp capture of tiny text and barcode data points common on driver's licenses. This precision converts ID credentials into digitally parsed information for instant age calculation against today's date during liquor transactions.
Touted for its stylish, compact industrial design, the Ambir scanner takes up minimal counter space while adding a modern tech aesthetic to checkout areas. Its dual-sided card feeder enables associates to handle IDs for fast processing regardless of initial positioning, and to immediately return them to customers after review.
From a performance lens, Ambir's 20 ppm scan rate provides ample speed for most store traffic levels. Paired with integrated USB connectivity, results interface directly with existing point of sale setups for streamlined age verification and regulatory compliance.
Price: $329.95
2. Vemos Hospitality Technology
Promising the "fastest mobile ID scanner” on the market, Vemos Hospitality harnesses purpose-built software designed explicitly for alcohol merchants. Beyond age verification, Vemos integrates customer insights and loyalty tools using scanned ID data as the foundation.
This mobile optimization allows staff to perform instant age verification and accumulate guest purchase behaviors simultaneously from anywhere in the store via tablets and smartphones. Vemos software instantly parses license barcode information, runs the age calculation, and then compares results against an integrated CRM database, recommending specific products if that customer profile indicates preferences for certain spirits, wine varietals, etc.
Price: $35 per month
3. AgeVisor Touch by TokenWorks
TokenWorks’ AgeVisor Touch scanner is a durable countertop identity document scanner built to eliminate second-guessing during age calculations. An integrated touch display walks staff clearly through verification steps, while advanced optics, barcode, and magnetic stripe parsing reliably extract credential data for precise date of birth capture.
AgeVisor Touch needs no manual setup, customization, or calibration. Your scanner will activate instantly out of the box using integrated demo IDs, allowing employees to review functionality immediately. Ongoing use for this ID scanner for liquor stores remains intuitive using the touch display to guide associates when a customer's license should be inserted and when verification completes or flags underage results.
Price: $895
4. Integrate With a Full POS Solution: Bottle POS
The three other options in this post are standalone ID scanners. However, there is another option you may consider for your store: an all-in-one point of sale solution with built-in age verification features.
Comprehensive point of sale systems like Bottle POS consolidate sales, inventory, reporting, loyalty programs, and regulatory compliance needs through a unified digital platform. Bottle POS supports most USB scanners that are plug-and-play in Windows.
Created specifically for liquor stores, Bottle POS allows owners to set up tailored bundles with partner hardware like barcode scanners for seamless age validation at checkout. We also offer cash drawers, printers, and other essential point of sale hardware, all seamlessly integrated with our cloud-based POS software.
Beyond scanning-driven age checks, Bottle POS centralizes inventory control, understands unique case break quantities, enables flexible payment methods like contactless and mobile pay, provides customer purchase analytics, and more from one intuitive interface.
Rather than budgeting individually across point of sale terminals, ID scanners, PC software, and IT infrastructure, Bottle POS provides an integrated suite delivering functionality specifically aligned to liquor store workflows.
Selecting the Best ID Scanner for Your Liquor Store
The three options listed early in this post provide strong age verification functionality. However, if you want a solution that scans IDs, integrates with your checkout and payment processes, helps with inventory management, facilitates customer loyalty programs, and provides robust sales analytics, you need an ID scanner as part of a full point of sale solution.
Bottle POS offers fully customizable point of sale systems designed specifically for liquor stores like yours. You can use our transparent build and price tool to create your ideal point of sale solution, choosing the hardware and features you need and skipping the expensive add-ons you don’t.
Schedule a free demo of Bottle POS today to see how our all-in-one point of sale suite can take your biggest inventory, sales, and marketing headaches and make them a thing of the past.
