Imagine a new customer stops by your liquor store with a particular spirit on their shopping list.
You guide them to the shelf where it should be — only to find it empty. You ask them to wait for a moment, then head to your storage room to hunt for it.
Best case: this customer’s first impression of your liquor store has been tarnished. Worst case: they leave before you locate the bottle.
To prevent this catastrophe altogether, you need a plan to manage your stock. In this blog, we’ll explore how liquor store inventory control boosts your business and how to implement an effective strategy from the ground up.
Liquor Inventory Store Control: The Challenges
Inventory management is one of the most critical and most challenging aspects of owning any type of retail business — but doubly so for liquor stores.
Between your storage area and shelves, you have hundreds if not thousands of items in stock, including everything from mini bottles of the most popular liquors to handles of the finest luxury spirits — not to mention accessories and snacks.
Since your customers will head to another liquor store if you don’t have their preferred products, effective liquor inventory control is a must for a healthy bottom line.
Another inventory challenge you face as a liquor store owner is that your stock is age-restricted. Complying with all laws regarding alcohol sales and maintaining your liquor license, requires you to keep a close eye on your stock levels and ensure that every bottle that leaves your store is accompanied by a customer of legal drinking age.
Now that we’ve covered what makes liquor store inventory control such a complex task, let’s demystify it.
Must-Have Tools for Liquor Store Inventory Control
Taking control of your liquor store’s stock isn’t something you can do on your own. You need the help of a modern, powerful liquor inventory management software solution.
This tool keeps track of every single bottle in your liquor store, from the moment it arrives in your storage room to the minute a customer purchases it at the checkout counter. It gives you an overview of your stock levels, streamlines your inventory ordering process, and makes keeping your shelves perfectly stocked easy.
Let’s look at some essential features your software should have for liquor inventory control:
- Real-time inventory monitoring: Access an up-to-date overview of your stock levels at any time, from anywhere.
- Case breaking: View your inventory by individual bottles or by cases and packs.
- Automated reordering: Make stocking your store effortless by relying on software to generate purchase orders when your inventory dips below a certain threshold.
- Shrinkage detection: Get alerts when your sales reports don’t match your inventory records.
- Centralized product database: Make onboarding to your new software simple with a database of the most common liquor SKUs.
- Age verification: Protect your business and your community with software that verifies your customers' ages during the checkout process.
Investing in updated hardware can make your liquor inventory software even more effective. In particular, you need reliable barcode scanners to perform efficient stock checks on the sales floor, facilitate accurate checkouts, and scan shoppers’ IDs to ensure they’re over 21.
Additional Tips for Effective Liquor Store Inventory Control
A successful liquor store inventory control strategy requires you to acquire the right technology and implement the right practices.
Let’s explore a few ways you and your team can work together to secure your inventory, keep your liquor store well-stocked, and boost your bottom line:
- Perform regular inventory counts to check that your physical stock and inventory records match.
- Train your staff on how to use your point of sale (POS) system to check inventory levels, answer shoppers' questions, and ensure accurate checkout processes.
- Implement security measures to protect your inventory from theft-related shrinkage.
- Optimize your inventory with insights from your software’s sales reports to identify seasonal fluctuations in your customers’ shopping habits.
Putting these tips into practice alongside powerful liquor inventory control software will completely transform your store’s operations, saving you time and protecting your profits.
Conquer Liquor Store Inventory Control With Bottle POS
Taking liquor store inventory control seriously has big benefits for your business, helping you achieve higher profits, happier customers, and more time in the day for you and your team.
Fortunately, the right tools and strategies can make liquor inventory management a breeze.
Bottle POS is an all-in-one liquor inventory control and point of sale solution with all the tools you need to transform your store’s operations. It includes robust inventory management features, insightful sales reporting, built-in age verification, and more.
Take Bottle POS for a spin today by scheduling your live demo, or get an instant quote for your business using our pricing tool.
