A smart point of sale (POS) system is a must-have for any liquor store owner who wants to run an efficient and more profitable store.
Some liquor store owners run their businesses through a POS system that is out of date or lacks the industry-specific functionality to help them run a smarter, more cost-efficient store.
Even worse, some liquor store owners don’t have a POS system at all!
These owners are left running their businesses using multiple systems that are often disconnected from one another, making their life more difficult.
If you’re hesitant about adopting POS technology or upgrading your current system, you aren’t alone. Making the switch can seem like a daunting task.
Thankfully, switching POS systems is easier now than ever before. Many new systems include industry-specific advancements designed to make running your store much easier.
Once you get your hands on a liquor store POS system that uses smart technology to make inventory tracking, product reordering, and flexible pricing as easy as possible to do, I’m sure you’ll ask yourself the same question we did — “Where has this been our whole life?”
Keep reading to learn more about what will soon become your new favorite liquor store POS functions.
The 7 Liquor Store POS Functions You Shouldn’t Have to Live Without
The liquor store POS functions we’re going to focus on aren’t the typical functions you’ve come to expect.
Can you do age verification? Yes, and it’s very reliable.
Can you process credit card payments? Absolutely.
But that’s like asking if your new iPhone can make long-distance phone calls. Of course, it can — but that’s just one of its most basic functions. Age verification and credit card payment functionality are so commonplace these days, we consider them to be standard issues.
We’d like to place our focus on some of the liquor store POS functions that are more advanced and industry-specific.
That’s not to say they’re difficult to perform. Quite the contrary. They just use cutting-edge technology to give you smarter insights into your business.
So what are these fancy new functions?
See auto-ranking and more in a demo. Schedule yours today!
1. Identify Your Top-Selling Products With Auto Ranking
What would it mean for your business if you could easily identify your top and bottom-selling products? How much time would it save if you didn’t have to figure that out manually?
These days, the smartest liquor store POS systems can give you those insights with the push of a button. Not only that, the best ones will color-code your products in the system and give them each a grade from A-D.
Products with an A grade are your best-selling items and products with a D grade are your worst-selling items.
A function like this is a great tool to help you and your employees visually see which products are selling and what inventory is tied up in dead stock. With this knowledge, you can prevent reordering items that aren’t selling, and double down on reordering your top performers.
Your POS system accomplishes this using artificial intelligence, and gives you this sales data in real-time.
2. Save Time Through Advanced Inventory Tracking
Your two new favorite words are about to become “automatic invoicing.”
One of the biggest challenges for any liquor store operator is accurately keeping track of inventory. With a smart POS system backed by technology, a lot of that can be done automatically.
With automatic invoicing, when the new inventory arrives at the store, simply scan the invoice, and stock levels and inventory are automatically updated. Then, you just have to review and finalize it.
Gone are the days when you spend hours manually adding and updating items on arrival.
If you ever need to do an inventory check, you can do so with a mobile handheld inventory scanner. Once you scan your items, they will sync back to the POS system and you’ll receive a discrepancy report to help identify product counts that don’t match.
Between automatic invoicing and mobile inventory scanning, you’ll save yourself hours each month.
3. Increase Convenience and Sales with E-Commerce Options
The two main benefits of an e-commerce store for your liquor store business are:
- It’s more convenient for your customers. They can see if the product they want is in stock before driving to your store. They can pay for it online and then quickly grab it using curbside pickup once they arrive.
- It increases sales. The more ways you can allow customers to purchase from your store, the better. If you aren’t able to accept purchases online, you could be limiting your growth.
Not only does e-commerce functionality make it more convenient for customers and help you increase sales, it provides you with more upsell opportunities.
Let’s say a customer orders a bottle of whiskey online. Before they proceed to the checkout, your e-commerce store might ask them if they would like some angostura bitters so they can make an old fashioned at home.
Or maybe it suggests a set of rocks glasses to go along with their purchase.
The possibilities for upsell recommendations are endless, and e-commerce functionality will help you do it with minimal extra effort on your part.
4. Remote Access: Keep Tabs on Your Business When You’re Not There
There was a time in history when you had to be physically present in order to keep track of what was happening at your store.
Thankfully, that time has passed.
With cloud-based POS systems, you can now keep tabs on your store from the back office, at home, or while you’re away enjoying a much-needed vacation.
Cloud-based point of sale solutions remove the need for you to be physically tethered to your store — without hindering your ability to keep an eye on things.
As long as you have a browser and an internet connection, you’ll be able to see inventory levels, sales reports, and so much more.
If you operate more than one store, this functionality also allows you to keep tabs on your additional locations without having to drive from store to store. And in the extreme case of an accident or natural disaster at your store, your store data is backed up to the cloud instead of being lost.
5. Keep Shelves Stocked with Automated Reordering
Have you ever gone to a store excited to buy a product, but when you get there, they’re sold out?
It’s so disappointing when that happens, especially because it’s so easy to avoid.
With a modern liquor store POS system, you’ll have automatic product reordering functions so this scenario never happens to your customers.
When the inventory gets down to a certain level, the system recognizes stock is low and automatically reorders from your supplier.
This results in happier customers because the product they came for will always be on the shelf. You also won’t have to pay for rush orders on the beer, liquor, or wine you need, but didn’t know was running low.
6. More Sales Options with Easy Case Break Inventory Tracking
As a liquor, wine, or beer shop owner, you already know the pain of tracking cases when an item is removed.
The case break inventory tracking function of your POS system allows you to easily track inventory by case, bottle, or six-pack, and automatically accounts for case breaks.
This is such a great function because it allows you to sell wholesale if needed or to break cases to sell bottles individually — without spending a ton of time tracking the inventory.
The less time you spend tracking inventory means the more time you can spend interacting with customers, coming up with new promotions for the store, or simply going home early to spend time with your family, knowing things are still running smoothly at the store.
7. Increase Sales with Flexible Pricing Options
If a customer wants to try six different types of beer, they should be able to do so without having to purchase multiple six-packs.
In other words, you need to have flexible pricing options that allow for mix-and-match purchases.
Flexible pricing options also give you more creativity in the types of promotions you can run in your store. If you want to run a “buy-two-get-one for X,” you should be able to without it being difficult to ring in.
You should also be able to run promotional deals with certain brands, vineyards, or breweries. You might run a promotion where if you buy X bottles from a certain brand, you receive 10 percent off.
The types of promotions you run are ultimately up to you, but your POS system needs to be able to support whatever type of promotion you decide to run.
How To Get The Best Liquor Store POS Working for Your Business
A modern POS system is vital to the profitability and success of your liquor store.
The functions we highlighted today are a curated shortlist of some of the best features to support liquor store owners and operators — but there are still more to be discovered.
If you’re interested in learning more about how those additional features can help save you time and money in your business, please talk with an expert from Bottle POS.
Our experts can answer any specific questions and help you decide if this is the right moment to upgrade from the “flip-phone” version of your liquor store POS to the high-performing “iPhone 14” equivalent.
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