“Work smarter, not harder.” These are great words to live by as a small business owner — especially when it comes to managing your liquor store inventory.
Effective inventory management is an essential ingredient for liquor store success. It prevents costly stockouts, keeps customers happy, and protects your bottom line.
But without the right approach, you’ll spend most of your time counting individual bottles, tracking down inventory discrepancies, and trying to guess which products your customers’ want.
That’s why we’ve created this quick guide to help you take a smarter approach to your liquor store inventory. Keep reading to learn about the three inventory management tools you need, plus our top four tips for putting them to work.
Must-Have Tools for Liquor Store Inventory
Before diving into specific strategies, let’s make sure your liquor store inventory toolbox is well-stocked. These three tools will do the heavy lifting when it comes to performing regular stock counts, creating purchase orders, receiving new inventory, and tracking your sales.
1. A Barcode Scanner
A barcode scanner is an essential tool for accurate liquor inventory management. Without it, your cashiers have to manually input prices and keep a paper or spreadsheet record of what customers purchase — leading to inventory errors, frustrated customers, and even a dented bottom line.
Fortunately, a barcode scanner can banish these issues and make the checkout process a breeze for everyone involved. When it’s time to check out, all your cashier has to do is scan each item’s barcode, and your point of sale (POS) system will take care of the rest to ensure that your customer pays the right price, the sold items are reflected in your stock records, and the purchase shows up on your sales reports.
2. Liquor Inventory Management Software
As a small business owner, your time is far too valuable to spend on the enormous task of counting every single bottle in your liquor store — which is why we recommend investing in liquor store inventory software.
This powerful tool replaces error-prone manual counts and monitors the flow of inventory into and out of your store in real time, ensuring you always have access to an accurate overview of your stock levels.
To make things even easier, look for software designed to handle the complexities of liquor inventory management. One key feature you need is case breaking, which shows your stock levels broken down by full and partial cases of liquor, or by individual bottles.
3. An All-in-One Liquor POS System
Ideally, your inventory management software will be part of a comprehensive liquor store point of sale (POS) system. This all-in-one solution should track your stock levels and process your sales transactions.
This seamless connection between your inventory records and sales reports ensures accuracy, speeds up the checkout process to keep customers happy, simplifies your operations, and can even help you spot theft-related discrepancies before they eat into your profits.
Our top tip for finding the right POS system is to choose one built specifically for liquor stores with these unique features:
- Built-in age verification
- A liquor customer loyalty program
- Real-time liquor inventory tracking
- In-depth sales reporting and analytics
- Flexible alcohol promotion options
- Liquor e-commerce integration
4 Tips for Liquor Inventory Management
You have the right tools; now it’s time to put them to work. Let’s explore our top four tips for efficient, accurate liquor store inventory management.
1. Understand Liquor Inventory Laws
Understanding and complying with all laws regarding alcohol sales is a critical step on your liquor store inventory journey.
These laws can vary at the federal, state, and local levels, so take the time to research your area’s unique regulations. Here are a few types of restrictions to look into:
- Age verification: Selling alcohol to customers under the age of 21 is illegal at the federal level, so make a plan to keep your inventory out of the hands of minors.
- Licensing restrictions: Depending on your state and local laws, your liquor license might dictate the types of alcohol you’re allowed to stock.
- Taxation: Since strong spirits are taxed more heavily than light beers at the federal level, your taxes will depend on the type of alcohol you sell. Your state and local government likely charge additional taxes on alcohol sales.
- Promotional restrictions: While promotions are a great way to increase inventory turnover, there are federal, state, and local restrictions on how you can discount and market alcohol.
These are just a few examples of liquor store inventory laws to familiarize yourself with to protect your store’s reputation and avoid costly legal issues.
2. Build Out Your Liquor Inventory List
Your next step is to create a comprehensive list of all the products you sell. Everything on your shelves — including every brand and bottle size — should be reflected in your inventory list.
Building out this list might sound like a huge undertaking, but all you need is a POS system with a centralized product database of common liquor store SKUs. With this convenient feature, you can quickly add products to your inventory list rather than manually entering them one by one.
Related Read: SKU vs. UPC: 6 Similarities and Differences for Liquor Inventory Labeling
3. Automate Your Inventory Processes
Automation isn’t just a buzzword; it can make your liquor inventory management process effortless, letting you focus on providing top-shelf service to your customers.
Here are three must-have automation features to look for in a liquor POS system:
- Product ranking: This AI-powered tool reveals your bestsellers and underperformers, helping you understand which spirits have the highest inventory turnover and which bottles are collecting dust.
- Purchase orders: This smart feature detects when a product drops below a certain inventory threshold and automatically generates a purchase order to restock it.
- Receiving: This time-saving feature streamlines the receiving process by automatically updating your inventory records when new stock arrives at your store.
These powerful automation tools can save you time and keep your shelves stocked with the right products in the right amounts.
4. Dig into Your Sales Reports
You’ve thoroughly researched your area’s liquor inventory laws, invested in a reliable POS system and barcode scanner, and put these tools to work in your store. That means you’ve mastered the art of liquor inventory management, right? Not quite.
Now it’s time to tackle the ongoing process of optimizing your liquor store’s inventory with the help of your sales reports.
Your POS system constantly collects data on your store’s performance, providing valuable information about your sales trends, customers’ shopping behaviors, and inventory turnover rates.
These reports can help you better understand what types of liquors your customers prefer, which products are trending, and which spirits aren’t worth the shelf space.
For example, as the holiday season approaches, your sales reports might reveal an uptick in wine sales and a downturn in beer sales. To meet your customers’ gifting and party needs, you can expand your selection of fine wines and slow down on stocking beers.
You can also plan data-driven promotions around this trend by offering a mix and match deal on wine or a discount to increase your beer inventory turnover.
Simplify Liquor Store Inventory Management With Bottle POS
Just like you can’t enjoy a delicious margarita without tequila, you can’t enjoy liquor store success without an effective inventory management approach. Ready to stir up a cocktail of happier customers, higher profits, and more efficient processes?
Your next step is to invest in a liquor store POS solution with the right inventory features.
Bottle POS has everything you need to keep your shelves stocked with the products your customers want, including real-time stock monitoring, automated product ranking, automated purchase orders and receiving, and in-depth reporting and analytics.
Along with these comprehensive inventory management features, Bottle POS includes built-in age verification, a sales-boosting customer loyalty program, and e-commerce integration options to take your liquor store to the next level.
See Bottle POS in action by scheduling your personalized demo with one of our liquor store experts today.
