As a liquor store owner, does it ever feel like you have ten jobs instead of one?
One moment you’re completing a purchase order, the next, you’re helping a customer, then you’re running to the back of the store to go over this month’s budget and inventory levels.
And don’t get us started on what happens when your point of sale system crashes and you suddenly have to become the technical support person as well.
It’s exhausting!
That said, it doesn’t have to be that way.
In this article, we will discuss some of the challenges of owning a liquor store and offer suggestions for overcoming them through automation and delegation.
Overcoming The 3 Biggest Challenges of Owning a Liquor Store
The primary focus of any successful liquor store is twofold.
First, you want to ensure your customers have a great experience at your store. That means they can find what they need and are taken care of by attentive staff members who offer great product recommendations.
When done well, customers leave the store satisfied with their experience and are more likely to return.
The secondary focus is to increase profits.
It’s secondary not because it’s any less important but because a great customer experience leads to repeat purchases and, therefore, more profit.
Take care of the customer and they will return time and time again.
One of the biggest challenges for liquor store owners is that their focus gets pulled from these primary objectives to take care of other parts of the business.
Much of their time is spent managing inventory, fulfilling purchase orders, accounting, and other necessary but time-consuming tasks.
Before we offer helpful solutions to overcome these challenges, let’s first look at how they manifest themselves.
1. Burnout Caused by Wearing Too Many Hats
One of the fastest ways to burn out is to do too many things at once without assistance.
Here are a few of the many hats a liquor store owner has to wear:
- Accountant
- Purchaser
- Technical Support
- Customer Service Representative
- Director of Marketing
- Director of Sales
- Stockperson
Wearing this many hats in your business is a surefire way to feel overwhelmed and overworked.
When you’re the only person trying to keep that many spinning plates in the air, it can leave you feeling that each one is about to come crashing down.
One possible solution could be to hire a person for each of these roles. But that’s expensive and just another thing for you to manage.
Thankfully, there is a cost-effective solution that can do each of these jobs better, faster, and cheaper than you could on your own.
We’ll discuss that solution in a moment, but first, let’s examine another one of liquor store owners' biggest challenges.
2. Spending Too Much Time and Money Managing Inventory
Managing inventory is an essential part of operating a liquor store. It’s also one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects.
To manage inventory successfully, you must keep track of:
- Low inventory
- Reordering
- Case breaks
- Invoicing
- Deadstock
When done manually, this takes a lot of time (and therefore, money).
If a mistake is made during the inventory tracking process, it takes even more time and money to correct it. A mistake could also result in ordering products you don't need or, worse, failing to order those you do need.
What would it mean for you and your business if there were someone on staff whose job was to keep track of inventory?
What if they came to you every month with a scorecard of all your products, ranking each of them from A to D, from best-selling to worst-selling?
With all the inventory tracking taken care of, we’re sure you’d have more time to focus on overcoming the third challenge many liquor store owners face.
3. Getting Sidetracked from Increasing Profits
As we’ve already established, the primary focus of any business is to provide customers with a great experience and to increase profits.
There are two main ways to increase profits: increase sales or reduce costs. The best approach is to do them both at once.
Unfortunately, with so many other parts of the business pulling focus, finding creative ways to increase profits or cut costs often gets put on the back burner.
It's never intentional, but inventory management, purchasing, and accounting tasks often overshadow the importance of more profit-producing activities.
Wouldn't it be nice to have someone on staff whose job was implementing a customer loyalty program?
What if you had help finding effective ways to reduce costs or someone to ensure you re-ordered the right amount of each product, reducing waste?
Thankfully, you can accomplish all these things with a single, affordable solution.
How To Overcome Liquor Store Ownership Challenges With One Solution
We have some good news for you if you face any of these challenges daily. You don't have to hire and train five new employees to help you.
These challenges can be overcome by using a smart point of sale (POS) in your business.
A modern POS system can help you by keeping track of the accounting numbers in your business. It can automatically re-order products when inventory gets low, and usually comes with its own tech support rep who is always on standby to help if anything goes wrong.
You no longer have to do every job inside of your business.
If managing inventory has been taking a lot of your time or costing money in labor, a modern POS system can help by tracking your inventory quickly and easily.
When orders come in, scan the order form, and the inventory will populate your POS automatically. It will also identify dead stock and help prevent you from reordering products that aren't selling.
Bottle POS has been designed specifically for liquor store owners with the above functionality in mind. If you'd like to see our POS in action and learn more about how it can save you time and money and reduce the stresses of operating a liquor store, please schedule a demo with one of our experts.
