Small Business Tips

Point of Sale Training for Liquor Stores: 6 Tips

Mar 21, 2024 • 6 min read

It’s a busy Saturday night.

Your liquor store is packed with customers. Suddenly, your new cashier freezes, unable to navigate your new point of sale (POS) system. Customers get frustrated and leave, your cashier looks defeated, and you lose a lot of sales.

It’s a nightmare scenario, but it could well happen if you don’t train your employees to use your POS system properly. Your POS should solve problems, not create them.

With the right tips and strategies, anyone can learn to use a liquor-specific POS system. This article highlights six tips for training your staff to process sales quickly, handle age verification, manage inventory, and more.

Why Point of Sale Training Is Essential

Running your liquor store comes with a host of challenges. From managing a large and varied inventory to ensuring compliance with local laws and regulations, you need your staff to be on the ball.

You’ve got your liquor store POS system, but have you trained your staff to use it effectively? You can’t overlook training. If you do, you won’t get the most out of your POS system, and your staff won’t feel equipped to do their job well.

Your POS system speeds up transactions, manages inventory, generates reports, and helps reduce shrinkage. In the right hands, it’s an excellent tool. It can also verify age, prevent sales to minors, and maintain accurate records. If your employees aren't trained on these procedures, you could face hefty fines or even lose your liquor license.

Prioritizing point of sale training empowers your staff to work efficiently and safeguards your business. From online tutorials to hands-on practice sessions, there are many ways to equip your staff with the skills they need to master your POS system. Let’s dive into our top tips.

Tip #1: Start With the Basics

Get the fundamentals right, and the rest will fall into place. Your staff should have a solid grasp of your POS system's core functions before moving on to the advanced features.

Start with the POS interface. It helps if your POS interface is intuitive and easy to use. Your staff should understand the layout of the screen, how to locate important buttons and menus, and learn any keyboard shortcuts that can speed up their workflow.

Knowing how to ring up sales is mission-critical — it’s what your staff will do the most. Guide your team step by step, from scanning or searching for products to applying discounts and finalizing the sale. Show them how to handle different payment methods.

Last, cover processing refunds and exchanges. Make sure your staff knows your policies and procedures for handling these situations. Make it easy for them to call a manager if that’s one of your procedures.

Pro tip: If you offer dual pricing (or cash discounting), ensure your staff is comfortable explaining it and can confidently answer customer questions about fees.

Tip #2: Master Liquor Inventory Management

The best inventory management software is simple yet effective. It ensures you have the right products in stock, reduces waste, and informs buying decisions.

Some modern liquor store POS systems come with valuable features like automated ranking. You can track sales and rank products based on their popularity and profitability. Teach your staff about this feature so they can identify top-selling items and slow movers.

Say you want to give certain staff members access to purchase orders. Teach them how to create accurate purchase orders based on current stock levels, sales trends, and vendor lead times.

The receiving process is just as important. Train your staff on how to check in deliveries, compare them against purchase orders, and invoice them in your POS system. They’ll need to verify quantities and update stock levels.

Last, regular inventory reconciliation is a must for a well-run liquor store. Your staff should feel confident that they can conduct physical counts and compare them against what’s in your system. This may involve scanning barcodes, entering quantities manually, or using mobile devices for on-the-go counting.

Note: Bottle POS offers automated reordering, invoicing, and ranking. This intuitive process saves hours of manual data entry. It’s worth showing your employees how these are set up and how to adjust parameters as needed.

Tip #3: Simplify Age Verification

Verifying your customers’ ages isn’t just a best practice; it’s the law.

Failing to check IDs and prevent sales to minors properly can result in hefty fines, license suspensions, and even criminal charges. It’s essential to train your staff in proper age verification. Follow this four-step process:

Emphasize the importance of strict compliance with laws and regulations. Your staff should understand there are no exceptions or excuses for selling alcohol to underage customers. Hold them personally responsible for checking IDs and asking for confirmation if they’re unsure.
Teach them how to check IDs and spot potential fakes. Use sample IDs and role-playing scenarios. Staff should know which forms of identification are acceptable and how to calculate age based on the date of birth.
Train staff on how to handle altercations with underage customers chancing their luck. It can be intimidating to deal with these customers, but your staff should be firm and politely refuse the sale. If a customer becomes threatening, make sure your staff can de-escalate the situation and know when to ask for help.
Last, train your staff to document age verification in your POS system. This may include scanning IDs, entering dates of birth, or using built-in age verification prompts. You can create a digital paper trail to protect your business in the event of an audit.

The best POS systems offer advanced age verification features that let you and your staff quickly and confidently approve customers to buy your products and minimize the risk of selling to minors.

Tip #4: Leverage POS Reporting

Your POS generates a goldmine of data on sales, inventory, customer preferences, and more. You can gain insights into your entire operation by training your staff to run and interpret these reports. The main reports to train your staff on include:

Sales reports: These may include daily sales summaries, hourly sales trends, product mix reports, and employee performance metrics. You’ll see what your bestsellers are, and your staff might spot trends that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Inventory reports: Train your staff to use reports to monitor stock levels, identify slow-moving or excess inventory, and forecast future demand based on historical sales data.
Customer preferences: Your staff are on the front lines. Encourage them to get to know customers and give them the confidence to nudge customers to sign up for loyalty programs.

Involve your team to make the most of your data. You can brainstorm ways to improve your business and empower your staff to make data-based decisions.

Tip #5: Promote Customer Loyalty

Building a loyal customer base is essential for your liquor store. Happy, repeat customers provide steady revenue and are likely to spend more. They’ll also tell their friends to shop with you.

Providing stellar customer service is the first step. Your staff should greet customers warmly and go above and beyond to create a positive experience. They can use the data in your POS system to recall a customer’s favorite brand and remember their name.

Another way to boost customer loyalty and your bottom line is to encourage staff to cross-sell and upsell. Train staff to suggest complementary items. For example, on game night, they could suggest chips or other snacks to go with alcohol purchases. Or if it’s coming up to a holiday, they could suggest gift items.

The best way to promote customer loyalty using your POS system is with a customer loyalty program. Train your team to:

Enroll customers: This may involve asking customers if they'd like to join, explaining the benefits of membership, and guiding them through the sign-up process in your POS system.
Help customers: Teach your staff to help customers redeem rewards and take advantage of promotions. This may include applying discounts at checkout, tracking points or purchases towards a reward goal, or issuing gift cards or vouchers.

Top liquor store POS systems come with integrated customer loyalty features. With POS software, customers can earn points that can be redeemed for discounts, free items, or custom offers that encourage repeat purchases.

Tip #6: Implement Loss Prevention Procedures

Shrinkage can eat away at your bottom line, especially if your whole team isn’t on the lookout for discrepancies, shoplifting, or administrative errors. Your POS system can help combat shrinkage, but only if your staff knows how to use it.

Start by training your team on how to identify and prevent common forms of shrinkage:

Recognizing sights of shoplifting
Knowing how to respond appropriately
Monitoring high-value items
Using inventory management to identify discrepancies

Next, get staff spun up on proper cash handling. Train them to count cash accurately and detect counterfeit bills. Your POS system can provide till counts and end-of-shift reports to ensure all transactions are accounted for.

Last, although employee theft and fraud can be tough to detect and prevent, your POS system can help. Set employee permissions and get senior members of staff to monitor suspicious activity, such as voided transactions or unusual discounts.

With the right tools and training, your team can become an effective first line of defense against shrinkage, theft, and fraud.

Liquor Store Point of Sale Training: Ongoing Support

Learning is an ongoing process. While getting your staff up to speed on your liquor POS system is crucial, it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it process. Technology evolves, and regular refresher sessions can help keep your team sharp.

Bottle POS is an excellent choice when it comes to liquor store POS. It’s designed by liquor store owners and features:

An easy-to-use, intuitive user interface
Built-in automation tools like automated invoicing and purchase orders
Robust inventory management, including automated ranking
Customer loyalty

…and more. Our POS system is easy to learn, and we provide 24/7 support. Take a moment to explore Bottle POS. Use our build and price tool to get a free quote today.

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