We’ve all heard the harrowing statistic: Only 50% of small businesses survive past their fifth year.
Fortunately, you don’t have to leave the fate of your liquor store up to chance. Offering the right spirits, providing a top-shelf customer experience, and investing in your marketing strategy can help your business survive and thrive long past the five-year mark.
In this blog, we’ll explore three essential best practices for how to run a liquor store and share specific tips to help you put them into action.
1. Stock the Right Spirits
Your product selection is the number one reason customers shop at your liquor store — so it’s critical to stock the right spirits in the right amounts.
Here are some key ways to ensure shoppers can always find what they’re looking for on your liquor store’s shelves.
Check Out Your Competitors’ Offerings
Whether you’re working on your liquor store business plan or overhauling your product offerings, we recommend paying your competitors a visit. Take notes on the types of spirits they carry, the sizes of their bottles, and their prices.
With this information, you can set your liquor store apart from others in the area by carrying spirits that customers can’t find anywhere else.
For example, if a store down the street carries popular brands at affordable prices, you can differentiate your business by specializing in fine, hard-to-find spirits. If a neighboring store carries a wide range of liquors, mixers, and cocktail accessories, you can stand out by focusing on wine and beer to fill the gap.
Learn About Your Customers’ Favorite Liquors
Once you’ve purchased and stocked your initial inventory, you can start learning about your customers’ preferences and shopping habits. Check your liquor store point of sale (POS) to discover which spirits are flying off the shelves and which are collecting dust.
After you identify trends in your sales reports, you can tailor your offerings to meet your shoppers’ wants and needs.
For example, if your sales reports show a sharp spike in wine sales around the holiday season, you can respond to this data by stocking a higher quantity and wider variety of wines.
Become a Liquor Inventory Management Pro
Even if you have the best liquor selection in the neighborhood, you’ll still lose sales if you frequently run out of your bestselling liquors.
That’s why you need a solid liquor inventory management plan.
Investing in a POS system with built-in inventory management is the best way to keep your shelves well-stocked. This powerful tool monitors your stock levels in real time and automatically generates purchase orders when you’re running low to ensure you never run out of your customers’ favorite bottles.
2. Keep Checkout Lines Short
Another crucial factor in how to run a liquor store is keeping checkout lines short.
Long lines can frustrate customers and lead to lost sales, so you need to invest in a convenient, secure solution for verifying customer ages and processing sales transactions.
Let’s look at three ways to ensure a checkout experience that’s as smooth as your spirits.
Use Barcode Labels
One of the best ways to simplify the checkout process is to label your products with barcodes and invest in a reliable barcode scanner. This eliminates the time-consuming process of manually entering product information and prices, saving your cashiers time and reducing errors.
To get started with barcode-based liquor inventory management, we recommend investing in a POS system that generates barcodes and integrates with a barcode label printer.
Simplify the Age Verification Process
Age verification is a mandatory step in the liquor store checkout process, but without the right technology, it can take up valuable time.
An age verification scanner is the fastest and most secure way to verify customers’ ages. This tool simply scans customers’ IDs to ensure they are of legal drinking age before your cashier processes the sale.
Train Your Cashiers
While the right technology can go a long way in speeding up your checkout lines, your team members have to be on board, too.
That’s why it’s critical to provide them with thorough training on how to run your liquor store smoothly and provide customers with friendly, prompt service on the sales floor and at the checkout counter.
Plan regular training sessions for all your employees to make sure they understand how to greet customers, use your POS system, and make excellent product recommendations.
3. Master the Art of Liquor Store Marketing
Our final tip for how to run a profitable liquor store is to prioritize marketing.
Liquor store marketing is essential for bringing new customers through your door and keeping your repeat customers coming back. Let’s explore the strategies you can use to accomplish each of these goals.
Attract New Customers
Whether you’ve just opened your doors or your liquor store has been open for decades, it’s always a good idea to bring in new customers.
Building your online presence is one of the most effective ways to attract customers and set your business apart from the competition. Claim your Google business profile, get active on social media, and consider launching an online liquor store.
This approach will make it easy for customers to find and choose your liquor store — and embracing the power of e-commerce will give your sales a major boost.
Related Read: How To Sell Liquor Online: Tips, Tools, and Regulations
Boost Repeat Business
Once you’ve attracted a customer to your liquor store, your next step is to keep them coming back.
Our best tip to increase repeat business is to launch a customer loyalty program that lets customers earn rewards points and unlock exclusive discounts when they shop with you. The more they spend, the more they’ll save — which means it’s a win-win.
Investing in a POS system with built-in customer management should make it easy to set up your loyalty program, add new members, and learn more about your most valuable shoppers.
Run a Successful Liquor Store With Bottle POS
Whether you’re a liquor industry veteran or just starting your small business journey, we hope these tips have been helpful! Let’s quickly recap our three top tips for how to run a liquor store:
- Stock the right products in the right amounts by adopting an effective liquor inventory management strategy.
- Provide a smooth, convenient customer experience by using barcodes, investing in an age verification scanner, and providing thorough cashier training.
- Invest in a marketing strategy to grow your liquor store’s customer base.
Implementing all these strategies might sound like a heavy lift, but we’re here to help. Bottle POS is a powerful, all-in-one POS solution designed for liquor store owners just like you. Our software includes robust inventory tracking, speedy checkout tools, and marketing integrations to smooth out your operations and grow your sales.
Ready to see how Bottle POS can make a difference for your liquor store? Schedule your live demo today!
