If you run a liquor store, you know that things get busy and time slips away from you fast if you’re not careful. If you have the wrong technology, that lost time spent on manual or repetitive tasks gets even worse.
That’s why it’s essential to choose a point of sale (POS) system that’s fit for your small business. But with so many options out there, how do you choose the best POS system for your liquor, wine, or beer shop?
In this post, we go over our picks for the top liquor store POS systems — along with the unique features your business needs to thrive.
General Retail vs. Liquor Store POS
There are a lot of different point POS systems on the market. Some are designed for general retail, while others cater specifically to certain industries and business types.
While many general retail POS systems could work perfectly well for your liquor store, they may require additional customization to get all the features most liquor retailers need.
Thankfully, there’s been an increase in the number of POS and inventory management systems tailored for liquor stores. In particular, they often have age verification, inventory management, and sales tracking features that are unique to the liquor retail industry.
Important POS Features for Liquor Store Owners
Liquor stores are subject to a number of restrictions and unique challenges that many other retail industries don’t have to worry about. So, when choosing the right POS system for your package store, consider its strengths and weaknesses in these categories:
- Inventory database and management: Liquor products have a ton of SKUs, and having a POS system with the most common ones built in can save you a lot of time. Liquor stores also benefit immensely from flexible software that supports case breaks in order to sell any given product by case, six-pack, or bottle, without a separate SKU.
- Cloud-based software: “The cloud” might seem like nothing but a tech buzzword, but cloud-based technology has many real-world benefits for liquor store owners. Using a cloud-based solution gives small business owners the ability to track activity and manage sales, inventory, employee reports, and more from anywhere and on any device.
- Employee management: Many modern POS systems include the ability to track employee time, manage what systems they have access to, and more. This helps not only monitor your employees’ efficiency but can help cut down on shrinkage and honest mistakes as well.
- Loyalty programs and promotions: Customer rewards programs and discounts are a great way to encourage repeat business and compete with larger liquor retailers. Many modern point of sale systems offer some level of promotion customization.
- Online sales: Online liquor sales skyrocketed during the pandemic and remain a popular way for customers to get their favorites. Not all POS systems come with e-commerce functionality built in, but if you want to take your business online, you should keep an eye out for it.
Top 5 Picks for Liquor Store POS Systems
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of point of sale systems out there. In addition to our leading liquor store POS solution, here are some of our top choices for liquor, beer, and wine shops.
1. Bottle POS
Bottle POS is a cloud-based POS system created by an Atlanta-based liquor store owner to address the unique needs of liquor, beer, and wine stores.
While not sporting as many native app integrations for advanced users, it’s the highest-rated solution on this list and a great choice for liquor stores with single or multiple locations.
Top Features and Benefits
Bottle POS has a number of unique selling points for liquor stores, such as:
- Advanced inventory management and automation
Bottle POS comes with built-in SKUs for many common products and can automate receiving inventory. You can also case break inventory and automate invoicing, saving time and avoiding common inventory mistakes.
- Auto ranking and detailed reports
Bottle POS sports the unique ability to automatically rank best selling products so you can know what’s popular and what needs help getting off the shelves. Additionally, you can create custom reports to monitor sales, employee performance, and more.
- Built-in e-commerce and online sales
Bottle POS also comes paired with BottleZoo, a user-friendly solution for setting up a webstore and offering online sales. Your webstore will sync up automatically with your inventory and gives customers the option to order online and pick up in store. - Customer rewards and loyalty
Bottle POS offers a variety of options for discounts and customer loyalty programs, allowing owners to be creative with offering wine clubs, discounts, and promotional deals. The solution makes it easy for customers to opt in by sharing their phone number so you can send promotions via SMS.
See more of Bottle POS’ features.
Reviews
Bottle POS currently has an average rating of 4.9 stars on Google and a 4.9 on Trustpilot.
Related Read: How a Point of Sale Rewards Program Benefits Liquor Stores
2. Square
Square is one of the biggest names in the industry with their all-in-one POS solution. It lacks some of the liquor store specific features of other competitors, but remains one of the most easy-to-use and reliable POS choices out there.
Top Features and Benefits
Square comes with a lot of functionality out of the box, but some of its top benefits include:
- Built-in loyalty programs
Square comes out of the box with customizable customer loyalty programs. Customers can earn points based on visits, specific items, amount spent, and more.
- Native connections with most third-party apps
As a leading POS solution, Square has a lot of built-in connections with Google and other third party apps that your business may be using already.
- Sell online through Square Online
Square also offers e-commerce functionality and a website builder. Square websites make online sales easy by integrating directly into your inventory management system. - Highly stable for maximum uptime
As a widely used POS and inventory management solution, Square is a trusted and stable solution for small business owners across industries.
Reviews
Square currently has an average rating of 4.6 stars on Google and a rating of 4.0 on Trustpilot.
3. POS Nation
POS Nation is a great all-around solution for small businesses and has specific features for liquor stores. As a trusted and highly-rated retail POS system, it’s another solid option for liquor store owners.
Top Features and Benefits
POS Nation serves thousands of liquor and wine shops nationwide and has several great features:
- Mix-and-match + dual pricing options
With POS Nation, liquor stores can bundle liquor, wine, and beer into enticing deals. Additionally, built-in dual pricing allows you to offer a discount to customers who pay with cash.
- Automated and mobile inventory
POS Nation offers a number of time-saving inventory features such as scanning incoming inventory on a mobile device and case break inventory tracking.
- Built-in vendor management
POS Nation lets you track all your vendors in a single database and even allows you to set reorder thresholds to automatically send emails out to distributors. - Flexible payment options
Customers can pay in whatever way works best for them, whether it’s by card, mobile payment, EBT, or cash.
Reviews
POS Nation currently has an average rating of 4.9 stars on Google and 4.7 on Trustpilot.
Related Read: What is an Inventory Counter? 6 Best Practices for Liquor Stores
4. Lightspeed HQ
Lightspeed is an all-around POS system that offers useful features for liquor stores. Based in Canada, Lightspeed offers scalable solutions (including enterprise-level options) for growing liquor stores.
Top Features and Benefits
Lightspeed is another established brand with many great features, including:
- Advanced inventory management
Lightspeed POS comes with many options to keep on top of stock management, including case breaking, numerous import options, and low stock alerts.
- Automated age verification reminders
Lightspeed POS can help your store stay in compliance by automatically prompting your staff to verify the age of customers.
- Built-in discounts and promotions
Like others on this list, Lightspeed POS comes with a lot of built-in ways to drive sales with promotional codes, customer loyalty, and more.' - No-code website builder and e-commerce
Lightspeed also comes with an e-commerce platform so you can sell your liquor online. Building a website is easy thanks to a no-code website builder.
Reviews
Lightspeed HQ currently has an average rating of 4.0 stars on Google and a 4.4 on Trustpilot.
5. mPower Beverage POS
mPower Beverage is another company that specifically caters to liquor stores. Designed in collaboration with liquor store owners, it offers a variety of helpful point of sale and back office features.
Top Features and Benefits
mPower Beverage has a number of features that are helpful for liquor store owners, such as:
- Automated reports and intelligent ordering
mPower beverage makes it easy to stay on top of your business metrics with automated reports and notifications. You can also streamline ordering by setting up suggested transfer reports or low stock notifications.
- Built-in employee management and age verification scanning
mPower Beverage lets you keep track of employee hours and sales as well as sporting the ability to scan customer IDs for age verification.
- QuickBooks and other third-party integrations
mPower Beverage team can help set up integrations with popular third-party apps. They also offer the ability to help you import data from an existing system. - Real-time visibility and remote access
mPower Beverage has TCP/IP based software that allows you to keep track of your liquor store in real-time, with options to add cloud server hosting for an additional fee
Reviews
mPower Beverage currently has an average rating of 3.4 stars on Google and no ratings so far on Trustpilot.
Work with a POS System Invested in Your Success
While many of the point of sale systems on this list share features, no two systems are exactly the same. We recommend trying out some demos to make sure you like the look and feel of any potential POS system. After all, you’ll be using it every day!
Not only that, but take the time to talk to people at each company. A POS system isn’t just some hardware and software, it’s a technology partner that needs to be invested in your business’ success.
At Bottle POS, we help liquor store owners across the country save time and money by eliminating manual labor and admin. And when any issues or questions arise, our knowledgeable and responsive support team is there to help.
To look at more of Bottle POS’ features and see if we’re a right fit for your store by scheduling a demo today.
