An effective POS system is a critical piece of technology for any liquor store. It can help you manage just about every aspect of your operations. The most advanced liquor store POS systems will do much more than just handle your sales. They can also manage your inventory and automate your ordering, help you remain compliant with alcohol and tobacco regulations, help you create effective customer loyalty programs, and provide detailed reports that will make it easier to monitor the success of your business.
When you choose the right POS system, it will help you manage all these tasks more efficiently. But there are many different POS systems available, and not all of them are ideally suited for liquor stores. To ensure you experience the best possible results, it’s important to choose a POS system specifically designed for use with liquor stores. Liquor store POS systems can contain a variety of customizations and features that are specific to your unique industry, ensuring you have the capabilities you need to run your business effectively.
Below are some of the most important features to look for when choosing a liquor store POS system.
Age Verification
One of the most critical tasks your staff must perform is to verify the age of your customers when they buy alcohol. If your employees mistakenly sell alcohol to an underage individual, you can incur hefty fines and potentially even lose your liquor license. Therefore, it’s critical to have a system for ensuring your employees can effectively identify a fake ID when one is presented at the register.
Many advanced liquor store POS systems now contain age verification systems that scan a customer’s ID to verify that they are of legal drinking age. This will help your employees immediately recognize when someone is using a fake ID or is under the age of 21, preventing sales to underage customers and providing your business with important protection.
Inventory Management Software
Liquor stores need robust inventory tracking capabilities, including the ability to:
- Track inventory at both the case and bottle level (case breaking)
- Set reorder points and automate your ordering
- Manage vendors and purchase orders
- Conduct physical inventory counts
Using a POS system that provides these important features will streamline your inventory management process, saving you a lot of time and ensuring you always have the right amount of inventory on hand.
Sales Reporting and Analytics
An important function provided by liquor store POS systems is the ability to know how the products you carry are performing. Make sure you choose a POS system that provides robust sales data regarding top selling products, margins for each product and other success metrics that will help you make informed decisions about your business.
In addition, make sure your POS system provides customizable dashboards and reporting for your analytics data. This will allow you to receive this information in an easy to view format and give you the ability to focus on the specific data that is most critical to your success.
Customer Management
Many advanced liquor store POS systems offer robust customer management capabilities which help you track important data for your regular customers. This streamlines your processes and enables you to improve the experience you provide to your most valued customers.
Some of the customer management tasks that can be handled by your POS system include:
- Tracking customer sales history
- Frequent buyer discounts
- Customer loyalty specials
- Separate tax entities can be associated with different ship-to addresses for a customer
- Extracting data from your database for easy integration with third-party marketing campaign software
- Designing different loyalty programs based on user-defined criteria such as purchase levels and products purchased
- Tracking on account purchases (using accounts receivable data)
Pricing for Promotions and Loyalty Programs
Promotions and loyalty programs are a great way to drive business at your liquor store. Your promotions will be much easier to implement if your POS system has the functionality to manage them. Look for a system that offers mix and match bottle pricing, allowing you to apply discounts to the entire inventory, individual products, or just a few specific items when they are paired together. In addition, your POS system should be able to automatically apply coupons and loyalty program discounts at the time of sale.
This customization will make it easier to apply discounts at checkout instead of having your cashier manually enter a code for each discounted item. When these discounts are automatically applied, it will significantly speed up your checkout process and provide a better customer experience, especially during times when you are busy.
eCommerce Integration
Online liquor sales increased significantly during the pandemic, and they’ve remained a popular way for people to purchase their alcohol. If your business does a significant online sales volume, or if you want to boost your online sales, you should choose a POS system that comes with eCommerce functionality. This will allow you to manage your online sales much more efficiently.
Employee Management
Many POS systems will contain functionality that allows you to track employee time, manage the systems each employee has access to, and a variety of other items that will help you monitor your employees’ efficiency.
Mariner Business Solutions Can Help
If you’re looking to update the POS system at your liquor store, Mariner Business Solutions can help. We’ve been the industry leading liquor store POS system provider for over 35 years, and our team will work with you to provide the customized solutions your business needs.
You’ll benefit from our exclusive Personal Advantage Plus™ Approach focused on giving you greater control over your business. This unique approach to POS solutions will elevate your success by:
- Collaborating with your team to understand your unique goals
- Providing customized recommendations that ensure you receive the best solution(s) to address the needs of your business
- Offering custom configuration and integrations that align with your operations and workflow
- Providing extensive customer support by our knowledgeable team to help you get the most out of your new system
- Providing on-site response to address any issues that arise
- Delivering greater uptime reliability
- Providing detailed and personalized reporting that helps you monitor the success of your business
- Creating ongoing competitive innovations that will address your evolving needs over time
Request a demo to find out how our POS solutions can help you grow your business.
