If you own a liquor store, you definitely have your regular customers you see all the time and have built rapport with. These relationships are a huge part of building a successful business, especially in the liquor sales industry.
Pouring into these customer relationships encourages them to return, and this applies to relationships with other businesses too, like restaurants and bars. When you improve your relationships with these customers, you improve your service. An advanced wholesale POS system is an incredibly useful tool to help you do this!
If expanding your business with wholesale capability sounds intimidating, we can assure you that with an easy-to-use wholesale POS system from Cheers POS, it’s not!
3 ways wholesale helps your liquor store business
At Cheers POS, we know what it takes to successfully run your business. Underneath it all, we are Midwestern liquor store owners through-and-through—we aren’t kidding.
Before we fully dive into our wholesale management solution, let’s look at 3 ways a wholesale pos system helps your business!
1. Wholesale opens you up to additional revenue streams
Sure, selling to your neighborhood folk and even tourists keeps you going, but what if wholesale lifts you even higher? What if you could double your sales and put more into updating the store and replacing old product?
Wholesale opens your doors to local bars, restaurants, clubs, and other businesses. After all, you and your staff are the alcohol experts and you have contact with the distributors. Those businesses going through you for their liquor is a win for both of you.
You get their business, and they get alcohol at a more discounted price. And thus, word of mouth travels and other local businesses are knocking on your door.
2. Your store will be viewed as reputable and trustworthy
Once you establish wholesale relationships and word starts traveling, more people will start viewing you as a well-established liquor store.
If you develop good relationships with your customers and you consistently deliver on their product, you will be a desirable, reputable distributor. The go-to! People will trust you and continue buying from you.
3. Wholesale connects you with your community
Being a trusted and well-established liquor store will connect you with your community. You’ll start seeing new faces and develop new relationships. You may even consider planning events or reaching out to other businesses to be a part of their events.
5 features of our wholesale POS system
Wholesale can significantly grow your business; who would want to say no to that?
To offer wholesale capabilities, though, we first had to develop a convenient, easy-to-manage system. While we were running our store, we realized we were missing a lot of tools that would save us time and headaches.
This led us to ultimately create our all-in-one POS system that our wholesale system lives inside of.
To talk about everything our entire system does would take way too long; so, we’ll get straight into the wholesale component. Here’s everything our wholesale POS system allows you to do!
Related: What to Look for in the Best POS System for Liquor Stores
1. Simply personalize accounts
The great news is that when you’re starting off with wholesale, you get to choose how many accounts you want to take on. There’s no need to overload yourself at the beginning; you can start as slow as you’d like.
Something important to note is every wholesale account is different and will need personalization.
When you’ve secured a local bar, club, or restaurant to sell to, you have the ability to decide your sale price for all the products for each specific customer.
Tier pricing
You will of course mark products above costs in order to make a profit, but you can also set up tier pricing for each individual account.
Example: If a bar is paying you $5,000 a month, you could mark up the products 10% above costs.
If a bar is paying you $10,000 a month, maybe you change the mark-up to 9% above costs instead.
Related: The Ultimate Liquor Pricing Guide
Case pricing
Case pricing is an option for you if you don’t already buy cases of a product that your customer wants.
In this case, you can buy single items and charge the bar/club a picking charge, also known as a handling cost. This prevents you from “going out of your way” and losing money on a sale.
Make changes as you see fit
You can play around with numbers and the tiers/case pricing at any time. You don’t have to stick with anything. Within our system, you’re able to customize and make changes whenever you want!
Once you start doing business with a customer and learn about their needs, you’ll be able to make better purchasing and pricing decisions.
The communication between you and the customer should be ongoing; it will be a sort of dance to figure out what works best!
Related: 5 Reasons You Should Consider a Wholesale POS
2. Access automated reports
In case you’re entirely new to wholesale, all club and bar sales have to be reported to the state at the end of each month.
These reports are called on-premise sales reports, and they include:
- What you sold
- Who you sold it to
- Your liquor license information
While liquor store owners have historically had to write up these reports by hand, our wholesale POS system automatically fills these reports in with the right data.
When the customer submits an order, our wholesale system automatically adds the items to the report. All you really have to do is sign it! Once you do that, it’s ready to be given to the state.
In addition to the on-premise sales reports, there are several other wholesale reports you have access to, including invoices and category sales reports. These show you all the sales data you need.
Get paid fast
The system’s advanced technology means you don’t have to wait around for someone to write you a check. You’ll have access to immediate ACH payment, so no more juggling annoying receipts and checks!
3. Easy ordering system
Another feature that makes both your life and your customers’ lives easier is convenient ordering through the wholesale management system.
The club, bar, or restaurant can place an order via the phone or online; either way it will go through the system!
The “committed column” view
The “committed column” is a view in the system that shows you what items have been pre-purchased or put on hold by a customer, whether on the retail side or wholesale side.
This will always be visible whether you’re rummaging through retail or wholesale product inventory and ordering.
When you are ultimately taking inventory for wholesale, the system will print an internal pull ticket. You can take this ticket and your clipboard with you as you go around the store to track down products.
You’ll see how many products you have on hand, how many are “committed”, and thus how many you need to order.
4. Separate retail and wholesale
Retail and wholesale are equally important revenue streams aimed at entirely different markets. Because of this, it’s important to keep them separate in the wholesale POS system.
We achieve this by keeping the register separate from the wholesale management system. The reporting from the retail side and wholesale side never intermingles.
You can look at your retail view and your wholesale view respectively and make business decisions based on the separate reports.
5. Integrated with other POS services
Possibly the best part about our wholesale management system is how seamlessly it integrates with all of our POS services.
For our purposes, we will cover the 2 main ones that go into wholesale.
Wholesale inventory management
Our wholesale POS system integrates with our inventory management system. This system automatically reports your inventory, working to save you time and money.
Everything that’s purchased, damaged, or returned will be automatically updated in the system. No product is slipping by without your knowledge. Plus, you have access to all types of reports.
Related: Loss Prevention for Liquor Stores
You will be able to see the “committed column” within this system as well. Wholesale inventory management is a breeze with our all-in-one system.
Related: 5 Tips for Liquor Store Inventory Counting
Purchase order automation
The Cheers POS purchase order automation system works in tandem with both our wholesale management and inventory management systems.
When you create a purchase order, it moves directly into the invoicing system in which you can reconcile or adjust. Our system allows you to make educated decisions on what products you need to order for wholesale and retail.
Before you make an order, you can see how well a certain product has done via reports, view the “committed column”, and any other sales data.
Once product is purchased, this new data will sync with your invoices and reporting, inventory management, and wholesale management systems! Automated processes are lifesaving.
Expand your liquor store operation with wholesale management
Both you and your community deserve the benefits that come with wholesale business. Your local bars, restaurants, and clubs need your expertise.
The process can be made easier with our all-encompassing POS system at Cheers.
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Questions?
In case you didn’t know, we’re known for our extensive customer service.
Call us or message us with any questions you have about our system.