Springtime means a lot of different things to a lot of people. For liquor store owners, spring signifies that the summer business boom is just around the corner, and that it’s time to start clearing out all the fall and winter products from the store.
A variety of new products drop at this time of year, getting people excited to try them out when the weather is warm. If you want to keep up with the trends, you have to make room in your liquor store inventory for new summer product favorites.
At Cheers POS, we have all the tips and tricks for your store’s spring cleaning. So don’t worry, you’ll have your store summer-ready in no time.
Step #1: Perform a liquor store inventory audit
Summer tends to be the busiest time for liquor stores. With the 4th of July and summer concerts and events, people need to stock up on alcohol. So, making sure you have room on your shelves and in your coolers is especially important during this time of year.
There are a number of methods that can help you make room for your new liquor store inventory.
Utilize sales reports
The first step to clearing your inventory is figuring out what product hasn’t been moving. You’ll want to utilize your sales reports to figure this out.
With our all-in-one point-of-sale system at Cheers POS, you can easily view all your store’s reports in one place. Our invoicing and reporting system houses these reports, allowing you to view them at any time.
Category sales report
The category sales report will show you which products haven’t been moving. You can break it down by timeframe and product type.
For example, maybe you want to see wine sales broken down by quarter, or, you want to see how your cordials have done the past couple of months.
This report will help you make decisions about what product you may want to stop ordering or order more of. If none of your wines have been selling, you might deduce that it’s time to bring in an entirely new selection.
It could even be that your customers aren’t wine drinkers and you need to stop ordering most of it altogether.
It can be beneficial to start chatting with your customers about products they like and don’t like. Both you—as the liquor store owner—and your customers will benefit from these conversations.
They get the products they need and don’t have to go elsewhere, and you profit and become a trusted supplier in the industry!
Perform counts
If this wasn’t a part of your plans already, you’ll definitely need to perform actual inventory counts. This is a much easier process when you have an automated inventory management system.
Related: 5 Tips for Liquor Store Inventory Counting During Tax Season
At Cheers POS, our all-in-one system automatically updates your inventory. Every product that is purchased, returned, or damaged will be updated in the cloud-based system.
After you’ve done your initial physical count and scanned your products into our system, you can start relying on the best POS system for liquor stores to do the heavy lifting for you.
Step #2: Decide what product to get rid of
After you’ve done your liquor store inventory audit, you will have likely identified all of the product you need to clear out. This includes product that isn’t selling for various reasons.
Unpopular product
The reason we suggest a comprehensive inventory audit is because this is a great time to figure out what other product hasn’t been selling.
This can be completely unrelated to seasonality; maybe it’s time to invest in a newer product in place of the one that isn’t making its way off the shelves at all. Do some field research; talk to other industry experts and store owners, see what’s flying off their shelves.
Out-of-season product
Nothing’s more out of place than an Oktoberfest beer in April! It’s important to optimize your store for the warmer months. You’re going to need all of the space you can get for the hot new products that will be all over social media, driving people to your store to find them.
Step #3: Get rid of product
After you’ve decided on which products you will no longer keep around, you get to decide what you’ll do with the leftover product! We have a few pointers that could help you out with this.
Run promotions
The best way to get rid of product is to make money off of it! Consider running promotions on the products you don’t need anymore. Many customers would be happy to buy an out-of-season or unpopular product if it’s on clearance.
With our POS system, you can create “tags” for products you’re putting on clearance in order to easily keep track of sales. With this feature, you can name a tag, such as “Christmas package” or “Discontinued item”, and set promotion dates and prices in our system.
That way, you won’t have to worry about manually keeping track of what items are on clearance and for how much; the system does it all for you.
Put together mystery bags
Another way you can profit off of your outdated product is by putting them in mystery bags.
Whether you want to try to sell the mystery bags for a low price or give them away with a purchase is entirely up to you. You can try selling them at first, and later give them away if no one is biting.
Step #4: Update your selection
Now that you have a plan for product you no longer need to hold on to, you can focus on the fun part: updating your liquor store inventory selection!
You get to decide what you want to carry at your store by talking to industry experts, keeping up with trends, and even chatting with your customers. You can even ask your customers to fill out a questionnaire on the kinds of products they would like to see.
There are so many beers and seltzers on the market; you simply can’t carry them all. Figure out your customers’ priorities and make them happen.
Step #5: Make more space
If you’ve cleared out everything you can and still don’t have enough space to accommodate your summer product, consider buying more cooler or shelf space.
Many liquor store owners are buying larger coolers with bigger doors to accommodate the exponential growth of seltzers on the market. Summer flavors are definitely popular enough to take up quite a bit of cooler space.
Similarly, fruit-infused liquors and other summer liquors come back to the spotlight every year—add more shelf space if needed.
Step #6: Ensure you have the staff
This is a step that isn’t directly inventory-related, but it’s important nonetheless. Make sure you’re staffed up for the busy season. We guarantee you don’t want to be the only one working all day every day.
Depending on your store’s traffic, you will likely need more than one or two people working on the weekends. Trying to stock and work register at the same time on a Saturday isn’t ideal.
Step #7: Use an all-in-one POS system
Having to start from scratch each season is time consuming. You have so much going on as a liquor store owner at any given time—having an unhelpful, one-dimensional point-of-sale system doesn’t have to be one of them.
In order for you to accommodate the influx of new product and summer traffic with the least amount of hiccups, you need an all-in-one liquor store management software that works for you.
At Cheers POS, there’s more to our POS system than the automatic invoicing and reporting and inventory management system. Our system includes a multitude of other services:
- Integrated Credit Card Processing
- Access the system on a range of devices, choose your credit card processor, pass credit card fees to customers, and accept all kinds of payments.
- Hardware and Peripherals
- Choose to use your own hardware and peripherals and receive our expertise for setting it up with our system, or you can start fresh with our equipment.
- E-Commerce
- Access a Shopify website that is integrated with your liquor store inventory management system.
- Purchase Order Automations
- Create itemized purchase orders using sales data and manage and reconcile invoices.
- Gift Cards
- Manage outstanding gift cards and store credit directly from your POS terminal.
- Customer Loyalty
- Manage your customer database and offer custom discounts or rewards.
- Wholesale Management
- Utilize sales data to make informed wholesale purchase decisions.
- Distributor Integrations
- Browse a variety of products from top distributors and electronically submit your purchase orders with your integrated distributors.
Having all of these services and more in one place will save you the valuable time and money you may otherwise spend manually counting product and entering data.
You’ll be able to devote your time and money to what matters: keeping your customers satisfied and coming to you for all their alcohol, mixer, and cordial needs.
Invest in your liquor store: start spring cleaning
Both you and your customers deserve a summer-ready liquor store. With a liquor store inventory update, more space, enough staff, and a POS system built by liquor store people for liquor store people, you’re set up for success.
Questions?
At Cheers POS, we’re known for our limitless customer service. Call us or message us with any questions you have about our system or even just about getting your store prepared for the summer!
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