Beverage Dynamics

Beverage Dynamics Sept-Oct 2011

Beverage Dynamics is the largest national business magazine devoted exclusively to the needs of off-premise beverage alcohol retailers, from single liquor stores to big box chains, through coverage of the latest trends in wine, beer and spirits.

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The Future is Bright A nd computer companies continue to add new capabilities, large and small, that can make a retailer's day run more smoothly. At Chip's Wine & Beer, a two-store operation in North Carolina, for instance, Phil and Laura Wayland, owners, have begun using the tips feature of their LiquorPOS system from Merchant Software. This allows customers to add in a tip when purchasing wine and beer flights at the tasting lounge the Waylands have just added to one of the stores. They have also begun using the feature which prints a barcode at the bottom of every receipt. "You just need to scan the receipt to bring the whole sale back up," said Laura Wayland, "which is great if something was rung in wrong or if someone is returning a broken corkscrew or something. You can put the item back into inventory too." The company InfoTouch has just added the capability to scan driver's licenses, with the system's product scanner rather than a separate device, to verify age. The system can also use the information contained in a driver's license barcode – name, address – to auto-populate its customer-management system. For the future, InfoTouch, which first introduced the use of touchscreens at the point of sale back in 1986, is looking at biometrics (an employee clocks into the system's time clock using a fingerprint, preventing buddies from clocking each other in) and at having a multi-language capability (allowing cashiers to easily switch between languages when using the POS system). Broadway's Scalise will be attending a conference of Windward Software system users next month, to give a presentation on how he uses his system for inventory management. "The point I want to make," he said, "is that nothing is impossible." s A PROFIT CENTER Y for liquor, wine and beer retailers, has developed a machine that can do all three things. ou try to catch the customer's attention, with displays as flashy as you can make them. You also try to educate the customer, with wine tastings and product information. Above all, you try to make some money. Now, ChoiceMaster, a long-time maker of customer kiosks Its newest customer-kiosk, the ChoiceMaster Digital Signage (CMDS), is still a touchscreen kiosk, equipped with a scanner and a printer, which customers and staff can use to look up information, such as tasting notes, on products. (And it is still linked to the store's POS system so that all the products that it gives information on are in that store.) But now it also is equipped with a 42-inch LCD screen. That screen can play advertisements, including supplier television commercials. In markets where legal, ChoiceMaster sells these advertising opportunities and, again in markets were legal, it splits this ad revenue with the retailer. Even with these national, system-wide ads, the only ads that will play in a particular store are ones for products that the store carries. Retailers can also sell their own local ads, keeping all the money, for their ChoiceMaster kiosks and can create their own content, using Power Point. "The kiosk (which retailers lease of $89 per month) can pay for itself – and even make money," said Jim Greaves, president of ChoiceMaster. Contact Cheryl Naughton at 678-292-6054 cnaughton@m2media360.com In addition, the new large screens can also show live wine tastings, like a webinar, where the person on the screen can hear and respond to questions from people watching in different stores. (These tastings can also be recorded and reshown.) "All the store has to do is have someone there pouring the wine," said Greaves. The machine will do the rest. 54 • Beverage Dynamics • www.beveragedynamics.com • September/October 2011

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