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.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/82861
restaurant-like needs, such as keeping a ticket open as people order wine and cheese to have while at Good Vibes, but he also needed off-premise retail features, such as a counter, as well. Cashier Live, working through a PC, fit the bill for this new business. "There was no loading of software, we don't have to back up our data (it is kept secure by Cashier Live) and I can access from any PC," said Klausing. Saving Time F or his new store, Nelson's Countyline Liquors in Lizben, WI, Joe Nelson went with a system from Harbortouch. (See guide.) He pays approximately $75 per month for his POS system, which includes both hardware and software as well as support. Nelson had been running the store with no POS system, just an old-fashioned cash register, before he implemented the Harbortouch system and he can vouch for how much time hav- ing the POS automated can save. "I had been tagging every single product with a marking gun, which took a lot of time, all day," he said, "and where I used to have two registers, I now need only one because checking out customers is so much faster." Having a more precise idea of his sales and inventory, especially in beer, Nelson said, has saved him both time and money, when it comes to reordering. Some of the systems require a retailer to use a cer- tain credit card processor, while others do not. Some offer a cheaper monthly fee if a retailer uses their pre- ferred processor but will allow a retailer to choose their own. And some of these systems come from credit card processors themselves. "If a free or low-cost system requires you to use their credit card processing, you might be paying a lot larger fees," warned Rick Crudo, partner & director of sales of Merchant Technology Designs, a Seattle-based computer-system consultan- cy. When comparing systems, it is important to con- sider all the costs of each, including the credit-card- processing fees. Supporting Liquor Retailers C ustomer service, including the ability to provide the features and support a liquor retailer needs, is very important, retailers say. When Corey Maple was making plans for his new store, Seven Sisters Wine & Spirits, which he opened in May in Detroit Springs, MN, the fact that the company RITE (see guide) focused solely on beverage alcohol retailing, was "the number-one factor" that led him to choose their system. Another was that the company was local- ly based. "Their service has been spectacular. I know most of their staff by name and have been calling them on almost a weekly basis for advice," said Maple, who used to run his own computer-soft- ware companies, though in a different industry, himself. "Every software is going to have deficiencies," he said. "No software is bug-free. No software is going to have all the functions you need. What you need to look for in a com- puter company is a good staff who is constantly tweaking the system, adding new function- ality, and one that is responsive to their customers." What RITE does is offer a system that uses the Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS) as its base. Microsoft built RMS so that it is cus- tomizable and that's what RITE has done. "With some computer companies, you can't get any help to customize the system for your business. With others, you might be able to hack a change, even though you're not supposed to, but when the system releases an update, your hack will no longer work. That's a major difference with us and RMS: when RMS issues an update, all our add-ons travel with it," said Gary Noble, a retail technology specialist with RITE. What are some of the customized features Maple has been using? He particularly likes the advanced pur- chase order (APO) feature, where the system generates a forecast of the store's future sales, based on its sales in the past, to help him decide how much product to order. "A lot of retailers don't do purchase orders, they don't forecast, they just order what they think they need," he said, "but I run a purchase order for every vendor. I may need to make a few adjustments here and there, but the system almost autonomously generates the order for me. I would buy the RITE system for that feature alone." He also has the RITE system set so that his employ- ees must swipe the customer's ID for the transaction to Beverage Dynamics • www.beveragedynamics.com • September/October 2012 • 35