The Best POS for Liquor Store Owners — Top 10 for 2024 Compared

The platform’s robust liquor store inventory management features make tracking stock easy, even across multiple locations. On the free plan, you can set low-stock alerts, which notify you when a particular product is about to go out of stock.

Square’s smart stock forecast tracks products that are selling quickly and recommends reordering when stock falls to a critical level.

The stock is automatically synced across multiple locations and online stores, so you have a clear picture of inventory at every location.

Square’s AfterPay, a Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) scheme, is another feature that can help you attract more business. Let’s say a customer is having a house party and wants to order liquor worth $2,000. Instead of paying upfront, the customer can pay in four installments over six weeks ($500 each). The best part? You’ll get the payment upfront without delay. It’s a win-win for both parties.

You can also accept various payment methods, including debit cards, credit cards, wallets, and tap-and-pay, and there are no hidden costs you’ll incur. All the applicable fees are transparently displayed on the website, so there are no shocks.

If there’s one minor downside, it’s that customer support could be improved – but there are plenty of helpful guides available online. And going beyond liquor stores, we rate Square as one of the best POS systems overall.

Square offers a Point-of-Sale plan which doesn’t have a monthly fee, you only pay the processing rate of 2.6% + 10c per tap, dip, or swipe. This option is good for small and new stores that only want the basics, just keep in mind that the hardware will be an additional cost.

Your other option is to go with one of Square’s three Retail plans.

• Free – No monthly fee
• Plus– $89/month
• Premium– Custom

All plans also come with processing rates, which start at 2.6% + 10 cents (in person) and 2.9% + 30 cents (online).
If you opt for either of the Retail options, you also receive a 30-day free trial of the Plus plan where you can test our all the features.

The platform comes with a native payment solution, TouchBistro Payments, which syncs the bill between devices. You can also accept payments with all cards, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay, leaving your customers with plenty of options.

One feature we loved was the availability of offline payment options. Traditional payment portals require the internet to work. However, if your internet is down, you can still collect customer payments.

TouchBistro stores the customer’s credit card information offline, and once connectivity is restored, the transaction is processed automatically.

TouchBistro also comes with impressive add-ons such as gift cards and marketing tools, which aren’t common among POS vendors. Thanks to the integration between TouchBistro Online Ordering, Digital Gift Cards, and the POS, customers can buy digital gift cards from your online ordering page.

Redeeming the gift card is equally easy – buyers just need to enter the card details on the checkout page. You can even customize the gift card with your store logo.

The platform’s 50 built-in reports update in real time and are just what you need. Since it’s a cloud-based platform, you can access these reports from anywhere and even periodically email them to key staff members.

TouchBistro’s features are more geared to bars and restaurants, so if you serve drinks alongside your retail operations, it’s ideal. If you’re looking for a more general ecommerce platform, however, Square may be a better bet.

TouchBistro offers its point-of-sale system using a modular approach. Firstly, you have to choose the actual Point-of-Sale solution, which starts at $69/month.

In addition to this, you can add Payments and a Customer-facing display – both with custom pricing.

For back-of-house solutions, you have the following options:

• Kitchen display system – Starting at $19/month
• Profit management – Starting at $330.month

Guest engagement:

• Online ordering – Starting at $50/month
• Reservations – Starting at $229/month
• Loyalty – Starting at $99/month
• Marketing – Starting at $99/month
• Gift cards – Starting at $25/month

What we like about a modular approach is that you can pick and choose the support your business needs, but keep in mind that it can quickly get expensive with all the add-ons.

Toast offers one of the best handheld POS devices, which is made specifically for the food industry since it’s spill, dust, and drop-proof. Its impressive 24-hour battery life ensures you won’t run out of power while accepting payments. Plus, it’s light, compact, and easy to carry around.

Toast also tops the tips management game with its dedicated Tips Manager. You can set endless custom rules to pool tips, which can then be synced directly to Toast Payroll and Teams Management. The tips paid are automatically included in the employees’ payroll data.

The best part is you can make these tips available to employees almost instantly with the Toast Pay Card. It works exactly like a debit card and can be used to pay for anything you like. Your employees also get access to 37,000 MoneyPass Network ATMs.

If you do need additional functionality, you’ll need to look into add-ons, however – and the price of these can add up.

If you’re a small business with basic POS needs, Toast’s Starter Kit is available for free. It includes a Toast Flex POS terminal and cloud-based POS software.

• Starter Kit – Suitable for small businesses that only require 1-2 terminals.
• Point of Sale – The plan that will suit most businesses. It includes all the basics and flat-rate processing fees.
• Build Your Own –Here, you choose the features you require, like employee benefits, automated inventory, and select your own hardware.

While the Starter Kit is suitable for startups, most businesses will start with the Point of Sale plan at $69/month. Compared to the likes of TouchBistro, it’s a good offering but it’s not as comprehensive as Lightspeed.

One thing we loved about Lavu was its contactless payment options. You can generate a customer receipt with a printed QR code, which can be scanned to make payments. This makes the whole process a lot easier, with no need to handle cash registers or swipe machines.

Lavu’s acquisition of MenuDrive has made menu management on the POS a breeze. You can email your liquor store details with the menu, and a representative will add it for you to the system.

Plus, you can choose between 100+ templates and add brand images and logos, along with a host of other marketing tools.

The platform’s Best Seller report is another feature worth mentioning. As the name suggests, it identifies the best-selling drinks on your menu in an attractive color-coded graph for easy identification.

There are fewer hardware options with Lavu. If this is a real show-stopper for you, you might consider Square or Shopify.

Lavu offers three price plans.

As expected, the Starter plan covers your basic needs, while Growth allows DoorDash and MenuDrive online ordering as well as QR-code ordering. Optimize includes everything in the two previous tiers and integration with both Xero and QuickBooks.

If you have several employees in your liquor store, you’ll surely appreciate Clover’s shift management features. You can check your team’s availability with the Time Clock and assign shifts based on their availability. Plus, you can also send them automated reminders just before their shifts start.

What makes this feature even more exciting is the ability to link tips to specific employee schedules. All the tips received are recorded in one place, which you can then divide between employees during whose shift the tips were received.

The platform also offers one of the fastest shipping in the industry. If ordered online, your entire system will arrive in one business day. The setup includes an 8-inch touchscreen POS with a built-in receipt printer and a cash drawer with the basic plan.

The transaction fees are notably cheap – though there is a fairly substantial hardware startup cost. And Clover, with its several real-time and periodic reports, makes tax filing easy. You can access built-in POS reports and hand them to your tax preparer. You can even link the POS to software like QuickBooks.

Clover offers separate payment plans depending on your type of business. To keep it simple, we’re only listing the retail systems pricing as that is the category best suited for liquor stores.

Transaction fees of 2.6% + 10c for cards that are tapped, swiped, or inserted and 3.5% + 10c for card information typed in are additional to all plans.

• Starter – With this plan you get the essentials, and a mini 8” touchscreen with built-in receipt printer. A cash stand is an optional add-on.
• Standard – Here you get a Station Duo 14” merchant-facing POS with a 8” customer screen and handheld POS.
• Advanced – In the top-tier plan, you receive the same hardware as Standard, as well as a handheld POS with a built-in receipt printer and the option to add a handheld barcode scanner and weight scale.

Like Square, Lightspeed also lets you create your own online store with 30+ free website designs and templates, much like a website builder. You can then import your products from the POS system, after which the inventory levels will be synced with your online store as well so that you do not oversell an item.

Similarly, Lightspeed is ideal if you have stores across multiple locations, as it syncs all stock data without any glitches and can be accessed from anywhere.

Lightspeed’s analytics help you streamline business processes. For example, its inventory reports help forecast demand and decide which products to put on sale. You can keep detailed customer reports, too, helping you identify loyal buyers and design marketing efforts such as email marketing.

Apart from traditional POS functions, Lightspeed equips you with a host of marketing and loyalty program tools to drive sales. You can collect customer data at checkout and divide them into segments based on behavioral data. You can use several pre-made templates to draft emails, forms, and landing pages.

The platform also lets you design loyalty schemes for your customers, where you can set spend thresholds, tiers, and point multipliers. Plus, you get abandoned cart emails, so you can focus on hesitant buyers and offer them special discounts.

There’s also impressive one-on-one software onboarding, which is something few other providers offer. This helps you migrate to Lightspeed quickly and get a hang of the system in no time.

Like Lavu, Lightspeed POS offers separate pricing plans depending on what ype of business you’re running. For this article, we’re comparing the retail offering.

Regardless of which plan you choose, you get a 14-day free trial.

If you’re looking for an affordable solution, you can even use your iPhone as a POS system with tap-and-pay payment acceptance. As you can see, the options are endless, and it all depends on space management and budget.

Shopify takes omnichannel selling to the next level with three options. Customers can buy online and opt for in-store pickups, which reduces logistic costs and speeds up the delivery process. The customers can also buy from a physical store and choose to have the bottles shipped to their address from a nearby location.

The last option is for people who want to have a good look at the product physically before buying online. This can be done by emailing virtual carts to buyers.

Like SquarePay, Shopify also offers buyers to pay in installments. However, it goes a notch higher by allowing an interest-free period of 12 months divided into four equal installments. This gives buyers more time to accumulate for large purchases.

Shopify also makes staff management easy with the ability to create unlimited POS PINs. You can add as many employees as you want and assign them permissions based on their roles. Customizing permissions is also easy, which ensures the staff has only the amount of access they actually need.

For example, you wouldn’t want your on-floor staff to issue refunds or exchanges. Let’s say a bottle of liquor you sold turned out to be expired on the date of sale, and the customer has requested an exchange. In such cases, you can set custom manager approvals before the action goes through.

For operators in the liquor business, POS Lite Retail would be a good starting point. It comes with a 2% transaction fee on third-party payments, unlimited POS logins as well as a limited online store.

For larger businesses, the POS Pro Advanced plan stands out as it allows for customized features, reporting, and a fully customized checkout experience.

Now, when you sell a single bottle, the POS will “break” the case and show available complete packs and single bottles available for sale. This eliminates the need for manually updating quantities every time you sell a single bottle.

Another challenge liquor stores face is teenagers posing as adults to buy drinks. Sure, you can check their IDs manually to tackle this problem. But, it becomes quite a hassle, and even a single blip can land you in legal trouble.

However, you can choose to upgrade to POS Nation’s ID scanner to make things easy. As soon as an age-restricted item pops up while billing, you’ll see a date of birth prompt.

You can either insert it manually or scan the QR code on the buyer’s driving license, and the system will automatically calculate their age.
If the buyer is found to be underage, the POS will not allow that item to be checked out. This also discourages your cashiers from illegally selling liquor to teens.

POS Nations pricing starts at $149/month but is customized to your business. To get an accurate quote, you must contact the company directly.

If you have multiple billing counters, finding the culprit can be difficult. However, with Korona POS, you can customize features to require authentication before a cashier voids a receipt. Similarly, individual item voids are also reflected in employees’ shift reports.

Another feature we liked about Korona was its self-checkout POS system. You can set up self-service POS kiosks with integrated RFID software.

Customers can scan their bottles, generate a bill, and use contactless payment methods to complete their purchases. This speeds up the entire checkout process and also reduces labor costs, as you’ll need to hire fewer cashiers to process checkouts.

Korona also generates interactive reports that make decision-making a whole lot easier. For example, its ABC report shows the percentage of return on each of your products and then classifies them into categories. This provides an overview of products so you can take action fast.

If you own a franchise, Korona helps you out by calculating royalty right at the POS level. This saves accounting time and effort and also provides your team with a point of reference while finalizing royalties. You can even choose to send out royalties at regular intervals with Korona

Like TouchBistro, Korona POS takes a modular approach to pricing. The point-of-sale system offers two base plans on which you can build your own package.

In addition to the plans above, which cover the basics like reporting, dashboards and inventory features, you can choose from the below optional add-on packages.

• Food +$10/month per terminal
• Plus + $20/month per terminal
• Invoicing +$10/month per terminal
• Ticketing +$50/month per gate
• Franchise +$30/month per franchise
• Integration +$45/month per token

If you want to focus on your core business and not worry about maintaining POS systems, you’ll like Revel’s Concierge Services. These connect you with an industry expert who’ll set up the POS for you, according to your business needs.

This includes tasks like setting up the device, entering business details, enabling payments, and making the system good to go.

Revel’s Enterprise Management Solution (EMS) is worth a mention. It lets you manage staff scheduling and payroll across locations and standardize menus and products.

You can also access detailed reports for either a single location or multiple locations on metrics like order history, sales summary, product mix, labor forecasting, and more. This makes core analysis a whole lot easier for larger retail liquor outlets.

Like several other POS systems on the list, Revel also offers an in-house payment processing solution – Revel Advantage.
It lets you accept payments through various cards, QR codes, gift cards, mobile pay, and so on. Revel takes security seriously, which is evident with its EMV-enabled terminals. EMV cards protect each transaction with unique codes, which makes it impossible to replicate.

Revel Systems POS pricing starts at $99/month plus transaction fees from 2.49% + 15c per transaction. From this, you can build and create a custom plan suitable for your business.

In comparison to Lightspeed, this pricing is a bit on the higher side, especially as the system doesn’t offer a free trial, only a demo.

The best POS system for bars and liquor stores should ideally include an ID scanner that makes age verification a simple process. With this feature, you can swiftly and accurately verify the age of your customers before selling alcohol, reducing the potential legal consequences of selling to minors.

These systems streamline and secure transactions, accommodating various payment methods, including credit cards, mobile payments, and cash. With advanced payment processing features, you can offer customers a seamless checkout experience, improving customer satisfaction and reducing the risk of errors.

POS systems can help maintain accurate stock levels, automatically reordering products when necessary and providing insights into top-selling items. This approach can reduce instances of overstocking and understocking, improving cost control and profitability.

Integrating time clock management can reduce costs and save valuable time. Leading liquor store POS systems include payroll features similar to those included with the best payroll software, enabling you to efficiently oversee employee hours.

These systems provide insights into employee records, identify high-performing cashiers, establish schedules, and accurately track worked hours – all of which contribute to more effective labor cost management.

Built-in CRM software allows you to collect and analyze customer data, including purchase history and preferences. This will help you personalize marketing strategies, loyalty programs, and promotions, creating a more engaging and tailored shopping experience.

You can easily integrate POS systems with various other software and hardware components. Many POS systems integrate with accounting software solutions, payment processors, and ecommerce platforms and can expand functionality and improve efficiency.