Critical Winery POS Features for Vineyards, Wine Shops, and Tasting Rooms

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As a winery owner, your tasting room is the jumping-off point to both building your winery’s brand as well as the first place to convert customers into wine club members. So providing an outstanding hospitality experience is crucial. A winery POS system is a valuable piece of technology that can enhance the tasting room experience and build more loyalty among your guests. Therefore, choosing the right POS vendor is important as your Winery POS features should be able to help your winery business thrive.

Gone are those days when you had to manage your winery using paper or Excel spreadsheets. Nowadays, many winery owners are shifting from outdated manual management methods to cutting-edge winery POS systems.

According to Finances Online, 59% of retailers made focusing on omnichannel capabilities their top POS priority in 2020. Similarly, 52% of retailers wanted to improve their POS systems.

Therefore, if your winery is still using the traditional cash register with a card reader and no other payment options, you’re not only lagging behind your competitors but, more importantly, losing customers. And if you’re not using an advanced loyalty tool, you’re losing repeat customers.

It’s time to revamp your winery marketing strategy by personalizing your wine club membership gifts based on a customer database that you can only access through your wine POS system.

An elite wine POS system allows you to easily manage your transactions, collect detailed customer data to better customize your services, and track your inventory.

But let’s face it, switching to a fully electronic solution or a new vendor to manage your transactions or inventory can be difficult. You’ll need to break old habits and it takes time to get things back on track. But the effort is worth it. 

Consider that your winery loses its reputation and customers without diversifying your capabilities and marketing strategy because they receive better customer service elsewhere. 

What happens if the POS vendor accidentally deletes your inventory data?  Are you still confident that the POS platform will be able to maintain and even grow your club membership program?

This article will walk you through these critical questions and help you understand which POS system features are best for your winery. Wineries have different needs in terms of size, target segment, and location.

However, the universal features required in a POS system that will help ensure the continued success of your winery operations are the following:

Winery POS Features

  1. Customer Analytics and Marketing
  2. Customer Relationship and Event Management
  3. Food Menus
  4. Online Engagement and Marketing
  5. Wine POS Speed and Reliability
  6. Stock and Inventory Tracking
  7. Wine Club Management
an infographic showing the most important winery POS features

Customer Analytics and Marketing: A Must-Have Winery POS Feature 

Customer analytics refers to the valuable data collected through your customers’ behavior to improve your marketing strategy. 

Age, gender, previous purchases, online interactions with your site, and how often consumers purchase your wines are information that your wine POS should collect. 

Other additional consumer information includes purchase history (both in-person and online), detailed order notes, lifetime value, and customer preferences. 

In order to build customer loyalty, personalization is now the best way to meet most people’s expectations. And it complements a seamless customer experience, which is known to lead customers to buy 47% more than they originally planned.

To be sure that you’ve chosen the best point of sale, ensure that the software can associate all this personal customer information with segmented marketing campaigns. 

Your POS software should also be able to help you better manage purchase histories so that you can provide upsell opportunities to your staff at a self-service kiosk or through your website.

Customer Relationship and Event Management: Improve Customer Service And Retention

With a large and diverse customer base, it is difficult for your staff to remember the personal details of your loyal customers. However, it is gratifying for a customer to be greeted by their first or last name or for your server to remember their favorite wine.

Therefore, using a solution that allows for the integration of customer relationship management (CRM) tools is an essential element that every winery should offer its customers for an exceptional customer experience.

 In addition, make it as easy as possible for your customers to make reservations for increased demand of your tasting room or tours of your vineyard. A sound winery POS system should be able to handle guest reservations for tastings, as well as remind them via SMS or email about the upcoming event at your winery.

Invest in a POS system that allows you to analyze the events organized and know which ones were the most profitable.

Menu and Order Management: Run a Bar and Kitchen at the Winery

No one can deny that there is a more natural pairing than wine and cheese. Most of your guests will want to snack on something while enjoying your wine. So you’ll need a menu setup that’s easy to manage and update, but follows your establishment’s philosophy and taste.

KORONA POS allows you to run a bar and restaurant operation in addition to managing your inventory and retail sales. Plus, you can customize all menus with custom sizes, promotions, and loyalty benefits. Better yet, a cloud POS has the advantage of being agile and allowing for real-time updates.

Online Engagement: Helps Stay in Touch With All Your Customers

With the restrictions of COVID19, your point of sale must offer customers multiple sales channels through apps and interactive online wine clubs. Indeed, more customers want your winery to move from a physical space to a digital one.

One development that fits this trend is the ability to host wine tastings at home. To provide an excellent experience for consumers outside of the winery, you need an intelligent winery POS that is tailored to this industry. This allows consumers to purchase and interact with your brand at their convenience, at any time.

KORONA POS and bLoyal provide wineries with state-by-state shipping compliance, allowing retailers to seamlessly ship products across the country without having to worry about the legality of doing so.

Speed and Reliability: POS Features For Fast Transactions

One of the most unpleasant things for any server is not quickly enough registering a customer’s wine order and having them spend minutes waiting. Another critical aspect of a POS is speedy checkout and transaction integration.

Here are the features your POS system needs for optimal transaction speed and integration: 

  • Easy barcode scanning
  • Ability to process any type of payment (digital wallet, credit, contactless)
  • Ability to send digital receipts via email 
  • Touch screen
  • Tip capture
  • Shortcut keys for popular products
  • Ability to display a custom screen for easy verification of transaction details
  • Easy access to tracking numbers
  • Ability to capture customer emails
  • Easy options to generate discounts

Stock and Inventory Tracking: Control Your Stock and Ordering

To optimize your time and increase employee efficiency, use a point-of-sale for real-time inventory and data entry.  

In the event of a stockout, the system should be able to set up alerts and automatic replenishments. Likewise, items that are overstocked should be identified so the vendor can take appropriate action, like running a promotion.

Powerful inventory management helps wineries plan both their production and ordering and run a more efficient and profitable operation.

Wine Club Membership: Bring More Loyalty to Your Winery

A winery without a wine club membership is like a forest without trees!  It’s a must.

Wine club membership is essential for service and customer retention. Make sure your POS system has a CRM solution with these features:

  • An easy sign-up process for all customers 
  • Multiple club types 
  • Daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly management of wine club benefits 
  • Automatic calculation of club member discounts.
  • A well-developed wine club membership portal (essentially a loyalty program) capable of helping customers better manage their profiles and data, their favorite wines, and their order history to place new orders quickly.

KORONA Winery POS System For Vineyards of All Sizes

KORONA’s unique approach delivers the top point of sale features requested by retail customers, wine club members, tasting room staff, and winery management. For retail customers, KORONA POS makes it easy to pay at tasting rooms and customers attending events can quickly check out using traditional or mobile devices with credit or debit cards. 

And with merchandising, including bestsellers, upselling promotions, and discounts, KORONA POS delivers the tools you need for your retail sales. 

Choosing KORONA POS means you’ll have a dedicated product specialist who will guide you through your system and can upload your inventory so you can see exactly what it will look like in your business. 

Unlike many POS software solutions that are not subscription-based, KORONA POS is a monthly fee instead of a one-time purchase. You’re probably wondering why? Well, our main objective is to provide a better POS service, and our team of developers is working to develop new tools and features based on our customers’  needs and suggestions. Therefore, buying the software outright is risky because it’s expensive and likely to be outdated within months. 

 POS Features That Set Our Solution Apart:

  • Table Service Features
  • Retail and Gift Shop Sales
  • Kitchen/Bar Printers and Ticket System
  • Loyalty & Membership Program Integration
  • Remote Back Office Cloud-Access
  • Case Discounts and Bundled Deals
  • Happy Hour and Time-Based Promotions
  • Automated Winery POS Inventory Updates
  • CRM and Loyalty Programs
  • Pairing Suggestions and Product Descriptions
  • ABC Product Analysis
  • Winery Point of Sale Reporting and Metrics.

Best Features of a Winery Point of Sale System: What to Take Away

A state-of-the-art winery POS system can significantly enhance your tasting room staff’s efficiency and ability to provide positive customer experiences. It can also help you better tailor your marketing strategies based on all the personal customer data it helps collect.

Try KORONA POS for free now, and see how it all works for yourself. Click below to get started.

About the Author

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Mahougnon Martial Amoussou

Passionate about SEO and Content Marketing. Martial also writes about retail trends and tips for KORONA POS. He loves NBA games and is a big fan of the Golden State Warriors.