Essential POS Features For Your Bar Or Brewery In 2024
Learn what features you should look for when purchasing a point of sale system for your bar or brew pub.
Kymberlin started contributing to Merchant Maverick as a freelancer in 2022 and joined the team as the full-time small business health insurance expert in 2023. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Pacific University in 2020 and continues to reside in Portland, Oregon.
WRITTEN & RESEARCHED BY
Kymberlin BushKymberlin started contributing to Merchant Maverick as a freelancer in 2022 and joined the team as the full-time small business health insurance expert in 2023. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Pacific University in 2020 and continues to reside in Portland, Oregon.
Staff Writer
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Matt has been helping small businesses make decisions since 2017. He has written reviews and articles across many different channels but specializes in the point of sale, payroll, and small business insurance categories and has been quoted in articles for Fox Business, Forbes, and other publications. Prior to joining Merchant Maverick, Matt was a journalist and editor for 14 years for a pair of weekly newspapers. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon and currently resides in Gladstone, Oregon.
REVIEWED BY
Matt ShermanMatt has been helping small businesses make decisions since 2017. He has written reviews and articles across many different channels but specializes in the point of sale, payroll, and small business insurance categories and has been quoted in articles for Fox Business, Forbes, and other publications. Prior to joining Merchant Maverick, Matt was a journalist and editor for 14 years for a pair of weekly newspapers. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon and currently resides in Gladstone, Oregon.
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Advertiser Disclosure: Our unbiased reviews and content are supported in part by affiliate partnerships, and we adhere to strict guidelines to preserve editorial integrity.
The best POS systems for small businesses will be helpful for your bar or brewery, but there are some essential POS features for bars that you can’t afford to miss.
The best point of sale systems for bars, nightclubs, breweries, and pubs will have bar-specific software integrations, ample hardware options, low payment processing fees, and give you a choice of payment processor.
Here are the top things you should look for when buying a POS system for your bar or brewery.
7 Essential POS Features For Bars
For brevity’s sake, we’ll use “bar” to cover all manner of nightlife/establishments that serve alcohol (nightclubs, bars, breweries, pubs, food carts, etc.) moving forward in this article.
Here are what we consider to be the most essential POS features for bars:
Flexible Menu Scheduling
Unlike full-service restaurants, bars change their menus as often as multiple times a day for special happy hour pricing, game-day specials, seasonal food/drinks, and more.
You’ll reduce employee errors and lost profits if your POS offers a flexible menu that can automatically accommodate these frequent changes.
Age Verification Software
This might seem like a no-brainer, but having a POS system that can scan IDs, check for fraudulent cards, and keep records of legal alcohol sales could be crucial to your business in the event of an investigation.
24/7 Customer Support
Without fail, you will have a transaction error at midnight on a Tuesday when most customer service centers are closed, so 24/7 customer support from your POS system is more crucial for bars than other businesses.
Robust Inventory Management
With liquid inventory tracking, bartenders can track the alcohol poured into each drink and get alerts when specific ingredients are running low. POS systems can also store drink recipes, report on best-sellers, and allow you to check your stock in real time from anywhere.
Employee Management
At the very least, your bar needs a POS system with basic time-tracking, scheduling, and training capabilities for your employees.
Realistically, you’re going to want employee management and reporting tools beyond just the basics.
Open Tabs & Suspended Tickets
Your POS system should have a pre-authorization feature that saves a customer’s card information as soon as the tab is opened, along with an “open ticket” or “suspend” function. Larger businesses will also need to be able to merge and transfer tickets between servers.
A “split tab” feature is also useful for large parties that order a lot of drinks, food, and/or bottles of wine.
In-Depth Reporting Features
Any POS worth the cost is going to offer some basic reporting features. The best will have in-depth reports based on automatically collected data from every transaction, visit to your store, and interaction with marketing materials.
POS reporting helps you gain insight into your business operations to help you improve your sales, employee turnover rate, and customer satisfaction.
The Bottom Line On Essential POS Features For Bars
Keep in mind, even if it has the features above, that you need to do a lot of research before agreeing to any POS system.
These are just the tip of the iceberg, but look around for the answers or contact a sales rep for any POS system you’re considering and you’ll leave with a good understanding of the system as a whole.
Kymberlin started contributing to Merchant Maverick as a freelancer in 2022 and joined the team as the full-time small business health insurance expert in 2023. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Pacific University in 2020 and continues to reside in Portland, Oregon.
View Kymberlin Bush's professional experience on LinkedIn.
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Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
Our unbiased reviews and content are supported in part by affiliate partnerships, and we adhere to strict guidelines to preserve editorial integrity. The editorial content on this page is not provided by any of the companies mentioned and has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone.
We Recommend Square POS For Your Business 🏆User-friendly & feature-rich point of sale system with affordable pricing.Square POS is an intuitive and simple point of sale platform. It offers customizable tools and a variety of add-ons to fit your business needs and reach your goals.Get StartedNo credit card required