Best POS For Wineries

Revel’s baseline contract requires a two-terminal minimum under a three-year standard commitment. This is the only way to secure the lowest advertised pricing; otherwise, you’ll get a custom-quoted monthly pricing plan.

Some features, such as online ordering and delivery, are a paid monthly add-on, but these features will pay for themselves (and then some).

Revel offers the following wine-specific features:

• Alcohol shipping compliance for online orders
• Liquid inventory wastage to better monitor where your inventory is going
• Wine sales by the glass, bottle, case, or mix-and-match sales with inventory breakdowns
• Custom alcohol tax rates and sales reports

If you serve customers in a retail/restaurant environment, Revel has a great food ordering POS screen with customizable modifiers, such as ordering by the glass or bottle. You can create scheduled and recurring sales for the whole store or just special items (such as a new wine you’re introducing to your menu).

You can sell wine, food, and merch online for pickup, local delivery, or shipping, with delivery monitoring. Plus, you can set minimum purchase amounts for shipping. There’s also an online appointment scheduling portal for customers to book a class, event, private tasting, or tour of your winery.

Larger businesses will appreciate Revel’s multilocation features, such as stock transfers across locations. Businesses with a catering component will appreciate Revel’s catering event scheduling features and catering reports.

Revel is iPad-based, and you can turn an iPad into a POS register, kitchen display system (KDS), customer-facing display, and self-serve kiosk.

Other hardware, such as credit card readers and barcode scanners, will have to be purchased from Revel (a representative will give you a quote), or you have to get written permission from Revel to purchase specific Revel-compatible items on your own.

Revel offers an in-house payment processing solution, Revel Advantage. Each business will get a custom quoted flat rate processing fee, which will largely depend on your business’s sales volumes, average ticket size, and time in business.

You may integrate Revel with another payment processor, such as Chase Payments, Worldpay, TSYS, or Adyen. You may have to pay an extra monthly fee to do so.

Revel’s standard contract term is three years, with a steep early termination fee if you cancel.

However, you can negotiate a shorter-term contract until you’re sure that Revel is what you need for your winery.

Take advantage of Revel’s free demo before committing to a plan!

All plans come with one register and Lightspeed’s integrated payment processor, Lightspeed Payments. If you’d like to use a third-party payment processor for taking customer payments, you’ll pay an additional monthly fee. Additional POS registers can also be added for an extra monthly cost.

Third-party integrations such as Drizly and subscription management software will cost extra.

Lightspeed’s strongest assets are its inventory capabilities and numerous third-party integrations. Winery owners will appreciate these inventorying features the most:

• Inventory breakdowns and composite items, so you can list and sell items however you want
• Exclusive online catalogs for B2B clients, with B2B customer accounts and account limits
• Auto-populating purchase order generation based on POS recommendations, minimum stock levels, and backorders
• Vendor catalogs with easy pricing updates
• Automated inventory tracking, including partial inventory deductions from bottles when you sell single glasses of wine

Lightspeed’s event rental integration, Booxi, is customizable enough that tasting room owners can book private tastings, rent out their location for parties or meetings, and get customers to sign up for winemaking classes. It seamlessly integrates with your Lightspeed website and POS register so that patrons can sign up online or in person.

Drizly, a popular alcohol delivery platform that allows you to sell alcohol online for shipping and delivery according to local laws, integrates with Lightspeed. The only competitor with this integration is Shopify.

Lightspeed also integrates with QuoteMachine, a software that allows you to sell wine club subscriptions and take custom orders with an online ordering form.

Lightspeed works on iPads and browsers, so you’re able to use both smartphones and desktop/laptop computers for this POS system. You can buy these things directly from Lightspeed or bring your own.

You can also buy items such as barcode scanners, cash drawers, and receipt printers from Lightspeed or source Lightspeed-compatible ones on your own. Lightspeed also offers full kits tailored to specific industries. Only custom quote pricing is available.

Lightspeed Payments, Lightspeed’s in-house payment processor, charges a payment processing fee of 2.6% + $0.10 per in-person transaction. Card-not-present rates are 2.9% + $0.30 and include manually keyed-in cards as well as online orders.

Individuals on the Advanced plan will get a custom Lightspeed Payments processing rate.

While you will get the best pricing on an annual Lightspeed plan, there is an early termination fee if you cancel your plan early. Until you’re sure Lightspeed is the POS for you, consider signing up for a monthly plan.

If you purchase hardware from Lightspeed, you must verify that you have received it within five business days, or it won’t qualify for the hardware warranty (14 days for Apple products, 30 days for other products).

There are several paid add-ons available, including:

How does Square compare to other free restaurant POS software systems you could consider for your winery? We’ve got an article for that! Compare restaurant POS system costs to learn more.

Square is best known for its free feature set, which includes:

• Free online ordering website
• Free subscription payments function with a saved card on file
• Free QR code ordering
• Free invoice generator and online customer inquiry form
• Free menu and order manager

Wineries can host events by selling tickets online and allowing customers to inquire about parties or special orders with an online form builder. Also, you can sell online for local pickup, local delivery, or shipping without paying a dime.

The server screen is easy to use, the system will auto-86 menu items when ingredients run out, and it has a few employee management functions. Plus, the simple-to-use inventory management features allow anyone to break down cases and create mix-and-match deals.

Square’s basic hardware offering (and the only one you need before opening your doors) is the Square contactless card reader. Square has a lot of hardware choices, so you should read our Square hardware guide to figure out exactly what you’ll need.

You must use Square’s in-house payment processor, which charges the following payment processing fees:

• In-Person Payments: 2.6% + $0.10
• Online Payments: 2.9% + $0.30
• Manually Keyed-In Card Payments: 3.5% + $0.15

Square subscriptions are month-to-month with no early termination fee. The company also has a generous hardware warranty on all Square products, whether you purchase your device directly from Square or not.

Wineries are going to need to purchase the KORONA Food add-on for an additional fee per terminal.

There are a couple of extra packages you can add to your monthly plan, but most of them are going to be more than wineries need unless you have multiple locations and are planning on selling tickets for major events at your locations.

KORONA’s open API access feature allows you to build an integration between your POS and any other third-party software, which can be very useful if you have certain software you already use or are very interested in.

KORONA’s best features are in four specific areas: inventory management, customer engagement, winery-specific integrations, and sales reporting.

This POS system’s inventory management is designed so that you can spend minimal time thinking about ordering stock. You can set minimum stock levels and get the system to reorder items for you automatically. The system will also recommend what stock to order and when depending on sales data. Plus, customers can pre-order items online, and the system will send out a request to the right vendor for any out-of-stock items.

KORONA POS offers some winery-specific integrations, including:

• bLoyal, a wine-specific membership, subscription, and loyalty program; also includes email and text marketing
• Bottlecapps is a company that will build an eCommerce store/mobile app for your business
• City Hive is a commerce platform that offers services such as eCommerce site creation and marketing to help retailers and distributors sell online

KORONA POS takes a unique approach to sales reporting. Instead of having to generate hard-to-read reports, KORONA has created a user-friendly visual-focused reporting dashboard so that you can get a holistic view of your business and dial into important sales metrics.

Many winery owners use it to determine which bottles perform best, how to nurture their best customers, and even decide store hours!

KORONA POS can run on browsers, iPads, and several types of POS hardware.

This includes hardware from Epson, PartnerTech, PAX, Genius, Dejavoo, Econduit, Aures, and Honeywell. You can purchase these yourself and follow KORONA’s directions to integrate them for no added fee.

KORONA POS does not have in-house payment processing but has opted to remain processor-agnostic, meaning that you can integrate your POS with any of several payment service providers.

This includes some of the best high-risk merchant account providers for businesses that sell alcohol.

KORONA POS has excellent contract terms, with month-to-month contracts and no cancellation fees.

You will have to sign a contract with your merchant services provider (which also processes transactions) and may run into long-term contracts with early termination fees unless you carefully read and negotiate your merchant agreement.

Shopify POS plans are month-to-month, but you can take a little off of your plan pricing if you sign up for an annual plan.

While Shopify is a good retail POS system, the software’s true strengths lie in its omnichannel inventory management and sales tools, which include:

• Sales via your age-restricted website
• Integrations with wine marketplaces
• Sales via customer accounts, with a saved card on file
• Shipping suite that helps you manage pickups, local deliveries, national and international purchases, plus tracking numbers for all orders
• Inventory syncing across all sales channels, including ones that don’t directly integrate with Shopify (any “custom” sales channels such as non-integrated wine marketplaces)
• Online ticket sales, appointment booking, and custom order form integrations

You can start and customize a wine subscription club more easily with Shopify than with any other wine club management software. You can also set up your customer loyalty program however you want, given the number of general and wine-specific loyalty integrations available.

Wineries that are also large-scale sellers and wholesalers will find that Shopify’s built-in shipping and fulfillment tools are sufficient for growing their business. There are also wholesale inventory and shipping integrations available.

Shopify offers a lot of POS hardware, ranging from the Shopify card reader that you can use with a mobile phone to retail kits for iPads (not included).

Read our post on Shopify hardware to determine what kind of hardware you’ll need at your winery and how much it will cost.

Shopify has an in-house payment processor, Shopify Payments, which you are required to use if you don’t want to pay any transaction fees. The advertised in-person rates range from 2.4 – 2.9%.

The higher your plan is, the less you’ll have to pay in fees. If you process a lot of payments every month, consider getting on a higher-level plan.

If you decide against using Shopify Payments, you’ll be charged a transaction fee per transaction. Payment processing providers such as 2Checkout, Adyen, Chase Payment Solutions, and National Processing all integrate with Shopify. This may be a good idea for businesses that don’t want to use the flat-rate pricing model and instead want the more cost-effective (but more involved) interchange-plus payment processing model.

You are permitted to use Shopify Payments to sell alcohol, but you must apply to use it and show Shopify that you have an age restriction system in place, have a winery license, and intend to follow all local and national alcohol sales laws that apply to your store.

You won’t have to worry about long-term contracts with Shopify. All POS plans are month-to-month and there’s no early termination fee to worry about.

There are contract options like annual or bi-annual plans that you could sign up for to save a little each month, but make sure you read all of the terms of service before signing up.

All plans come with one register and Lightspeed’s in-house payment processing system, Lightspeed Payments. Extra registers incur an additional monthly fee.

Lightspeed offers some great hotel guest management and wine-focused restaurant software integrations, including:

• StayNTouch and WebRezPro, two highly rated hotel reservation, check-in, housekeeping, and integrated restaurant management apps
• BevSpot, a liquid inventory management app that helps minimize profit loss and optimize ordering practices
• OpenTable, an integration that helps restaurants and tasting rooms manage waitlists, table statuses, and more
• Como, a loyalty app that allows customers to pick up and redeem loyalty points at meals, and has a subscription membership function for wine clubs

You can also book events at your restaurant/inn by creating products as timed events and selling them on your online ordering site.

Like Lightspeed Retail, Lightspeed Restaurant offers great inventory management, including perishable inventory management. You can create timed discounts, combo deals, case breakdowns and composite drinks, generate purchase orders and invoices by vendor, and more.

Lightspeed also has a great server interface, with a quick-serve POS mode to take orders with modifiers faster. It connects to the intuitive kitchen display system, which syncs with online orders.

Managers can even rearrange floor plans, and inn owners can monitor several restaurants (and several locations) starting with the Plus plan.

Lightspeed sells compatible hardware and gives users a list of compatible devices if they want to source hardware themselves.

Lightspeed Payments, Lightspeed’s in-house payment processor, charges a fee of 2.6% + $0.10 per in-person payment and 2.9% + $0.30 per card-not-present payment.

If you’re on the Premium plan or a custom enterprise-level plan, you’ll get a custom payment processing fee depending on your business’s sales volumes and average ticket size, among other factors.

You get much better pricing on the annual plan than you do on the monthly plan. However, if you cancel your plan early, there is an early termination fee. Consider a monthly plan until you’re sure Lightspeed is the POS for you.

Also, to qualify for Lightspeed’s hardware warranty (14 days for Apple products, 30 days for other products), you must verify that you have received it within five business days.