Best POS for Retail – Convenience Store & Liquor Store

 Convenience stores are small retailers that sell a variety of everyday items such as snacks, beverages, groceries, baked goods, tobacco, over-the-counter drugs, toiletries, newspapers, and magazines. In 2020, there were over 150,000 convenience stores in the United States, the majority of which were independent stores. In the most recently the reported year 2021, the industry generated nearly $650 billion in revenue, more than half of which came from automotive fuel sales. 

The first Convenience store in US

America's first convenience store chain opened in Dallas, Texas in 1927. The chain eventually became known as 7-Eleven. It is now the best convenience store. In terms of the number of chains alone, other major US convenience stores include Alimentation Couche-Tard, Speedway, and Casey’s.

In-store sales at convenience stores

In general, in-store sales at convenience stores are divided into two segments: merchandise and food. According to the most recent data, cigarettes were the best-selling product, with sales of $56 billion. Beer was followed by less than half of cigarettes sales. Within the beer category, American consumers preferred domestic premium brands such as Budweiser. During the most recently reported period, Budweiser was the number one domestic premium beer sold at US convenience stores. Other popular products sold at c-stores include snacks and candies. Potato chips were the best-selling salty snack in US convenience stores in 2020, and chocolate was at the top of the candy segment.

Changes in shopping behavior

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, US consumers have significantly reduced their frequency of shopping at convenience stores. In an August 2020 survey of a diverse generation, more than half of millennials and baby boomers reported reducing their number of convenience store visits. Two months later, another survey asked consumers what types of measures they could apply to increase their convenience store visits. While nearly 40% said there was nothing they could do, 32% believed that improving store cleanliness could increase customer visits. Other options include improving health and safety protocols, providing outdoor seating, and providing contactless or autonomous check-out.

 

As we move into the post-COVID era, it is perhaps no wonder that convenience store visits and sales are also increasing. Fortunately, management technology products for convenience stores did not stop advancing during the COVID Pandemic. Let's find out which POS is right for you in the face of increasing contactless transactions and confusion about e-cigarette sales.

 

Common and essential functions of retail POS

Barcode Management : In addition to warehousing, sales, and inventory management using barcodes attached to products, products without barcodes must be managed by printing barcodes. Registering bulk products should also be easy.

Various product management : It must be able to set and manage not only product model, color, and size, but also configuration and management of set products, and various taxes.

Inventory management : Of course, it is necessary to be able to create an order form through an alert when a product out of stock occurs (low stock alert) while managing inventory by each place of purchase. If you have multiple stores, it is natural that movement between stores should be handled as bulk, and the owner should be able to check and manage the inventory status by stores anytime, anywhere.

Customer Management : Customer profiling and purchase history management are basic, and you should be able to set customer grades to conduct events or provide rewards.

Store card : In the case of multiple stores, the store card must be used together in multiple designated shops.

Online Admin Portal : You should be able to check the status and data you need to see anytime, anywhere through the web's administrator site access.

Others : Staff's time clock management, discounts, overlapping discounts, and discounted sales management functions by membership level are also required.

 

Advanced Features for the Retail POS focus on Convenience Store

RACS-certified POS : It should automatically require scans of government-issued IDs to verify age and validity, so that legal issues can be prohibited easily. Sales transactions should be automatically integrated and controlled to prevent manual ignoring of sales personnel. This includes automated electronic age verification and compliance with purchase limits. For the e-cigarette JULL for example, the quantity of products that can be purchased at one time should be limited to 1 Juul device and 4 JUUL POD packs.

Maintain product freshness : You should be able to specifically manage the products that need to be sold fresh through the workflow and aging reports integrated into the inventory management system.

Individual sales of boxed products : Dozens of products in a box can be separated and registered with one click to reduce errors due to manual operation and save labor costs.

Real-Time Low stock alert : Real-time inventory status alert function should be able to be sent so that you can know the stock status remotely, and that product should be automatically added to the purchase order list.

Verification : Products that require age verification, such as alcohol and tobacco, must be checked.

Multi-Location(Branch) Management 

: The Cloud Base System enables fast and accurate integrated management of inventory and sales of multiple stores.

- Product reordering, product movement (including bulk) and tracking, history management, and inventory exhaustion strategies should be easy to execute through product-specific transaction status inquiry.

- Marketing function for flagship products

- If you have a warehouse, POS must have a management function that can supply the products to each store branch from a warehouse.

- Products purchased at other stores can be returned or exchanged at other stores.

- It should be possible to manage by various roles, such as by branch and total manager, and it should be easy to manage the time clock and status of employees at each branch.

Our Recommendation

Vela POS, which may be somewhat unfamiliar compared to widely known products such as Clover POS, is optimized for more complex product composition and management of mass products. Although it is not known due to insufficient marketing, it is a nice and easy system that has been developed by constantly accepting and applying users' requirements, so user satisfaction is also very high. It will also be our duty to make appropriate recommendations to merchants who need such products.

 

Please do not think of this as just an advertisement, we strongly recommend trying it at least once.

Moreover, there is a Free POS event that can be received without initial investment, so there is no need to ignore it!

We, AAMS(AA MerchantServices) always trying to be a good merchant services provider. Endless research is one of the ways to improve our professionalism and to be a good merchant service provider.