Mobile Point of Sale is Changing the Cellar Door Experience

Mobile POS systems let you sell where you couldn’t before. When your POS is portable - you can use it at a private tasting, out on a deck, or as you’re walking through the barrel room. If you’re at an off-site tasting event, it’s now possible to take a sale right then and there. Using a point of sale system that gets you out from behind the tasting bar and creates a more intimate experience. 

There are a lot of relatively simple things happening on the mobile POS that traditional systems just don't do. If a customer has an expired card on their wine club, the system will prompt the staff. If the customer has a package to pick up - the system prompts the staff. The mobile POS is definitely “smarter” than a traditional system. Really, it focuses on the user experience. Each mobile POS system is different - but if you look at the Vin65 POS, or something like Square, there is a larger focus on capturing customer data - especially email addresses. The single most important factor in selling more wine is obtaining an email address - and emailing the customer receipt is a great way to accomplish this. The customer information is often more important than the transaction itself. From the mobile POS, the staff can easily see the customer, their lifetime value, if they belong to a club, plus any important notes. 

Customers are experiencing the mobile POS at stores like Apple, at small retailers using Square, inside taxi cabs and at all sorts of places; they can tell you what they like about it. If the line gets long in the cellar door and you only have one or two registers you can use the mobile POS to “line bust”.

Here are 5 tips for using the mobile POS as a sales booster:

1. Number one priority should be capturing an email address when entering a sale. This is the best way to follow up with the customer and get them to repeat purchase on your online store. 

2. Make sure your mobile POS is connected to your other channels (such as ecommerce, wine club, etc.). When you have all of your customer information in a central spot, and available to your front line to act on - it becomes very powerful.

3. Setup carrots in the carrot engine. Use prompts, helpful tips and messaging to guide tasting room staff with different customers. Ensure your staff knows if this person is a first time visitor, a repeat visitor, or a club member, so that they know how to treat them. If the customer has been to the cellar door 2-3 times this year, the carrot could display a prompt asking them to join a wine club to save.

4. Constantly look for ways to improve the customer experience. There is nothing worse than having a great experience during a private tasting and then coming out having to wait in a long line to buy wine. Mobile POS systems are cheap - and they run on phones or tablets (giving you the ability to scale up or down). You can move the sales experience into a private tasting, the vineyard, or wherever makes sense for your winery.

5. Train and empower staff. Most mobile POS systems tend to be easier to use than traditional cash registers, but keep in mind that it’s still important to train and empower staff. Ensure they know how to use it.