What is a Wine Inventory System?
One of the most important tasks at a bar is keeping track of inventory. A wine inventory system plays an important role in overall inventory management. It helps keep count of wine stocks on hand; flags how well or poorly each wine sells; the profits it brings; and alerts you to broader sales trends in the market through customer demand.
A Great Wine Inventory System Can Make Your Cellars Sing. Know How
What is a Wine Inventory System?
Wine inventory keeps an up-to-date count of all your wine stocks, and tracks your wine sales. A good wine inventory system is regular and thorough. It records every detail of a wine bottle, including brand name, vineyard, region, sub-region, varietal, vintage, price, year of purchase, each time a bottle is used, and best-by date. The data gives bar owners and managers better control over their winemarking stock levels; alerting them to par levels and when to reorder; and guiding their buying decisions.
These days modern wine inventory systems do even more that what paper-based inventory could manage. These automated, software-based solutions use digital tools for stocktaking. The data they gather enters seamlessly into a device like a cell-phone, tablet, or laptop and is automatically organised into spreadsheets, tables and graphs for quick and precise reading. The inventory app allows immediate, multi-user, multi-device accessibility, making convenience and accuracy its foremost selling points.
A digital wine inventory system doesn't just alert the bar manager when stocks are low, it can be preset to automatically process fresh orders. It can even be integrated with the point-of-sale (POS) system of a bar to help a bar manager keep track of real-time sales and profit margins each bottle brings. Using advanced analytics, it also generates periodic reports that forecast demand, red-flag losses, and prompt profit-making alterations to the bar's operations. The modern wine inventory management system makes wine storage and cataloguing infinitely easier than it used to be by merging seamlessly with a bar's overall operations.
Bar Inventory
- The cork of a wine bottle adds to the flavour of the wine. It is therefore advisable to keep wine bottles lying down, so that the wine comes into contact with the cork.
- Wine bottles are best stored with their labels facing out to allow easy reading. Turning a wine bottle around frequently to check its details can harm the ageing process.
Why is it Important to Have a Wine Inventory System?
Manual wine inventory systems track wine stock with the help of cellar books and spreadsheets. This may be the conventional way to manage a wine collection in a bar, but it's tedious and prone to error. A digital wine inventory system, on the other hand, uses inventory management software to streamline the process and integrate it with the larger operations of an establishment.
It's crucial for a wine seller or bar owner to set up the right wine inventory system to manage wine stocks in real time. Here's how a modern wine inventory system can make all the difference to a bar-
- An automated wine inventory management system lightens the load of a bar manager. It saves time and effort and eliminates oversight and error that may arise from manual inventory.
- A wine inventory system comprehensively catalogues all the relevant information of a wine collection on a wine rack, including origin, varietal, vineyard, age, price, etc. This makes it possible to immediately locate a wine.
- Like all food and beverages, wines too have a best-by date. An inventory management software lets you know how long a wine bottle has stayed in the wine cellar. This is important for left beyond its best-by date, the wine can go bad and may have to be chucked out. A good wine inventory management system can prevent wastage and loss.
- Every bottle in multiple cellars can be categorized and sorted into different wine lists for easy access.
- Integrating the POS system with the wine inventory lets you keep a finger on the pulse of sales. The system will also prepare reports of sales and inventory stocks to better analyze demand trends, predict demand, and calibrate pricing for higher profits.
- A smart wine inventory system also lets you place orders for wine by keeping tabs on cellar inventory and sales reports.
- An automated wine inventory system allows controlled multi-user access across multiple devices, making it easier to monitor inventory.
Bottle Scale
Restaurant Management
Keeping track of your wine is a challenge, when you just can't remember what's in the cellar.
What you need is a reliable and efficient wine inventory system.
Types of Wine Inventory Systems
Whether you're a bar manager, a serious wine collector, or an amateur wine lover, you'll want to organize your wine collection in a way that makes you proud and serves you well. From simple apps to help manage a limited collection of wine bottles in a home wine collection, to elaborate wine inventory systems for a bar, there's something for everyone in the market.
- Private wine cellars and home wine collections will benefit from basic, easy use wine cellar software. These wine managing apps log a wine's essential data, like name, vintage, varietal, region, price, time of purchase and use. Some even include tasting notes. Many of these apps are free, although some charge a nominal monthly or yearly fee.
- More sophisticated wine cellar apps categorize wines into different lists in order to organize a large and complex wine collection for easy use and search. These apps typically serve wine collections in bars and restaurants, often across multiple locations.
- The cellar management software is designed for professional wine management that deals with large cellars and warehouses. These software solutions don't just keep count, but categorise wines by wine rack and bottle tag.
Liquor Dispenser
- Wine sales saw a 1.5% value growth in the U.S. market in 2020, reversing 2019 trends, according to an International Wine and Spirits Records (IWSR) study.
- Despite Covid-19's dampening spirits, US saw low-alcohol wines doubling their growth in 2020.
How Does an App-based Wine Inventory System Work?
Gone are the days when you had to go around the wine cellar with a clipboard in hand, making tasting notes and logging bottle tags to keep track of a wine collection. Today, most wine inventory management systems include apps and bar code scanners that make data entry a cakewalk. With the bar code scanner, you can now just scan bottle barcodes and have all the information you need merge with the wine inventory management system app. The app gives you real-time information at your fingertips.
Detailed search options provided by the wine cellar software will help you retrieve any wine bottle you're looking for from the depths of your cellar. This way, you can look for any bottle any time, and get real-time updates of your wine inventory on your mobile device. It will save you time, and multiple trips to the cellar.
Wine inventory can be managed and streamlined with a cellar management software. By integrating with a bar's POS system, the wine inventory app can send and receive sales information, order updates, and other alerts vital to the business. The app can automatically pull up inventory data, which can help the wine bar prepare sales reports and analyze business growth.
Restaurant Inventory
Alcohol Consumption
Wine Inventory System Can Help With Menu Pricing? How's That?
A robust wine inventory management system makes managing wine easy. It can, additionally, lower pour cost (cost incurred in making a drink) and drive up profits. By streamlining the inventory management process, it can plug the holes in cellar management, pointing out wines that aren't selling well and deserving of fewer purchase orders. This will lead to reduced loss and wastage. As losses go down, the bottomline is more likely to even out.
On the other hand, with detailed sales reports and business analyzing tools provided by the wine cellar management system, you can take gain deeper insight into how the business is running and make better decisions for it. The system will outline steps towards lowering pour cost and raising the retail price of particular drinks to increase revenue, while prompting you to offer discounts on slow-moving wines.
Pricing Strategy
Good wines can go bad if they’re not consumed in time.
But it's difficult to keep an eye on every wine's best-by date. What's the best way to keep track?
Who Needs a Wine Inventory System?
From wine connoisseurs, to wine bar managers, a good wine inventory system benefits every active wine buyer. So whether you're a wine collector or a manager at a popular wine bar, you can find the right wine management software you need to make cellar management a breeze.
Collectors- Wine collectors who have elaborate wine cellars at home often rely on the manual stock-taking process by going through their wine racks and bottle tags with a clipboard in hand. However, with a simple wine inventory management software, data entry,
tasting notes and bin organization becomes a breeze.
Bar owners- With the right management software, bar owners and bar managers can focus on managing the bar instead of spending all their time managing inventory. The cellar management software will do the job for you and take notes, analyze inventory stocks, and keep track of sales.
Wine lovers- Wine lovers who wish to read wine reviews, taste a new brand, or make an informed decision before buying a wine bottle need only scan the bottle with a bar code scanner. Apps for wine connoisseurs have wine reviews, price lists, brief histories, discussion platforms, and several other features.
Supply Chain
New Product
How to Select a Great App-based Wine Inventory System
Every wine inventory software offers a set of inventory management features. Be sure to study these well before committing to a purchase or subscription.
Bar code scanner
Some wine inventory software solutions help you take inventory quickly and easily by simply scanning the bar code on a wine bottle. All you need is a handheld bar code scanner or a smartphone camera. Once scanned, a bottle's vital information is transferred to the wine inventory software. You don't have to take notes with a pen and paper, or key information into a device when you have a bar code scanner.
Wine search
A well-built search option in the inventory management software helps you keep track of each and every bottle in your wine inventory across multiple locations. Just enter the necessary keywords to pinpoint a bottle.
Wine data tracking
A cellar management system keeps track of all historical data of your wine inventory. At the same time, it also tracks sales at the bar. This data can be used to make better business decisions and accelerate growth.
Cellar management analysis
A wine inventory system can keep track of data and process it accurately to prepare analytical reports of inventory stocks, sales, profits, and losses. This can help a bar manager make informed decisions about cellar management and bar operations.
Labor Costs
Wine is a big investment and needs to be stored well.
A good cellar alone won't do much good without a good wine inventory system. But what exactly is a good wine inventory system?