6 Best Winery POS Systems
With more than a decade of hospitality experience, Mary has worked in some of the most celebrated restaurants in the world. Her expertise is featured across Fit Small Business in restaurant, retail, and starting a business content.
This article is part of a larger series on POS Systems.
A winery point-of-sale (POS) system should help wine merchants manage inventory, sell wine on-site and online, and notify customers of allocated bottles, sales, and promotional events. If your winery hosts a tasting room, you’ll also need to sell wines by bottle, glass, or tasting flights.
Subscription-based payments and robust customer relationship management tools help wineries grow their wine clubs. Wineries in scenic settings may also host private events and need to process party deposits. So the best POS system for a winery must combine retail, wholesale, bar, and ecommerce functions.
Based on our evaluations, the best winery POS systems are:
- WineDirect: Best overall winery POS system
- Revel Systems: Best for high-volume food and beverage operations
- Commerce7: Best for ecommerce
- Vintegrate 360: Best for virtual wine tasting and wholesale operations
- VinNow: Best for custom crush winery operations
- Square for Restaurants: Best for small wineries that need a low-cost system
Looking for something different? See our guides to the best restaurant POS systems, liquor POS systems, and small business POS systems.
Top Winery POS Systems Compared
 |  |  |  |  |  | |
Setup fee | $399–$2,500 | $674 | None | Custom quote | Optional data conversion fee of $600 | None |
Monthly software fee | $79–$199+ | $99 per terminal | $99–$999 | Custom quote | $99–$489 | $0–$60+ |
Per transaction fee | 1%–2% | None | 0.25%–1% | None | None | None |
Integrated ecommerce site | ✔ | Via Vines OS integration | Integrates with your existing CMS | Integrates with your existing CMS | Integrates with your existing CMS | ✔ |
Wholesale account support | ✔ | ✔ | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Wine club management | ✔ | Via Vines OS integration | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | Via Vincipia integration |
Shipping integrations | Built-in fulfillment services | Via Vines OS integration | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
How We Evaluated Winery POS Systems
We looked for systems that help wineries support wholesale sales alongside in-person retail sales. Since online sales have become an essential lifeline for wineries, we also looked for robust ecommerce integrations and social media marketing tools. Inventory tracking, the ability to process recurring subscription payments, and customer relationship management were also considered. Finally, we awarded points based on our software experts’ experience with the POS tools.
Based on the above criteria, WineDirect is the best winery POS. The software received the highest overall score according to our grading system for winery software (4.7 out of 5). Based on our personal experience testing different POS software and working in and with small businesses that use POS systems every day, WineDirect is also one of the top software that we would personally recommend.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of our scorching criteria:
20%
Pricing
20%
Sales and Ecommerce
20%
Tasting Room Features
20%
Back Office
20%
Expert Score
20% of Overall Score
We looked at the overall affordability of the subscription, whether there were setup and transaction fees and if the system included integrated payment processing.
20% of Overall Score
We favored POS software with online ordering, the ability to handle shipments, batch billing, and wine club features. We also awarded points to systems that have tools to process B2B and wholesale orders for wineries that sell to liquor stores and restaurants. We looked for systems that integrate with robust ecommerce websites. We awarded bonus points to systems that personalize upsell suggestions and “carrot” type reminders that encourage online customers to turn a few bottles into a case order.
20% of Overall Score
We looked at reservations, table management, tipping, general mobility, and credit card pre-authorization so tasting room guests can open tabs.
20% of Overall Score
We looked for strong inventory functions that could coordinate different volumes—from barrels to pours—and sync between online and in-person sales. In addition, we favored POS systems with customer relationship management (CRM) functions, marketing tools, and of course, financial and other reports.
20% of Overall Score
In addition to our expert evaluation of features, we looked at experts in the field—winery publications and users themselves. This score also takes into account standout features and ease of use.
*Percentages of overall score
WineDirect: Best Overall Winery POS
WineDirect
Overall Score: 4.70 OUT OF 5 iOur score is based on a weighted evaluation of dozens of similar products and services conducted by our experts.
What We Like
- Integrated ecommerce site
- Built-in fulfillment services
- Onsite “carrots” prompt additional web orders
- Marketplace selling introduces your winery to a new audience
What's Missing
- No offline mode
- Cannot pre-authorize credit cards for bar tabs
- Inventory has some limitations
WineDirect Pricing
- Software subscription fee:
- Starter – $79 per month + 2% of sales
- DTC Pro – $199 per month + 1% of sales
- DTC Advanced – Custom-quoted
- One-time installation fees:
- Starter – $399
- DTC Pro – $999
- DTC Advanced – $2,500
- Hardware costs: Varies; WineDirect is browser-based, so you can operate the system from any internet-connected device
WineDirect is a great POS software for wineries that sell to customers through wine clubs, online, or third-party channels. It handles online ordering, gift cards, wine clubs, event reservations, tipping, and more. It also has excellent inventory management and CRM features and supports wholesale customer accounts. Unlike others on this list, WineDirect also includes a unique Marketplace feature that enables wineries to showcase their wines to new customers.
In our evaluation, WineDirect earned a 4.7 out of 5, with high marks for online ordering and order fulfillment. But its lack of interactive floorplans, pre-authorized bar tabs, and offline mode kept WineDirect from earning a perfect score. If those features are important to you, consider Revel Systems instead.
WineDirect's POS operates on any internet-connected device. (Image from WineDirect)
Centralized customer profiles allow your staff to easily see customer preferences and order history anywhere in your winery. (Image from WineDirect)
You can easily search current and past orders in WineDirect's order fulfillment dashboard.
(Image from WineDirect)
Built-in email marketing features send promotions to recent tasting room visitors. (Image from WineDirect)
Social media linked "like" and "share" buttons let customers easily rate and share their favorite wines across platforms. (Image from WineDirect)
Detailed customer profiles track memberships, purchases, preferences, allergies, and other details.
(Image from WineDirect)
WineDirect Standout Features
WineDirect’s Marketplace Distribution sets it apart from its peers. You can cross-promote your products through its partners and manage sales through your ecommerce account. WineDirect promotes your products through sellers that match your winery in terms of lifestyle, attitude, and interest in wines. It handles payment processing and disbursements and supports compliance with liquor sales.
WineDirect’s standout features include:
- Wine club management: WineDirect hosts a customer portal that allows your wine club members to manage their accounts from your website. An easy-to-use one-page signup sheet speeds the enrollment process. You can create welcome packages to reward new members immediately and track key club metrics like member cancellation reasons, online signups, active statuses, or credit card expiration dates. You can create multiple club types, including customer-choice clubs where members select their own bottles.
- Personalized web experience: WineDirect includes automated upsells at critical moments of the online purchase process. It calls these message prompts “carrots.” Carrots might encourage customers to add more bottles to unlock a full case price break or free shipping promotions. Carrots can appear on-site as customers add items to their virtual cart, or even appear in the cart itself before shoppers finalize payments. In the customer portal, wine club members also receive personalized recommendations based on past purchases.
- Wholesale account management: In WineDirect, wholesale customers are treated similarly to retail customers. Your wholesale clients will have detailed customer profiles and can manage their accounts through the customer portal. On the back end, you can set wholesale clients to receive orders tax-free. There is no separate interface to manage.
- Marketplace option: WineDirect maintains a virtual storefront on popular wine platforms like Vivino, allowing WineDirect wineries to showcase their wines to a massive audience. Vivino has over 46 million wine-loving users, but only 15% of the wines on the platform are purchasable through the app. WineDirect customers can showcase their wines on Vivino, with purchasable links. This can have a massive impact on your wine sales. WineDirect is the only system on this list with a marketplace feature.
- Built-in fulfillment services: WineDirect customers can hold wine in a temperature-controlled WineDirect warehouse. WineDirect’s staff will package and ship your orders from its warehouse. Packages are routed to your preferred shipper. Tracking numbers and order status are updated in your WineDirect system, and WineDirect automatically emails customers the same shipping information. You can monitor your WineDirect warehouse inventory in real time and even have branded cards, tasting sheets, and other collateral packed with your wines.
- Tock integration: You can create custom tasting experiences and curate tasting packages via WineDirect’s Tock integration. In addition to supporting customer-facing reservations and table management, Tock showcases your winery on a third-party platform alongside other experiences in your area. So travelers may come across your winery while booking a dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant and choose to book a tasting with you on another day.
Revel Systems: Best for High-Volume Restaurant-Style Tasting Rooms
Revel Systems
Overall Score: 4.53 OUT OF 5 iOur score is based on a weighted evaluation of dozens of similar products and services conducted by our experts.
What We Like
- Invoicing features support wholesale order management
- Wine club and ecommerce functions are supported by Vines OS integration
- Robust restaurant features support high-volume tasting rooms
- Integrates with UPS and FedEx for shipping
What's Missing
- Many winery features require an additional integration
- Personalized upselling tools are not robust
Revel Systems Pricing
- Software subscription fee: $99 per month for a single terminal; additional terminals require a custom quote
- One-time installation fees: $674
- Hardware costs: Custom-quoted (the system runs on iPads, but for smoothest operation they should be purchased via Revel Systems)
Revel Systems is a hybrid POS system designed to support small retail and restaurant businesses. Hybrid POS systems operate via a local area network backed up by the cloud, giving hybrid systems like Revel excellent offline functionality. The software operates on iPads and offers excellent tasting room features like pre-authorized bar tabs and table management. The built-in invoice management features support wholesale account management. A key integration with Vines OS ($299 – $1,000 per month) adds wine club functions, customer-facing tasting room reservations, and an ecommerce site.
Revel Systems earned a 4.53 out of 5 on our winery POS ranking system, earning massive points for its restaurant features and offline functionality. The fact that many winery-specific features are only available with additional (pricey) integrations docked it some points, though. If you want winery features alongside table management in a single POS, Commerce7 might be a better fit. Though crunch the numbers; Revel Systems may be lower cost than Commerce7’s higher membership tiers.
Revel System's terminals can process in-person wine purchases by bar code scan or order buttons.
(Image from Revel Systems)
Vines OS functions seamlessly sync with your Revel Systems POS, allowing you to manage your winery functions from your POS screen. (Image from Vines OS)
With Revel Systems' built-in invoicing you can print or email invoices directly from the POS screen.
(Image from Revel Systems)
Setting up tastings and events is easy in the Vines OS reservation dashboard.
(Image from Revel Systems)
Revel Systems Standout Features
As a purpose-built retail and restaurant POS, it should be no surprise that Revel Systems’ tasting room features are excellent. Revel Systems users can run their tasting room with the efficiency of a full-service restaurant with pre-authorized bar tabs, customizable floor plans, and order tickets that print in kitchens and bars. The hybrid installation also gives Revel Systems something few competitors on this list have: offline functionality.
Revel Systems’ standout features include:
- Vines OS integration: This integration adds a wealth of winery features to your Revel Systems POS. The two apps sync in real time and share customer information, online orders, inventory, product information, and discounts. Club orders appear in your Revel POS in real time, so when members arrive for pickup, the order is ready and waiting. For shipping, Vines OS integrates with ShipCompliant—like WineDirect and Commerce7—so you can easily ship your wines to qualifying locations.
- White-labeled ordering and club sites: Vines OS hosts your club, reservations, and online shopping pages. It will design these pages to look and feel like your main websites, with your logos and branding, so customers get a seamless experience.
- Tasting room features: Revel runs on iPads, so the system is highly mobile. Card readers and iPads in a handheld case allow you to take your Revel POS tableside or curbside. You can open bar tabs with a credit card swipe and pre-authorize the card to retain payment information. The system supports multiple floor plans so you can create table layouts that match all of your tasting rooms and event areas.
- Workforce management: Like Square for Restaurants, Revel Systems includes workforce management functions. You can build your staff schedules directly in your Revel Systems management dashboard and use your POS as an employee timeclock.
- Invoice management: You can toggle on invoice settings in your Revel Systems management dashboard. Once active, you can create invoices for wholesale orders directly in the POS and print or email invoices to your wholesale clients. You have the option to automate your invoices by pre-scheduling invoices to become orders in the system on their due date and set up wholesale clients with all future orders created as invoices.
- Shipping integrations: Revel integrates with UPS and FedEx to calculate shipping costs and generate labels and tracking numbers for in-store and online orders.
Commerce7: Best for Ecommerce Functions
Commerce7
Overall Score: 4.34 OUT OF 5 iOur score is based on a weighted evaluation of dozens of similar products and services conducted by our experts.
What We Like
- Ecommerce tools include personalized customer recommendations and in-cart upselling
- No setup/onboarding fee
- Customer-facing reservations with table management
- Operates via a browser on any internet-enabled device
What's Missing
- Does not include a built-in website
- No tools for wholesale account management
- Cannot pre-authorize credit cards for bar tabs
Commerce7 Pricing
- Software subscription fee:
- Basic – $99 per month + 1% transaction fee
- Pro – $499 per month + 0.5% transaction fee
- Experience – $999 + 0.25% transaction fee
- Enterprise – Custom-quoted
- One-time installation fees: None
- Hardware costs: Operates via a browser on any internet-enabled device
Commerce7 is browser-based winery software that includes POS tools along with ecommerce and wine club management functions. You can run the software from any internet-connected device, making Commerce7 an incredibly flexible system for wineries of all types. While Commerce7 does not host your ecommerce site, it integrates with most website content management systems (CMSs) to offer tools like personalized upsells and in-cart “carrot” messages that drive sales.
On our winery POS ranking criteria, Commerce7 earned a 4.34 out of 5. The strength of the system’s upselling tools, wine club management, and detailed customer profiles earned high marks. Customer-facing reservations and table management also scored points.
But as its name suggests, Comerce7 is all about the commerce side of winery management; you won’t find any built-in tools to support wholesale wine sales. If you sell directly to restaurants and resellers, you’ll probably be happier with WineDirect or Revel Systems. If you need bulk wine management, check out Vintegrate 360 and VinNow.
Commerce7 includes user-choice wine club configurations. (Image from Commerce7)
Commerce7's upselling tools include in-cart carrots that prompt additional bottle purchases.
(Image from Commerce7)
With Commerce7 you can map every tasting area in your winery and assign reservations to tables.
(Image from Commerce7)
Customer-facing reservation screens are easy to use. (Image from Commerce7)
You can create and track email blasts from your Commerce7 dashboard. (Image from Commerce7)
Commerce7 Standout Features
With Commerce7, you can customize your wine clubs to a granular level. You can make products accessible online only to specific club levels and allow members to build their own boxes of club wines. Commerce7 works with most preexisting websites, but if you don’t have the bandwidth for a full site build, you can use one of their free site templates for your winery’s online sales site. You’ll’ be on your own for hosting services, though.
Commerce7’s standout features include:
- Partial offline mode: When you lose internet access—which can happen a lot when walking through a large winery—Commerce7 caches your POS data locally. When you regain internet access, the system will update from the cached information. This is not full offline functionality like Revel Systems offers. It can’t spool credit card payments when offline. But it can save you from losing valuable information as you move from vineyard to warehouse to tasting room.
- Personalization: You can choose what information to display to online guest shoppers and wine club members of various tiers. You can customize wine pricing to show member’s-only prices and even generate personalized wine recommendations based on customer’s past purchases.
- Automated emails: With the click of a couple of buttons, you can send automated emails to club members when their cards on file are close to expiring. This saves a lot of time and potential headaches before you batch bill wine club runs. You can also create custom email campaigns when you release new vintages or offer promotions. Your email campaigns are trackable in your Commerce7 dashboard, allowing you to see how many emails were opened and what sales came from each email campaign.
- Smart cart tools: You can create in-cart incentives in your online store and dangle them like carrots before customers finalize their orders. For example, you can remind customers with four bottles in their cart that they’ll get a price break or free shipping if they make it a six-bottle case. Commerce7 also supports a single, consistent cart across multiple user devices. So customers can start a purchase on your website, then complete it from their smartphone days later.
- Detailed product listings: Adding new products to your online store and POS is easy. Commerce7’s product entry page includes specific fields for teasers, product descriptions, tasting notes, shipping information, and various prices (for discounts, case prices, and club members). You can customize the slug for the product link and add a meta-description to make your wine easily findable in internet searches. Users can also add custom templates to the product page, handy if your winery is known for detailed tasting notes or providing tech sheets to wholesale clients.
- Reservations: You can add reservations to your online site, allowing customers to book tastings themselves. The reservations are customizable; you can offer multiple tiers of tasting events or give guests the option to add additional bottles to their tasting or upgrade to reserve wines.
- Table management: Commerce7 users can create detailed floor plans of tasting rooms and private event areas in the POS. You can automatically assign reservations to specific tables or tasting areas and view reservation trends over time.
Vintegrate 360: Best for Virtual Tasting & Wholesale
Vintegrate 360
Overall Score: 4.01 OUT OF 5 iOur score is based on a weighted evaluation of dozens of similar products and services conducted by our experts.
What We Like
- Includes tools to track wine making process
- Supports multiple styles of virtual wine tastings
- Wholesale account management tools
What's Missing
- Pricing is all custom-quoted
- Lacks personalized upselling tools
Vintegrate 360 Pricing
- Software subscription fee: Custom-quoted
- One-time installation fees: Custom-quoted
- Hardware costs: Browser-based system runs on any internet-connected device
Vintegrate 360 is an all-around excellent winery POS aimed at small and midsized wineries making up to $2 million a year. It offers a fantastic set of features for retail, inventory, wine clubs, events, and wholesale clients. Vintegrate 360 also includes insightful tools for virtual wine tastings, which can expand your winery’s reach beyond your tasting room. Like Commerce7, Vintegrate 360 is a browser-based system. You can run the POS and management dashboard from any web-enabled device.
With 4.01 out of 5 stars, this system earned points in several areas. With Vintegrate 360, you’ll find everything from wine clubs and online order management to wholesale and B2B sales. It offers reservation management down to the table and setup times, email marketing, and some of the best inventory control of all the winery POS systems reviewed.
It lost some points for pricing though; you’ll need to call for a custom quote. And the personalized upselling features are not as robust as those offered by WineDirect and Commerce7. But if you need tools to manage your wine-making process and B2B sales in addition to POS and ecommerce tools, Vintegrate 360 will be your best fit.
Vintegrate 360 has tools for in-app virtual wine tastings that drive wine sales. (Image from Vintegrate 360)
Vintegrate 360 Standout Features
As the name implies, Vintegrate 360 is comprehensive winery management software. The system includes tools to support virtually every task in a busy winery operation, from tracking your wine-making process to managing wholesale accounts and receiving in-person and online orders.
Vintegrate 360’s standout features include:
- Bulk inventory management: Manage your bulk inventory by wine program to maximize profits. Track intended use from grape-picking through to blending and bottling. You can explore the impact of various bottling formats (750 mL, half bottles, or large format). You can also forecast how many bottles you will have of a particular vintage and identify your potential sellout date.
- Wholesale account management tools: Beyond the basic invoice management functions brands like Revel Systems offer, Vintegrate 360 includes a complete web portal for your wholesale clients. Clients can log in to their accounts to place orders, see open invoices, and make payments.
- Virtual wine tasting events: You can host virtual tastings directly on your Vintegrate 360 platform. Tastings can be live-streamed or pre-recorded and either open to the public or private. You can ship wines to tasting attendees in advance so customers can follow along. Best of all, when your tasting is virtual, attendees have access to your ecommerce site the whole time. You can easily convert virtual tasting attendees to new customers or wine club members.
- Wine production management: Like VinNow, Vintegrate 360 offers tools to track your wine production from field to bottle. You can forecast planned harvest tonnage and compare those projections to your actual harvest. You can compare yields from individual plots year over year to identify trends. Vintegrate 360 helps you estimate the cost and composition of proposed wine blends and tracks vessels of various sizes throughout your cellar.
- Workforce management: Like Square for Restaurants and Revel Systems, Vintegrate 360 includes built-in employee management functions like an employee time clock. You can also track sales by employee and view wine club signups and other key sales metrics by staff member. While Vintegrate 360 does not appear to support credit card tips, you can award commissions based on individual staff sales reports.
- Driver’s license integration: Vintegrate 360 includes a function that they call “fast collect.” This feature collects customer contact and age information from a driver’s license swipe. With this information, Vintegrate 360 then generates a new customer profile so you can save preferences and payment information.
VinNow: Best for Custom Crush Operations
VinNow
Overall Score: 3.90 OUT OF 5 iOur score is based on a weighted evaluation of dozens of similar products and services conducted by our experts.
What We Like
- Operates on iPads
- Unlimited number of terminals
- Flexible retail and restaurant modes
- VinTracker tool tracks bulk wine costs
What's Missing
- User interface is dated
- Does not include integrated ecommerce site
- No on-site upselling tools
VinNow Pricing
- Software subscription fee:
- 150 and fewer wine club members: $99.00 per month
- 151 to 500 wine club members: $249.00 per month
- 501 to 1,000 wine club members: $389.00 per month
- 1,001 and more wine club members: $489.00 per month
- One-time installation fees: No installation fee, but if you need to convert existing data from another system there is a $600 fee
- Hardware costs: Browser-based system runs on any internet-connected device
VinNow’s pricing is based on wine club membership, as opposed to features or sales size. It works on iPads and, like Square for Restaurants, does not limit the number of registers. In fact, VinNow allows you to designate some iPads for retail functions and others for restaurant tools.
The VinNow system also includes the most robust bulk wine tracking features of any system on this list. The tools are specifically designed to track the most granular details of specific wine vats including tracking blending, chemical additions, and alcohol volume; making this an excellent system for wineries that make wine for other wineries under custom labels.
These detailed features earned VinNow a 3.90 out of 5 in our evaluation. VinNow offers many functions that make managing your wine clubs easier. You can create as many clubs as you wish and set tiers within them. The bulk wine tracking supports a whole additional revenue stream for your winery. But a few missing features like customer-facing reservations and automated upselling tools lost this system some points. If you need these tools, try Commerce7 or WineDirect instead.
VinNow shows your winery's key performance metrics in easy to read graphs. (Image from VinNow)
Detailed inventory tools track wines by the bottle, case, barrel, or tank. (Image from VinNow)
The VinNow management dashboard has sidebars and expandable menus to fit a lot of information on a single screen. (Image from VinNow)
VinNow's work order management tracks every process of the winemaking process. (Image from VinNow)
VinNow Standout Features
VinNow’s unique pricing structure is based on the number of people in your wine clubs. It does not limit the number of registers you can use. Like WineDirect, Vintegrate, and Commerce7, VinNow is browser-based and runs on any internet-enabled device. VinTracker, which manages bulk wine inventory and sales, is an extra $69 per month. And an ecommerce shopping cart is an additional $50 per month. Considering the stackable pricing, wineries that are more ecommerce-driven will likely spend less with a system like WineDirect or Commerce7. But if you manage a custom crush facility, VinNow will be your best fit.
VinNow’s standout features include:
- VinTracker: For wineries that make their own wine on-site or custom crush wine for smaller winemakers, the VinTracker bulk wine tracking tools are invaluable. This system allows you to track wine vessels of any size throughout your winery—tank, vat, barrel, keg, drum, etc.—and assign work orders to specific staff to manage the winemaking process. You can track specific wine blends, when wine is topped off, when chemicals are added, and the amount of alcohol by volume (ABV). The system also includes detailed invoice tools to charge custom crush clients for the work you do on their wine.
- Wine club customization: Customers can give memberships as gifts and join more than one club. Signing up is as easy as clicking a button, and the software will remind you and your members about expiring credit cards, declined cards, and more.
- Order holds and email messaging: Customers can place holds on single shipments or put their club accounts on hold for a specific amount of time without canceling their membership. For members with second homes or who travel seasonally, VinNow can skip specific months each year. You can send emails to all customers with orders on hold for on-winery pickup or email all wine club members whose credit cards will expire before the next billing cycle.
- Shipping integrations: VinNow integrates with UPS and FedEx so that you can print shipping labels for your wine club deliveries directly from your VinNow POS dashboard.
Square for Restaurants: Best for Low-Volume Wineries Needing a Low-Cost POS
Square for Restaurants
Overall Score: 3.88 OUT OF 5 iOur score is based on a weighted evaluation of dozens of similar products and services conducted by our experts.
What We Like
- Baseline POS is free to use
- Square subscription includes free online ordering website
- Wine club management and shipping tools are available via integrations
- Square invoices support wholesale orders
What's Missing
- Many winery tools require additional integrations
- Cannot pre-authorize in-person tabs
- Customer support is not as robust as others on this list
Square for Restaurants Pricing
- Software subscription fee:
- Starter – $0
- Plus – $60 per month
- Premium – Custom-quoted
- One-time installation fees: None; installation is do-it-yourself.
- Hardware costs: Varies; the system operates on iPads. You can bring your own or purchase through Square.
Square for Restaurants is a cloud-based POS that runs on iPads. You can download the app from the Apple app store after you sign up for a Square account. Once you attach a card reader, you’re good to go. Setup is easy, and you can do it yourself. Best of all, the baseline POS software and the integrated Square Online Store are free to use; all you pay are credit card processing fees.
Square’s pricing, easy setup, and a slew of winery-supporting third-party integrations earned Square for Restaurants an overall score of 3.88 out of 5 in our winery POS ranking. Like Revel Systems, Square for Restaurants is not purpose-built for wineries. So making the system work for your wine club or wholesale operation requires add-ons and third-party integrations. None of the available add-ons are a robust reservation management tool, though. If you need customer-facing online reservations, you’ll be better served by Commerce7, WineDirect, or VinNow.
The free Square Online Store showcases product images, descriptions, and stock levels.
(Image from Hi Lo Liquor market)
Square's invoice tool tracks paid and outstanding invoices at a glance. (Image from Square)
Square's integration with Vincipia lets you manage wine club shipments from your Square dashboard. (Image from Vincipia)
A Biermi integration helps craft wine and beer makers manage local deliveries and memberships.
(Image from Square)
Square for Restaurants Standout Features
Square for Restaurants excels as a low-cost POS solution for wineries. The baseline POS is free to use for unlimited terminals, and the system runs on iPads, which you can supply yourself. The free POS does not support customized floor plans; for that, you’ll need to upgrade to the Plus level at $60 per month. But that’s still a lower cost than any of the other options on this list.
While many winery functions require additional integrations, these are easy to add from the Square App store. Considering the high cost of many systems in this list, putting in the time to customize a Square POS will likely be worth it for small wineries.
Square for Restaurants’ standout features include:
- Free integrated online store: Your Square account comes with a free online store. All you pay are Square’s processing fees for online payments, which are currently 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. You can add this store to an existing winery website or host it for free on the Square domain. You can sync products between your online store and your POS.
- Square invoices: You can send invoices to wholesale clients from your Square dashboard. Like other Square tools, there is no monthly fee to use Square Invoice; all you pay are transaction fees on customer payments. Currently, those fees are 2.9% + 30 cents for online credit card payments and 1% on ACH transactions. You can track outstanding invoices, see when your emails have been opened, and send automated payment reminders to customers.
- Unlimited terminals: Square for Restaurant’s free baseline POS package allows you to download the Square POS app on unlimited devices. While only paying transaction fees on credit card payments, you can run the POS in your tasting room and event spaces and throughout your winery.
- Tips and commission tracking: In addition to tracking tips, which most others on this list do, Square for Restaurant’s users can add commission tracking to reward staff for selling wine club memberships or a flat rate per sale. You can tier commissions to award a bigger commission rate to more senior staff and exclude certain products or services from commission.
- Vincipia integration: Vincipia is a Square partner app that allows you to synchronize sales, product, and customer information between Square and the Vincipia platform. With this integration, you can manage wine clubs and batch process credit card transactions for wine club shipments. Vincipia users pay 2% plus 10 cents per Vincipia transaction. These fees are on top of Square’s payment processing fees.
- Biermi integration: Biermi is a free local online ordering and delivery app designed specifically for craft beverage makers. It is free to use and allows artisan beverage makers to create member clubs and deliver their products locally (where it is legal to do so).
- Shipping integrations: Square integrates with UPS, FedEx, and DHL for shipping. You can print shipping labels for these services directly from your Square dashboard. For additional couriers and automated shipping tools, you can add the Easyship integration; free for up to 100 labels per month and up to $49 per month for 2,500 labels. Easyship allows you to offer a selection of delivery services at checkout, generate shipping labels in-app, schedule pickups with freight companies, and send automated tracking emails to customers.
Bottom Line
Choosing a robust POS system that best serves the needs of your winery is key amid fierce competition (there are more than 11,000 wineries currently operating in the US) and industry trends such as the small but growing segment of online alcohol sales. In 2019, online wine orders accounted for 55% of online alcohol purchases, which grew as much as 533% at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumers between the ages of 25 and 34 years old accounted for 31% of online wine purchases during 2020.
WineDirect received the highest score across our grading system for its comprehensive winery management features alongside its affordable pricing. Starting at just $79 per month, plus 2% per transaction, WineDirect is affordable for small, fledgling wineries. Users can easily manage large wine clubs and manage wholesale accounts from the same customer dashboard. Personalized upselling features drive web sales, and built-in fulfillment services make shipping a breeze. With three pricing levels, wineries of all sizes can find a subscription that works for their business. To see if WineDirect is a fit for your winery, visit WineDirect for a demo.
