Part III

Keeping up with customer trends and changing demand isn’t the only challenge with managing inventory. As a result of the COVID crisis, people are just buying more.

As Liz Paquette from Drizly noted in early May of this year, “the past week showed that Drizly sales are growing six times our average growth rate in 2020. Over the last three days [May 15–17], that rate jumped to ten times that average.”

That means store owners are facing one of their worst fears: empty shelves. Making sure your most popular items are in stock is as important as ever.

Retail liquor can expect these trends to continue. According to Drizly’s 2020 consumer survey report, “American adults significantly increased alcohol purchases for home consumption since stay-at-home orders widely took effect.” That change seems to be driven largely by the move from bars and restaurants to at-home consumption.

Per the survey, “Prior to March, a majority of respondents habitually frequented on-premise venues at least a couple of times per month, with nearly and a third venturing out at least once or twice per week,” but not surprisingly, “as of June, the data points to more than two thirds of adults of legal drinking age planning to visit bars and restaurants less frequently through year-end compared to pre-March 2020.”

Did you know that TigerPOS inventory management issues an alert when your stock drops below a certain volume? Or, even better, it automatically creates a purchase order for that item.

Customers are taking the same approach. “We’re seeing that consumers are placing larger orders, indicating a ‘stock up’ mentality, now spending on average 50% more than normal on Drizly,” Paquette says. Businesses have to be prepared to handle the extra volume, and maintaining your supply is a critical part of that process.

TigerPOS makes it easy—manage your stock with inventory alerts, get on top of trends with sales reports, and stay ahead of the market with automatic purchase orders. Call us today to learn more.