There has been a revolution in the beer industry with the rise of the locally focused, craft breweries. North Carolina specifically has had a large rise in success of these companies. Many of them have tasting areas or even entire tasting buildings designed to allow their customers to enjoy a fresh product and hang out and have a great time. For us, we have seen this create a challenge in operations for these clients to maximize profit and minimize risk.
Suddenly companies that were focused on making a great brew or brews have put themselves into thinking about taking payment at their plant for the product. What’s the best way to do that? How much does it cost to process credit cards? How would we handle cash? Do we need an ATM? How do those work? How do we securely count and store cash?
All of these are very valid questions. The average credit card fee is around 3% of transactions. So if you are a business owner, if you can take cash it saves you 3% right off the top just for accepting payment for goods. “Well our customers don’t typically carry cash,” you may say, which is certainly possible. Most transactions less than $20 still occur today with cash. How can you facilitate that? Typically an ATM can provide inexpensive access to cash for your clients and reduce the fees you would have to pay to Visa/Mastercard/Amex. You would receive 100% of the surcharge fee on the ATM which you could use as a revenue source, or offer some loyalty discount, or even use it as a donation to a cause of your choice depending on your strategy. You could even offer a coupon on merchandise like T-shirts and other branding items through the ATM which would further incentivize the customer to champion your brand.
Once the cash is being used at the register, you have to consider how you would verify the notes are good and securely store them. A solution like a CCi from Volumatic allows your cashier to verify notes accepted are good bills and keep them safe to mitigate robbery. The CCi also allows the cash to only have to be counted once, which the average at most retail locations is typically 6-8 times a note is counted from acceptance to deposit in the bank. The CCi allows you to focus on what you do best, selling your brand and your beer and makes cash handling a background activity instead of being at the forefront in your cashier’s mind.
For more information on how your brewery can more effectively create a buying process and handle the transaction load associated with a tasting area, give us a call, we’re here to help