Ultimate Holiday Planner for Restaurants
Download Now!
Imagine a busy Friday evening at your liquor store, where customers are lining up. The last thing you want is a manual, time-consuming process to verify every customer's age.
But selling alcohol comes with a serious responsibility—ensuring that no underage customer walks away with a bottle. This is where OneHubPOS with its inbuilt age verification functionality makes all the difference. It streamlines the entire buying process and offers an efficient, foolproof way to ensure you’re on the right side of the law.
In this guide, we'll walk through why you should implement age verification features directly into your POS and how OneHubPOS helps you with verifying the age of your customers.
Not checking the age of buyers can happen more often when employees are rushing through transactions during busy hours. But age verification is important for liquor stores. Here’s why:
Verifying your customers' ages is a legal mandate if you sell alcohol, tobacco, or other age-restricted products. For example, in California, online retailers and restaurants selling alcohol are mandated to verify a purchaser’s age, but they're free to choose when they want to do it: during the online checkout or at the point of delivery.
Failing to follow local or federal laws while selling liquor may make you face severe penalties, such as:
POS software with automated age verification functionality doesn't let the transaction happen if the customer doesn't fulfill the age requirement, preventing the expensive mistake.
Your customers expect you to follow the rules and maintain a responsible business. When they see that you’re careful and strict about checking IDs, it signals that you care about more than just profits—you care about doing the right thing. Over time, this builds trust and encourages repeat business.
Think about it: a customer is purchasing liquor for a gathering or event and sees that your store strictly enforces age restrictions. So, they may feel safer shopping with you. After all, they are assured that your store follows laws, ensuring all alcohol is sold responsibly, reducing the risk of legal issues. They’ll appreciate knowing they can rely on you for ethical sales practices.
Word spreads quickly. The US liquor industry is highly regulated. So, a single slip-up can damage your reputation. A bad reputation for not following the law could turn away not just customers but suppliers and partners as well. Maintaining a strict age verification process through your POS system shows your commitment to compliance and responsible business practices.
Instead of manually entering a customer’s birthdate or doing the math in your head, verifying the age using your retail POS system is a smart move. Here's how OneHubPOS helps you implement age verification for your liquor store easily:
Log in to OneHubPOS using your credentials. After logging in, the home screen will appear, and you’ll see various product groups, such as “Liquor,” “Cigarettes,” “Wine,” and so on. Each category contains multiple items. Selecting and scanning items becomes easy this way.
When a customer approaches, you can start an order by adding items to the cart. This can be done using a scanner to quickly input the products they wish to purchase. As soon as you scan the first age-restricted item, whether it's beer, wine, or a cigar, OneHubPOS takes over with its built-in age verification feature.
The cloud POS platform automatically prompts you to check the customer’s age when a flagged item is scanned. This way, it alerts you to ensure you don’t miss the mandatory age verification step for alcohol and tobacco sales. The system will not allow you to proceed with adding the item to the cart until a valid ID has been scanned and verified.
Humans make mistakes. Your cashiers might misread an ID, fail to notice an expired card, or simply forget to check in during the rush of a busy shift. However, with the automated system of OneHubPOS, there is no risk of manual errors. At this stage, you can simply scan the ID, and the system will automatically verify if the customer is of legal age.
Once scanned, OneHubPOS retrieves and processes the customer’s details, including:
Note that manual age checks can slow down the buying process during rush hours. With automated age verification through OneHubPOS, the process becomes much quicker, usually taking between 15 to 30 seconds. This also reduces wait times and makes operations smoother.
Once the customer’s details are loaded and the system confirms their age meets the legal requirements for purchasing the restricted item, you can proceed by clicking "Yes" to approve the sale. The product is then successfully added to the cart, and the transaction can continue as usual.
So, let’s say a 22-year-old customer comes in to buy a bottle of wine. With OneHubPOS, your cashier simply scans the ID, and the POS system does the work. If the customer is old enough, the system allows the sale to proceed. If not, the system blocks the transaction.
Liquor stores must have a simple and compliant age verification process. Integrating age verification into your POS system not only protects your business from legal issues but also creates a smoother, faster experience for your customers.
Want to make age verification easy? OneHubPOS offers all these features and more. With our automated prompts and ID scanning tech, you can ensure every sale follows the rules while keeping your operations running smoothly. To make age verification one less thing to worry about, get started with OneHubPOS!
Sahana is a seasoned GTM leader with a passion for building startups. She excels in crafting GTM strategies for tech products, driving revenue growth.
