6 Essential Reports From Your POS System for Brewery

Did you know that in 2021, 84% of breweries reported their most profitable channel as the taproom? A one-of-a-kind environment, friendly staff, and exceptional brews are what make fans build tabs and come back again. 

And with the busiest summer in 3 years upon us, it’s key as a business owner yourself to think about how you can maximize those taproom sales even more. Understanding your taproom data is a crucial part of business success, so digging deep on reports from your POS system for breweries is a key way to stay productive and profitable.

Below, we break down 6 essential reports from your POS system for breweries.

Product Reporting Informs Consumer Tastes & Production Schedules

We all know it’s important to identify which products your customers like. After all, their drooling taste buds are what bring them to you in the first place! But, it’s also important information to identify for the sake of your back of house (BOH) staff so they can accurately plan production schedules.

Essential POS System For Brewery Report: Sales By Category

A Sales By Category report gives a summary of sales broken down by category, item type, quantity, and size. This report is helpful in understanding when inventory is moving and by how much. And if inventory is moving, your customers are liking what they’re drinking!

Because the report contains a robust amount of information, you can go as narrow as your business needs require. Filter by item size to determine if you’re selling more pints than growlers, for example. 

Key Insight Scenario: You notice via reporting from your POS system for breweries that it appears tasters of your Watermelon Sour are flying off the tap, but very few pints are. Perhaps the pucker is too much for your consumer base. Let the BOH team know, so they can whip up the brews that are statistically more popular in pint sizes. 

Essential POS System For Brewery Report: Best Sellers By Volume

In a similar vein to assessing pour sizes, it’s important to track the volume of product you’re selling using your POS system for breweries. This helps make intelligent production decisions, and it’s much more accurate than simply tracking dollar amounts as you sell. 

Best Sellers By Volume tracks barrelage through your taps, so you know which liquid is really your best seller. After all, like the case mentioned earlier, your staff may be pulling the Watermelon Sours tap dozens of times every night, but the report lets you know that the volume of Sour leaving your taproom is lower than most. Identify your best seller by choosing that one that’s leaving taps at the highest volume!

Your BOH staff will surely thank you for helping them establish a clear production schedule and prioritizing brewhouse efficiency. With experimentation and tap rotation being top of mind for crafty brewers, this report holds all parties responsible for prioritizing the best sellers first. 

Key Insight Scenario: This report also helps pinpoint which size pours are maximizing profits. If your flagship Lager in a growler is selling the highest volume of that brew, consider mixing up how you offer the Lager to see what makes your customers tick. Experiment with the growler price, or consider packaging in a 6-pack instead to see how buying behavior changes. Perhaps you’ll find that a 6-pack is more profitable than a growler, and the same amount of volume is leaving your taproom regardless! Use the growlers for something else and keep pushing those 6-packs instead. 

Service Reporting Identifies Growth Opportunities

When it comes to service, your goal is to maximize tab sizes and stay efficient with the staff on-hand. The following reports are helpful tools in determining how exactly consumer tab size sits, and how much money you’re bringing in versus paying out to staff the place. 

Essential POS System For Brewery Report: Average Tab Size

Average Tab Size can tell you as a business owner a lot about any particular consumer: how long they stayed, if they ate, how large their party was. Use these insights to encourage more purchases, and boost tab sizes even higher!

Key Insight Scenario: Reports from your POS system for breweries may tell you that tab size growth is stagnant, even as the seasons shift to warmer weather. Parties appear to generously order during the first round of food and drinks, but tend not to add to their tabs after that. You have a hunch that it’s because the line at the counter gets pretty long during peak periods, and people don’t have the time or energy to toe tap twice. 

If you’re short staffed but know patrons need an easier way to order their second rounds, consider QR code ordering. By putting a QR code on each table and empowering guests to add to their own tabs, you will see tab size instantly increase. In fact, Red Bear Brewing saw a 16% higher tab size when they began using a combination of ​​customer-owned mobile devices and staff-owned POS devices to build and close tabs. 

Here are some other effective ways to boost tab size:

• Offer food: Food orders inherently add additional dollars to any tab. Plus, if people are chowing down, they’re staying at your brewery longer. 
• Merchandise: What better way to remember the best beer you’ve ever had than with a branded t-shirt? Invest in unique merchandise and not only will your business have walking advertisements around town, you’ll also boost tab size. 
• Staff-guest engagement: Make sure your staff are trained to educate and upsell guests. Hearing your unique brand story, gaining product knowledge on your beer, or being offered a pretzel pairing are all ways to engage and dazzle guests, which makes tabs (and tips!) higher. 

Essential POS System For Brewery Report: Revenue To Labor Cost Percentage

Revenue To Labor Cost Percentage positions how much revenue you’re bringing in against how much you’re paying to staff the taproom. Obviously revenue should outweigh the latter, but you may find that the scale isn’t tipped quite as much as it should be in order to maximize profits.

Key Insight Scenario: Having 4 beertenders on during weekday nights is great for staff morale and allows you to run both counter and table service, but you’ve found that their wages are cutting into your revenue potential. Split weekday shifts between the 4 so they can save their energy for the busy weekend instead, and try different service models so your smaller staff doesn’t get overwhelmed. 

For example, Montclair Brewery’s lean staff seamlessly services their crowded taproom and outdoor area by leaning on mobile, cloud-based POS devices. They’re able to then run a mix of counter and table service, by having staff stationed at the bar ready to pour, and a roaming server collecting orders on their mobile POS device. 

Team Reporting Allows For Smart Brewery Staffing

You couldn’t run your business without all of the hardworking staff members by your side. Reports from POS systems for breweries are a great tool in recognizing top performers and staffing intelligently based on taproom traffic trends. 

Essential POS System For Brewery Report: Employee Performance

All of your staff works their tails off, but when you’re trying to staff for an upcoming beer event or push a new product line, you may want to identify which employees are performing the best. That’s where your Employee Performance report comes in!

This report from your POS system for breweries tells you far more than just which employees are selling and upselling the most. You can also see how and when employees are interacting with guests, informing you on which team members are attempting to boost tab size or otherwise engage customers. 

Key Insight Scenario: You’ve found that Barry the Bartender can sell the shirt off his back. Hold a staff training session with Barry as the lead, and have him share his tips to successful upselling. You can even check back on your Employee Performance report to see which team members took his advice!

Essential POS System For Brewery Report: Hourly Sales Data

Another report that helps you staff smarter is Hourly Sales Data: It tracks the rate of orders coming in, so you can identify when your taproom is the busiest and slowest. Staff up during hectic hours, and rely on a lean team and QR codes when it’s slow. 

Key Insight Scenario: Now, you’ve saved money on labor costs by staffing leaner during slow hours. But isn’t the whole point of this report roundup to help you maximize summer profits?! Yes, and identifying your slow periods gives you an opportunity to fill those hours with enticing programming instead. 

Raíces Brewing Company’s Tamil Maldonado Vega carefully chooses the brewery’s event dates based on when it’s slowest in order to drive traffic. She then looks back on reporting again to determine each event’s performance, and analyzes sales trends to ensure the event work is worthwhile. Talk about being data savvy!

Technology Automation Streamlines Operations

These POS system for brewery reports may all sound peachy, but pulling data together may not be your strong suit, nor at the top of your long list of to-do’s as a business owner. Plus, manually inputting sales data into an Excel sheet is tedious and not always accurate. That’s why it’s important to find a POS system for your brewery that offers automated reporting capabilities and a robust dashboard where you can analyze data efficiently and easily. 

In addition to a savvy tech solution that puts these reports at your fingertips, you need your brewery POS system to talk to all other systems you work with. That means integrating with accounting softwares, inventory management systems, etc. The more technology you can get to sync and communicate with each other, the more robust your reporting is, and the more profit potential your business has. 

The POS system most trusted by breweries today? Arryved POS. Their POS system’s capabilities don’t end at cloud-based reporting and relevant integrations that automate your data. Learn more about how Arryved was an integral part of the brewery success stories shared here, and how their POS system for breweries can help your business have future successes, too.