About Liquor Locker

Liquor Locker is a small chain of liquor stores in California, owned by a father, Rick, and his two sons, Andy and Amar. This family business was born out of Rick’s inspiring immigration story. When he first came to the United States, he worked seven days a week at a nationally known convenience store brand. In testament to his hard work, he was quickly promoted to a management position. Over the years he continued managing the store and saving his money, until he was eventually able to open his first liquor store, a tiny location in Modesto, CA. Rick was raising his young sons and working to build up his business when he noticed the owner of a 10-store local liquor chain coming in from time to time. He was always impressed by Rick’s high level of customer service and would joke that he was afraid one day Rick would be his competition. Fast forward to today and Rick, Andy, and Amar certainly are the competition! In fact, they now do more than double the business of that early competitor with their chain of 8 liquor stores—and they’re busy working towards the goal of having 20 stores in their operation. Rick and his sons have a lot to be proud of, including being named one of the country’s Top 100 Retailers in 2019 and 2020 by the national publication Beverage Dynamics.

The Challenge

Through sheer determination and hard work, Rick and his sons have built a strong business of 8 stores and growing. But to get to their goal of 20 stores, they knew they would need to replace their cash registers and credit card terminals with a point of sale (POS) that would help them streamline operations. It had become a struggle to keep up with reporting and inventory, running manual reports, inputting information, adding numbers, and checking stock to ensure they didn’t overlook anything. Even with three of them, the time it took to complete these operational tasks and travel between locations was overwhelming.

The Solution

Liquor Locker had participated in a demonstration of Exatouch^® Point of Sale along with many other POS solutions. They compared each system carefully, weighing their options and asking their local representative Nick at Electronic Payments of California, Electronic Payments’ partner on the ground, about different scenarios and potential pitfalls. In the end, Exatouch came out on top as it was able to handle the functions Rick and his sons needed—and they saw a system they could grow into as the business continued to expand.

Ease of use was key as their ever-growing staff would need to be comfortable with the system. Another important component taken into consideration was that Exatouch’s development tends to be much faster than other POS systems on the market. With a team dedicated to continuous improvement and implementing feature requests based on real need, Electronic Payments shows their commitment to their merchant partners. Finally, with hands-on support at the local level through Nick—backed by Electronic Payments’ 24/7, in-house technical support—Liquor Locker knew they would be in good hands.

The Results

Since installing Exatouch, Liquor Locker has a simple, intuitive system that makes it easy to train new employees. The staff is taking advantage of the system’s automatic age verification, quick lotto payouts, and support for CRV, California’s redemption program for bottle deposits. And now, with just a few taps of the screen, the team can check shoppers out in a flash and customers are thrilled to be able to get in and out quickly at any time of the day or night.

Rick, Andy, and Amar are excited about Exatouch’s pricing module with printed shelf labels that help the trio maintain consistency across their operation. After using the system for several months, they’ve been able to take the time they were spending on reports and inventory management and invest it in other areas of the business. “Exatouch has made not only our day-to-day operations faster, it’s put us in a better position to handle the growth we’re experiencing,” said Rick. “We love the way it looks and what it does for us!”

Rick and his sons estimate they’ve saved hundreds of hours on managing operations since installing Exatouch. And they’re noticing an increase in sales now that the checkout process has sped up. The owners are also seeing that with a system that tracks employees, they’re able to detect any potential theft to mitigate loss.

With so many businesses around them hurting from losses sustained during the pandemic, Rick and his sons are fortunate that their business has experienced growth since the onset of the coronavirus. “We’re thankful we had Exatouch in place to help us quickly handle the added business and get customers on their way swiftly—especially since government mandates allow only a certain number of customers in the store at a time,” they said.

The owners have faced challenges keeping certain inventory items in stock and they’ve had to put extra employees in every store to help maintain cleanliness for both customers and the staff. Fortunately, Exatouch’s employee and inventory management features make quick work of these responsibilities.

When asked if they would recommend Exatouch to other businesses, Rick and his sons say not only are they recommending the POS, so are their vendors! Nick, Electronic Payments’ partner who services Liquor Locker locally, was helping a nearby resort choose a POS for their business a short time ago. While discussing the benefits of point of sale, the resort owner pulled out his phone to show Nick a photo of Exatouch and said he wasn’t sure where he could get this particular POS, but one of his vendors had highly recommended it. Turns out that Liquor Locker recommended Exatouch to their vendor because of the awesome pricing and shelf label tools, and that same vendor works with the resort and passed along the insider information! The shelf labels have barcodes on them, which makes it easier for vendors to go through the store and create purchase orders. Not only does Exatouch save the merchants time, it even saves their suppliers time! In a local community of small businesses, word gets around quickly about smart and affordable tools that help entrepreneurs grow their operations.