I am thinking about trying to use Square to run a Wine Club membership and a Winery Tasting Room.

[Skirch]

I need tools to organize inventory, shipping, customer engagement, and reoccuring billing for a wine club.  I already use it in the Tasting Room for POS, but putting together the pieces for run a wine club is more complex.  Any suggestions would be much appreciated.  

[SteveJS]

Wine clubs are not “Buyers Clubs” .  Wine clubs are ( almost with out exception) “Subscriptions” where a customers signs up for a periodic purchase.  Subscriptions are supported in square.
 

[leviv]

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I don't know what a buyers club is, so I'll go google it.

Btw, did you say you were working on a solution for this or were going to? If so, how's it coming along?

[SteveJS]

I have quit working one personally (we'll probably go with a prepackaged one).  There is a previous reply to this thread from someone close to releasing their solution.

We're pretty unique in that we have a total choice wine club and it has some unique challenges with regard to dealing with getting fulfillment right.

Most wine clubs are pretty straightforward subscriptions.

Regards,

Steve

[dracaenawines]

The problem is that with a subscription it is the same charge every time. With the wine club, there is a different charge each time depending on which shipment it is. Rose' is much cheaper than Cab Franc as an example. 

[leviv]

@dracaenawines, yeah that's interesting. That seems to be a common way to do it. Do you currently use Square to handle any part of your club or are you managing it with another platform?

[dracaenawines]

I currently run each sale independently through square. Which takes SO MUCH time!  Even if Square came up with a way to charge like multiple people at a time that would be so helpful. Their cards are stored as customers, why can't I just say "charge X, Y and Z" now? 

[Sarah-LLWC]

I also have a winery with a wine club. We're running wine club independently from Square through QB and it takes me an entire day to run wine club (and that doesn't include the time it takes to contact people whose credit cards don't work). We need to move to a new solution, but if Square is coming out with a system that would work for this, I'd rather stay with Square.

[Joe]

Hi there, @Sarah-LLWC - thanks so much for adding your voice here to this thread. We don't have any current updates to share on new subscription service features, but hopefully we will have some news on that front soon.

Thanks for your patience! 

[RFVineyards]

We are also a winery.  Have you found a good solution for offering your club discounts within the Square software?  For example, we typically offer 10% discounts for case purchases (already in place), but we would like to offer 20% for club members.  I'm struggling to find a good way to apply these separate, club specific discounts.  Any help is appreciated! Melanie

[SteveJS]

Square lacks a method of tying discounts to specific customers so this is very hard to implement on your own.  I finally gave up waiting for a wine club like solution with square.  We moved to commerce7 which has given us much more than square at a lower cost overall.

[KatieHollister]

Thank you for the information about Commerce7.  I am currently using the Square Loyalty program and recurring invoices to manage our small but growing wine club, but it's cumbersome and time consuming.

How long have you been using Commerce7? Any issues with it? Are the POS and inventory control systems comparable to Square?  Thank you for any feedback you can offer.

One winery I know is considering Xudle, but it's fairly pricey for our small wine club. Another recently switched to WineDirect but hasn't used it long enough to form an opinion.

I see that there is an app on the Square App Marketplace - Vincipia - that is for wine clubs and integrates with Square but it looks like it is pretty new. Earlier today, I created a thread in the Square community asking for feedback on Vincipia.    

Thanks!       

[Sarah-LLWC]

There is a company that is creating an add on-app that works with Square but can accommodate wine club processing. If you look back through this thread, there is a response from the man creating it. I spoke with him a few times, but ultimately decided to stay with what we're currently doing (Square as our POS in the tasting room, and QuickBooks to process our wine club). It's a bit cumbersome, but after talking with many different companies and many, many different wineries it seemed like I wouldn't be saving that much time or getting that much easier of a system than what it would take to convert to any new system.

Good luck!

[theWineClubSite]

Hi all. This topic has come up continuously with Square over the years. I'm glad to announce we now have a solution geared towards wineries and wine retailers that have wine clubs and want square integration.

For those of you who have not given up hope please find out more here and let me know how we can help!

https://wineclubsite.com/square/

[KatieHollister]

Thank you for the information.  I'll take a look.

[dracaenawines]

I was asked to please modify my original response by the club creator. so I have deleted the original post and am now just posting facts.

1- reached out to wine club site. Email was replied to quickly and we set up a phone call.

2- In the half hour conversation, I mentioned a few times that we are extremely small with no tasting room and that we do not use other POS wine club systems because we can not afford it.

3- Explained how our club works, two shipments twice a year. Customers can modify.

4- Was told best thing to do was to set up a demo. So we did.

5- Demo was not fluid. Many times.. "oh that is the wrong page" 

6- demo was adding a customer to a club already established and running a test credit card. The demo did not place the person in the correct spot as it was suppose to after running the test. "customer should have been here since I marked it as a pick up, not sure why its not there."

7- Demo never showed how to set up a club, as I mentioned- it was already set up. 

8- After another half hour, I asked the fees. Was told there are no fees, just a $59 monthly charge. Which I then reiterated that I told him on the phone we can't afford monthly fees, that is why we use square as our POS. Pay as you go.  He did apologize for "lack of communication." But as I told him on the phone, he needs to listen to what his potential customer is telling him. 

9- The system does integrate with Square. If you add the customer in their program, the customer information is imported to square.

My honest opinion is that the program does not make sense for us. Why would I pay $59/month to run two club shipments. The system is asking me to spend about $700/year for something that would only be used 2x year. Now if you have a club that runs every month, then this may be perfect for you. But in my opinion, for businesses like us, who are using square to avoid monthly fees, this model does not make sense. There is no daily use for this program to expand upon if you do have a tasting room. Or at least through what I was shown, there is not an actual POS system, just a way to run bulk charges. 

I am not trying to put the system down, just stating the facts so that I can provide a picture for other people on the thread. They can decide if they feel the program is worth looking into. I am sorry the owner was upset with the review, but it is the facts that occurred. I hope that putting it this way- eliminating any possible emotion makes him (he was extremely nice) see what a customer sees. 

[bellsprings]

@theWineClubSite - What email can we send a few questions to?

[theWineClubSite]

info@wineclubsite.com

[VineSpring]

Hi All - I'm sorry I didn't notice this thread until now. VineSpring is a Square partner and our integration pushes club member, LTV, customer since, and club groups over to Square for easier club (and customer) management in the Square POS. See more info here https://www.vinespring.com/square-pos-integration and schedule a demo if you'd like. Thanks, Chris / VineSpring Co-Founder

[Submatic]

Hi all I realize this post is a bit old but in case anyone is looking for a way to manage this please let me know.

My name is Dan I've worked in point of sale and payments for 7+ years and developed a software to help retail businesses leverage subscriptions.  It's called Submatic (https://www.submatic.io/).

We have an integration with Square that automates member discounts/benefits based on the rules that you configure.  For example you can create a membership for a product or which entitles the member to a discount.  The product can change from month to month as might be the case in a wine club, and the member will still be eligible to receive that product at the free/discounted price.  Our software tracks and communicates the membership benefits with Square so that you don't have to track anything manually.

If you're interested in getting more info or checking out a trial let me know.  You can send me a direct message here on the forum, just hover your mouse over my username and then click "Send Message". Thanks!

[dracaenawines]

It looks like you are more of a reward system than a club system. We ship to our members 2x/yr. and the charge is different each time, as they are receiving different wines. Do you have the capability for this situation?

[Submatic]

Hey @dracaenawines thanks for asking.  Yes this is possible but the workflow depends a bit on how your customers order the wines.  Are the customers selecting from a pre-set list and they confirm their selections somehow (phone/website)? Or are you selecting the wines for them? Or some other set up? Thanks!