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.  

[dracaenawines]

Kind of a combination. We have select wines for each shipment, but they are able to add to it. 

[Taylor_JH]

@dracaenawines Have you looked into Vinoshipper. You can run fully customizable wine club shipments. Customers will be charged based on what's in their cart and at a discount of your choice. They will also be able to have additional benefits based on the email. You have the added benefit of shipping worry free to 40+ states with their built in compliance. 

[Madkorzon]

We have used Vinoshipper since 2019 and it works wonderfully.  It takes care of all the compliance issues (except California you have to do yourself).  It is by far the best priced software as you only pay when you use it.  No monthly subscription for the winery but you can set up a subscription for your customers.  All the small mom and pop wineries in our northern Michigan area are using it.  Very straight forward!  

[Submatic]

If you are looking for a solution that can handle benefits in the Winery such as 1 tasting per month, 1 glass per week, 10% off bottles, or $x in monthly credit (just examples, you can define your own rules) take a look at Submatic.

I founded Submatic and we're currently working with a number of Wineries that are using Square.  Our Square integration is very flexible and I'd be glad to provide more information to anyone that's interested.  

[cellardoorNC]

Hello all - Just checking for any updates with the wine club questions. We are a new, small wine shop - so a bit different than the wineries that are shipping wine for their club memberships. We want to offer a wine club for our customers that would be in-store only (customer pick-up); once per month billing (same $ each month). We are keeping it simple to start, so customers will not "choose" their wines, but we will simply provide 2 wines each month for the membership. I have looked at several of the options mentioned in the thread for other apps/services - but we really don't need the full functionality of those programs. And, as a brand-new store, we need to watch our budget and can't really afford to pay for an additional service each month.

I'd appreciate any thoughts from folks who are currently using Square. My main question is how to remove items from inventory, to fulfill the membership subscription each month?

Thank you!

[Submatic]

Hi @cellardoorNC Square does not offer a way to do exactly what you're looking to do with easy member identification, pick up tracking, etc.  The closest thing that is available within Square is Square Subscriptions. 

My company, Submatic, does exactly what you are describing.  Additionally we offer discounted pricing for brand new clubs as long as you have < 30 members.  Here is our Square app store listing for your reference https://squareup.com/ca/en/app-marketplace/app/submatic

Here are some other Wine Clubs using our software that are similar to what you described (flat fee, process monthly):

- https://www.strangemagicwine.com/wine-club

- https://www.3goats.com/the-herd

If you are open to having a quick conversation I'd be glad to tell you more and help you figure out if we could be a good fit for your business.  You can email me at hello@submatic.io or alternatively submit your info on this page https://submatic.io/request-a-demo

Thanks!

Dan @ Submatic

[theWinelubSite]

@cellardoorNC

we specialize in this. Please come check us out at www.wineclubsite.com

we are fully integrated to square.

[tiptopwineshop]

Just chiming in to say that I'm in the exact same boat as you (new, small shop, trying to implement simple once per month billing for wine club) , so if you've figured out a good system for this, and for inventory management of the items, I would really appreciate some guidance.

[theWineClubSite]

Hi, have you tried checking us out? www.wineclubsite.com

I think we can help you.

[tiptopwineshop]

I did. We're a very small shop, we can't afford the monthly fees.

[cellardoorNC]

Hi - here is how we are handling this, for now. We are a small shop, and as of now, have a small wine club. We do not ship any wine - members have to come to the shop to pick up the club wines each month. Because we have just a small number of members right now, we are manually billing the wine club each month. When customers sign up for the club, we have them put a credit card on file in their account. Then each month, I add the 2 wines to each customer's cart, adjust the prices so the total is the wine club fee, and then charge to the card on file. That way, the cards are billed each month, and I am able to remove the wines from inventory.

This is do-able with a small number of members - but would become quite cumbersome for larger clubs.

Still would love if Square could offer some help with this!!

[tiptopwineshop]

Thanks so much for the reply, I really appreciate it. We're also not going to be doing shipping and don't anticipate it being a big club for now, so we'll probably do something similar. I was thinking about creating a bundle called Wine Club, which will have a set price, and then updating the components monthly, which will pull the inventory correctly. Might be a little less cumbersome?

[cellardoorNC]

Thanks for your idea, too! I'll have to look into the bundle, and see if that would work for us.