Liquor stores can be very profitable ventures, especially in an economic climate in which many consumers are entertaining or just relaxing at home rather than at their favorite bars and restaurants. But there’s also a potential downside to owning and operating such stores—and that is the risk of accidentally selling liquor and other age-restricted products, like tobacco, to individuals who are not old enough to purchase them.

While merchants have long relied on glancing at customers’ driver’s licenses or other identification to determine their age, this is not a wise idea—for several reasons. For one thing, false identification is not all that difficult for minors to obtain, and some “fake IDs” appear, to the naked eye, to be authentic. For another, store employees may not always remember to ask customers to show identification that bears a birth date before ringing up transactions involving age-restricted merchandise.

In recent years, software vendors such as pcAmerica have developed age verification solutions that can reduce the risks and penalties associated with the sale of liquor in liquor stores, if used properly. pcAmerica builds age verification capabilities into a liquor store’s point of sales system through the integration of a specialized bar code scanner—the Honeywell Xenon 1900 with EZDL age verification software. Bar codes can be affixed to those items that are age-restricted and require cashiers to check IDs prior to processing transactions.

As each age-restricted item is scanned, the system prompts cashiers to scan the customer’s driver’s license, and the point of sale system then determines if the customer is old enough to purchase the product.  With the age verification capability in use, “slip-ups” of all kinds can happen less frequently from the equation, providing merchants with more peace of mind.

The age verification system for liquor stores is part of pcAmerica’s feature-rich Cash Register Express™ point of sale solution. To find out more, visit www.pcamerica.com.