The Company
Mason City Brewing (MCB) is Mason City, Iowa’s first brewery in over 130 years. MCB operates with a 1 BBL brew system and has a 24 BBL fermentation capacity. The onsite taproom seats 65 people and features eight of MCB’s beers on tap at all times.
“We focus on brewing a range of styles that will satisfy everyone from the craft beer novice to professionals,” said Owner Justin Merritt.
The Needs
MCB needed a POS system that was flexible enough to support their business and wouldn’t tie them down to a “traditional-style register” as they will be participating in events outside the taproom.
The SalesVu Decision
Before adopting SalesVu’s iPad POS, MCB looked at Intuit GoPayment, Square, Intuit POS, LightSpeed and Prosperity. They also demoed traditional POS systems before they “found and fell in love with the simplicity of SalesVu.”
“Ultimately, we chose SalesVu’s restaurant POS because it allowed us to create our own menu structure and item setup, provided some of the market’s lowest fees and offered the best online management options,” said Merritt.
MCB’s favorite thing about SalesVu is the ability to track the ounces of beer sold by beer type. As a brewery, this helps them create a production plan and provides MCB with the information they need to calculate taxes owed.
“We needed an iPad POS solution that provided this ability in the easiest way possible for the bartender, so that he wouldn’t fumble with the register rather than serve customers,” said Merritt. “SalesVu gave us just this with the ability to create different product levels and attach components to those levels. Selling a beer is as easy as two taps of the finger and we get all the tracking data we need on the backend.”
Another important feature that influenced the SalesVu decision is the ability to run tabs. According to MCB, SalesVu is one of the only retail POS applications they found that allows you to keep multiple orders open at a time and authorize a credit card on the order, this way, the business doesn’t have to hold on to the customer’s card.
“This helps immensely because we can offer our customers the convenience of running a tab (giving the customer the peace of mind of not leaving their credit card with a stranger) and comforts the business as they won’t have to eat any tabs left open,” said Merritt.
The Results
SalesVu has helped Mason City Brewing simplify in-store checkout and the order management process; it also has provided a level of sales reporting that they didn’t think they would be able to get.
”It allows us to understand which of our eight beers are in the highest demand and get a sense for the reception of new beers when we launch them,” said Merritt.
According to Merritt, MCB has saved thousands of dollars by adopting SalesVu.
“We save with every transaction when compared to Intuit GoPayment or Square and we saved significant costs upfront when compared to more traditional POS solutions like Intuit POS, LightSpeed or Prosperity.
Lastly, since SalesVu gives MCB all the reporting they need, they were able to simplify their accounting and record just the total sales and total inventory change into Quickbooks (using Quickbooks online without the SalesVu integration).
“SalesVu eliminated the need for a complicated Quickbooks setup and having all the detailed data in Quickbooks,” said Merritt.
For more information about Mason City Brewing, go to www.masoncitybrewing.com, like their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter @masoncitybrew.
