A Liquor Store Consultant’s Tips for Rightsizing a Retail Liquor Business

As a liquor store consultant, I’ve witnessed the many struggles of managing a liquor store. Day-to-day HR issues provide enough to deal with, but what do you do when the economy takes a downturn or there are vacancies and too few job seekers? Rightsizing may be the answer.

Rightsizing doesn’t have to mean layoffs.

“Organizations will usually rightsize their business by reducing their workforce, reorganizing upper management, cutting costs, and changing job roles.”— Rightsizing definition, “Glossary for HR Terms”, BambooHR.

Questions to Ask When Rightsizing Your Liquor Store

A liquor store consultant can help you answer the following questions:

What is the total payroll cost for all employees?
If payroll costs are rising, is the cause increased wages, turnover, or number of employees?

Which positions are vital to your operation?
By identifying which positions are key to your operation, you can implement strategies that ensure lower turnover for the role.

What is the employee turnover rate?
A Society for Human Resource Management study estimated that a company will experience a turnover of about 18% of its workforce annually. A Centre for American Progress study found that in the U.S., for workers earning < $50K annually (75% of the U.S. workforce) turnover costs are approximately 21% of the employee’s annual salary. The higher the skill required to do the job the greater the turnover costs.

Are wages, benefits and incentives adequate?
Research the wages, benefits, bonuses and other incentives competitors are offering for each position. It may be a challenge filling a position with the right hire if wages offered are lower than average.

Brainstorm the types of incentives that can make a job more attractive (flexible schedule, bonuses, professional development). For example, tips built into liquor store POS systems have become a trend. Implement this with caution. If the tipping function is added, its very difficult to remove without loosing staff. Additionally, some retailers have reported that promoting team members to salaried positions within a company such as assistant managers or managers becomes very difficult as those receiving tips often don’t want more responsibility, more hours and no tip option.

What is the cost of hiring and training?
Costs include writing and posting job descriptions, reviewing resumes, interviewing, training, and lost productivity/revenue while the position is vacant.

Are tasks distributed equitably between employees?
Are some employees performing more tasks than colleagues in the same position?
This can lead to inefficiency, job dissatisfaction and increased turnover.

Is employee onboarding streamlined?
Review job descriptions to see if they are attractive to potential hires. Review training practices and identify ways you can improve training to get employees up-and-running more quickly.

Is training adequate?
For example, sales technique training and customer service training can increase sales, and liquor law compliance training can safeguard your store’s liquor license.

Do you have the right mix of full-time and part-time employees?
Full-time employees cost more but they are up-and-running more quickly and stay in a position longer than part-timers. Part-timers cost less in wages, but, they often take longer to train and their turnover rate is higher.

For a detailed discussion on hiring full-time vs part-time, read “Should You Hire Full-Time or Part-Time Employees?“ at business.com.

Thrive Liquor Store Consultants Make Managing a Liquor Store Easy!

Liquor store consultants at Thrive Liquor & Cannabis Advisors provide much more than liquor license application support. We understand the challenges of owning and managing a liquor store. Our liquor retail operation services include inventory audits, store setup and layout optimization, POS setup and training, and employee acquisition services.