Customer-First vs Product-First:
The Power of POS Workflows
How a tasting room transaction begins has a surprising impact on the guest experience and club growth.
Across wineries, 79% of POS transactions start by selecting products, while only 21% begin by identifying the customer first. It's an understandable habit: during a busy service period, skipping the lookup feels faster. But the cost is invisible in the moment and can be significant over time. When staff skip the customer lookup, they lose the context that makes a tasting room visit feel personal: a guest's previous purchases, their visit history, their preferences, and even what club they'd be the best fit for.
Of course, that context only exists for returning guests. For new visitors, creating a record before checkout means the winery captures a complete picture of that first interaction which is the foundation of every future conversation.
The Connection to Club Membership:
Across markets, a significant share of club signups happen directly through the POS: Australia and the United States both see roughly 49% of memberships created in the tasting room, with Canada close behind at 46.8%. Even in markets with lower shares, like Great Britain and New Zealand, a meaningful portion of club enrollments still happen in person, during the visit.
These numbers reinforce the tasting room as more than a sales channel. It's often where the strongest customer relationships begin, and that starts with something as simple as looking up the customer before the cart.
Actionable Insights:
Train Staff to Start with the Customer, Not the Cart Shift the default from "scan the bottle" to "find the guest." With 79% of transactions starting product-first, a simple habit change of pulling up a customer profile before adding items unlocks the context needed to personalise every interaction. If your POS allows it, set a system-level prompt to make this the default step; small nudges like this help the behaviour stick, even on a packed Saturday afternoon.
Use That Context to Guide the Conversation When a customer profile is open, staff have instant context: what a guest has bought before, how many times they've visited, and what they might love next. That information turns a transaction into a continuation of a relationship and puts staff in a far stronger position to make a membership suggestion that feels relevant, not like a pitch at the register.
For New Visitors, the Record is the Relationship First-time guests don't have a history yet; but that's exactly why capturing a record before checkout matters. Every detail collected at that first interaction becomes the foundation for every conversation that follows, including the one where they join the club.
Treat the Tasting Room as a Membership Channel With roughly half of all club signups happening directly through the POS in several markets, the tasting room isn't just where wine gets sold, it's where members get made. Staff who start with the customer are better placed to have that conversation at the right moment, with the right context, for the right guest.