Taproom POS: The Complete EPOS Guide for Breweries and Tap Rooms
The taproom is the best margin your brewery will ever see: beer sold at retail, in your own venue, with the brand experience thrown in. But most tap rooms run on generic hospitality tills that know nothing about kegs, batches, or the brewery ten metres behind the bar. This guide covers what a taproom POS (or EPOS, as the equipment-minded call it) actually needs to do.
Why Generic POS Systems Fall Short in a Taproom
A standard restaurant till treats a beer as a menu item with a price. A taproom needs the same sale to answer brewery questions: which keg is it pouring from, which batch filled that keg, how much of the batch remains, and what did that litre cost to brew? Without those links you get the familiar symptoms — kegs "disappearing", taproom sales that never reconcile with production volumes, and no idea which beers actually make money per litre.
What a Real Taproom EPOS Must Do
Pour-level stock against kegs
Selling a 500 ml draught should deduct 500 ml from the specific keg on tap. When the keg kicks, the system should know how much was sold against it versus its fill volume — that difference is your waste and giveaway number, per keg, forever visible. This is the taproom equivalent of the per-pour spirit tracking we cover in our bar POS features guide.
Batch and production integration
The taproom sale should trace to the batch that brewed it. That gives you honest margin per beer (brewing cost per litre against taproom price), closes the loop for excise reporting, and turns "how is the new IPA selling?" into a report instead of a feeling. This only works when POS and production live on one platform — bolted-together systems reconcile monthly at best.
Hospitality basics, done properly
Tabs with limits, split bills, card, Zapper and SnapScan, staff PINs, and cash-up variance — the standard bar POS toolkit applies in full. Add tasting flights (multiple small pours sold as one product, deducted from multiple kegs) and merchandise and bottle sales over a barcode scanner, and the taproom edge cases are covered.
Retail and takeaway alongside draught
Most tap rooms sell packaged beer to take home. That is retail: barcode scanning, case-and-single stock handling, and shelf pricing — the same needs as a bottle store, sharing one stock ledger with the draught side.
The Integration Payoff
When taproom EPOS, production, and inventory share one system, the compounding benefits show up fast: live stock across packaged and draught, taproom demand feeding production planning, per-batch profitability from grain bill to glass, and excise records that build themselves as you trade. For producers, the POS stops being a till and becomes the retail end of the production system — which is exactly how Liquor Logic's producer POS is built.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between POS and EPOS?
Nothing meaningful today — EPOS ("electronic point of sale") is the traditional UK-flavoured term, POS the general one. Both describe the till software and hardware; every modern system is electronic.
Can a taproom POS also run food service?
Yes — if your taproom serves food, you want kitchen printing or a kitchen display and floor plans. Liquor Logic includes the full restaurant toolkit in the same plan, so a taproom kitchen is configuration, not an upgrade.
What does a taproom POS cost?
On Liquor Logic, taproom POS is included in the producer plans (from R549/month with production management) or available in the hospitality plan at R349/month. No per-terminal fees; standard hardware. See the POS cost guide for market comparison.
Conclusion
A taproom deserves better than a generic till with your logo on the receipt. Keg-level stock, batch traceability, tasting flights, and honest margins per beer are what make the taproom a business rather than a hobby with good foot traffic. Book a demo and we will show the whole loop — brewhouse to glass to cash-up — on your own numbers.