RFID in the Wine Cellar: A perfect pairing
THE PROBLEMS WITH Wine Inventory Management
Inventory
Moving wine to take inventory will upset the sediment and damage the aging process. It also takes a long time to check each bottle: find the barcode, scan, return to the shelf.
What's missing?
How do you know if a bottle has gone missing? When?
Where is it?
How do you find a misplaced bottle? It may take months before it's pulled and placed in the correct location.
Ad Hoc Storage
Receiving and sorting new vintages takes a lot of effort. A few extra bottles won't fit with the other from that vintage. You'll need to shift your entire stock if you want to keep the wines together -- or, you will risk losing that bottle forever.
THE SOLUTION
RFID tags allow you to locate wine ("I want a 1990 Bordeaux"). Just tag your wine and tell Wave what you're looking for.
Wave can keep tracking of total bottle count by SKU, variety, and year. Locate by region, brand, or bottler.
Any information you add can be searched and sorted. Or, located using the 'locator.'
More importantly -- you can now figure out how much wine you own. Or don't own.
Time savings with RFID
Once your bottles are tagged, this is how long it will take to inventory your wine.
| Bottles | Time to Audit |
|---|---|
| 1,000 | 2 minutes |
| 5,000 | 10 minutes |
| 20,000 | 40 minutes |
Now you can open your restaurant and get a daily count of your wine and liquor inventory in a few minutes. At closing, you can check for any unaccounted wines and update your menu on what's available, just like balancing the cash register. It only takes a couple of minutes and tells you if you're making or losing money.
Find the wine you're looking for. That's RFID.
But, more so: You can find what you want
If you have a few thousand bottles of wine, you can locate the one you're looking for.
Barcodes will never help you find anything. Human counting is also ineffective.
When new stock arrives, you can place it anywhere. RFID will let you find it instantly—no more shuffling. No more disappointed customers that a wine isn't available.
Can't find a $200 Caymus? That's $150 in lost profit. How many times a night does this happen?
THE PROCESS
RFID Tags
SimplyRFiD makes a unique 'Popsicle RFID flag tag' that curves around the top bottle seal and reads from ten feet away. Remove this tag before serving the bottle to the customer -- or leave it on the bottle. It peels off easily.
Tagging
- Place the flag tag on the bottle.
- Scan the SKU of the wine bottle with Wave and scan the RFID tag. If the SKU exists in your wine database, all the details about this wine are loaded into the handheld. Your entire team of waiters will have a real-time update of your wine stock and can make appropriate, in-stock suggestions.
The data is stored in the SimplyRFiD Pogi data server, and shared to all the Wave RFID handhelds in real-time. If you have multiple locations, Wave can track more than 1,000,000 bottles of wine at a time.
SimplyRFiD can also pre-print and encode all your RFID tags. Just peel and stick them to the appropriate bottle. New bottles arriving can be added to the system on arrival. Or, you can request your distributor to pre-tag with RFID. Automatically receive goods into inventory, no manual tagging.
Locating
With SimplyRFiD Wave, you can enter a name ("Caymus") and see every match you own. Squeeze the trigger, and the handheld will direct you to every Caymus in your cellar.
More importantly, the handheld can get specific: 2015 Caymus.
Drop a case anywhere in your cellar, and the handheld will direct you to it.
But, if a customer wants a 'dry cab' -- you can enter 'Cabernet' in the search and all wines matching that will be displayed. A beeper will tell you which direction the desired Cabernet is.
Auditing
Use the SimplyRFiD Wave RFID handheld to count your stock quickly. A list of missing items will be displayed. You can mark them as SOLD or missing, and export them to a CSV (Excel format) file to update your available inventory.
No more shortages or missing bottles.
Why not try RFID now for your wine cellar? It's risk free! Let us know your thoughts.
