Inside a Modern Tasting Room: Running Winery Operations on Shopify POS. More wineries are beginning to look at Shopify POS, not just as a point-of-sale system, but as the central platform connecting their tasting room, website, wine club, and customer data.

The Hidden Cost of Winery Technology Shopify POS delivers ~22% lower total cost of ownership. When wineries evaluate POS systems and ecommerce platforms, the conversation usually starts with price. But those numbers rarely tell the full story. What actually determines the long-term cost of a platform is something called Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). And that’s where things get interesting.

What Actually Changes When a Winery Moves to Shopify POS? When a winery switches to Shopify POS, they think they’re changing software. What they’re actually changing is workflow.  Over the past several weeks, I’ve been documenting what this transition looks like here in Washington, in real tasting rooms with real staff and real inventory. If you’re evaluating a move to Shopify POS, here’s what actually changes, and what doesn’t. 

I recently spent the day with Florence Cellars as they opened their tasting room in the heart of downtown Woodinville’s wine country.  First, congratulations to their team! The space looks great. The turnout was fantastic. It was one of those days where you could feel the energy in the room and it couldn’t have been more exciting.  

There’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: Do your tasting room systems actually work together, or do they just coexist? For many small Washington wineries, the setup feels fine on the surface. You launch ecommerce. You add a POS system. You create and manage your clubs. You print reports. Sure, everything functions. But a few deeper questions often reveal where things get… shall we say, murky.

One of the easiest mistakes to make in the wine world is assuming a tasting room works like a retail store.  On the surface, it kind of does. There’s a counter. There’s inventory. There are transactions and reports.  But once you spend any real time in a tasting room, the differences become obvious. 

Why most system problems aren’t caused by software, but by structure — with lessons from ecommerce and winery operations.

Photo Credit: Richard Duval - winepix.net Perseverance. Talent. Sticking to your guns. Belief. The guts to go against the grain. Standing up for yourself. It all matters. And if you do it long enough—sometimes amazing things happen. I’m super proud of the latest news involving three longtime friends and collaborators— Alex Stewart , Hal Iverson , and Jesse Schmidt . They’re the winemakers behind the 2022 Tenor La Reyna Blanca Vineyard Chardonnay, which just made Washington