With many of the smaller stores trying to stay viable for our cities and competing against the bigger box stores or even the competition down the road, now is the time to look at your purchasing power and smarter buying options from your vendors.

I recently teamed up with another municipal liquor store and have started to group purchase alcohol.

Together we are doing the 25 case buys on the "staple" items we know we will go through: Captain, Bacardi, Mac, Windsor, etc... 

It is perfectly legal to do so, despite what some of your salespeople will tell you.  

See MN State Statute 340A.312  

Getting the salesmen on board was the biggest challenge. 

It requires a little more paperwork on your salesman's side and some are not willing to work with you on it. 

We had one salesman that was not as willing to work with us, so I made a phone call to the Single Point of Contact from the MMBA magazine to discuss the issue we were having and it was resolved. 

Your salesmen should be appreciative for whatever business you are giving them, big or small.

When we place an order we decide how we are going to separate out the 25 case deal. 

To make it easier and less confusing for us and our salesmen, one of us puts the entire order in. 

Our group purchases are invoiced separately with the 25 case pricing and delivered to each location.

By group purchasing with another facility it helps you be more competitive in pricing, increases your Gross Profit, and generates more money for your city.

Cheers!

Karissa Kurth

Buffalo Lake 

From: creditcards.com 

Visa, for instance, has imposed a deadline of Oct. 1, 2015 (except for fuel-selling merchants, who have until Oct. 1, 2017). 

After that, the liability for point-of-sale fraud at terminals that do not support EMV will shift from Visa to the party that doesn't enable chip technology to be used -- that could be the merchant, the acquirer/processor if it hasn't offered an EMV-capable solution to merchants, or the issuer if it has not issued EMV-capable cards to its cardholders.

MasterCard, American Express and Discover all share those 2015 and 2017 deadlines, but each has its own specific rules on liability shift.

Ole and Lena were lying in bed one night when the phone rang. 

Ole answered it and Lena heard him yell, "Vell, how da hell should I know, dats over 2,000 miles away" and he hung up.

Lena say's "who vas dat Ole?"

Ole say's "Hell if I know, some guy vants ta know if da coast is clear."