Frequently asked questions: selling to-go on BeerMenus
Payment
How do the fees work?
Stripe, the payment processor we work with, charges 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction by default. Stripe also offers lower rates as your payment volume increases.
The BeerMenus fee is a flat 5% on the order subtotal.
Both fees will be collected at the time of the transaction. In other words, unlike with some other services you won’t receive an invoice for you to pay fees separately.
How do I get paid?
Your money goes straight into your bank account. Like a ton of businesses out there, we partner with Stripe to process credit card payments for sales on BeerMenus.
During the sale setup process, we provide a way for you to create a Stripe account and connect your bank account to your Stripe account. You only connect your bank account to Stripe. You do not connect your bank account to BeerMenus.
It’s possible you already have a Stripe account—if you do, all you need to do is log in to that account.
Once that’s done, the funds from your BeerMenus sales have a route straight into your bank account.
When do I get paid?
Sales are totaled and begin making their way to your bank account daily. The first time our payment processor, Stripe, delivers your money it takes 7 days from the date of your first transaction. After that 7 day period, the transactions from 2 business days ago hit your bank account each day. For a fee, Stripe offers instant payouts.
What about taxes?
Within your to-go settings you can identify your sales tax:
Once you input a number there and check the “enable sales tax collection” box, sales tax will be applied at checkout.
Here’s how it will look for your customers:
Please note that the tax payment will still flow to you, so you’ll be responsible for filing sales tax for BeerMenus orders.
In other words, your business is the merchant of record for the transactions, and you are responsible for paying taxes on sales. You’ll receive a 1099 form from Stripe for your sales.
How should I price my items?
This is up to you. The Stripe fee is similar to normal credit card processing fees, which you likely already build into your pricing.
The question is whether you want to try to build the 5% BeerMenus fee into the price of your product. Some businesses do. Some do not.
Pickup
How will I know when someone places an order?
When someone places an order, you’ll receive an email notification about their order, telling you the person's name, what they ordered, and when they'll be arriving.
You can choose which email the order notification gets sent to on your to-go sales settings page (the “Sell” tab):
How does order pickup work?
Fulfillment works however you’d like it to—you provide pickup instructions for your to-go items on your to-go settings page (the “Sell” tab):
The world is your oyster here—you can direct customers to call when they arrive and you’ll bring it out; you could tell them to utilize an outdoor table that you’ve set up; and so on.
Can customers choose windows when they want to come pick something up?
As of now, we do not support pick up time windows. Pickup timing is limited to what you write in the "Buy now, pick up..." and "Pickup instructions" fields.
That said, you could direct customers to call if they won't arrive during a certain time period after ordering. Here's how that could look in the "Pickup info" visible to your customers:
Inventory
Can I only sell beer?
Nope, you can sell anything you'd like, so long as you comply with your local laws.
That means you can sell liquor, wine, food, cocktail kits, gift cards, merch, or anything else. If you can add it to your BeerMenus page, you can now sell it.
Hint: use that "Custom" tab to add anything that isn't a beer, wine, spirit, or cocktail:
How does inventory work?
When you add an item that’s available for to-go purchase, you must set a quantity available for purchase:
You can always see how much inventory you have remaining in your BeerMenus sale by navigating to your update menu page and looking at the product you're curious about:
Do you connect to my POS?
Do you connect to my POS? Not at this time, but we're exploring some options.
Businesses using BeerMenus to sell to-go typically set aside a certain amount of product for BeerMenus sales.
Promotion
On BeerMenus
As soon as your to-go sale goes live there’s a ton of automatic promotion that gets kicked off within the BeerMenus universe. Here are all the ways you get automatically promoted on BeerMenus.
On your BeerMenus page:
BeerMenus homepage:
Beer pages:
To-go/delivery page:
Daily/weekly feed emails:
How else can I promote my to-go sales on BeerMenus?
Easy: share the link to your BeerMenus page everywhere you can to let your customers know they can buy to-go straight from your BeerMenus page.
As with driving sales on services like DoorDash, GrubHub, and others, it’s important for you to share the link to your BeerMenus page on social media, on your website, and elsewhere.
While the automatic marketing boost you get from BeerMenus is levels above what you get those services and others like them (unless you want to pay an arm and a leg for their “marketing boosts”), you still need to put in some effort to spread the word to your audience.
How can I get started?
You can be up and running your to-go sale in minutes. For a 3-step how-to and a screencast, head over to this help doc.
Delivery
Do you offer delivery, or just to-go/pickup?
Right now we only offer to-go sales, but we’re actively exploring offering delivery. If you’re interested, please take our 1-minute survey to get early access!