Liquor is one of the more challenging products to sell online. Not because it is difficult to sell to people, but because there are lots of rules and regulations that must be adhered to when you are selling it, especially internationally and to what age the person can make a purchase. In this article, we look at how to start a liquor Shopify store, with a focus on the precautions that you might want to take.

Key Takeaways
1
Use age verification apps to confirm customers meet legal age requirements for liquor purchases.
2
Restrict website access from countries with liquor sale restrictions using geolocation apps.
3
Pay attention to shipping, tax, and payment details when creating your liquor store.

Add an Age Check App

There are lots of apps that are others to protect you from selling to the wrong audience due to their age. With a liquor store, you need to ensure that all those visiting your store or making an order are above a certain age, or you could be fined. Using an age verification app is really easy and many of them have high accuracy levels.

Be sure that you are setting the age right. In the UK, the legal age is 18, but in some parts of the US, the legal age is 21. Therefore, you need to think about where you are selling your product and what age limits there are at that location.

Add a Geolocation App

At the same time, you might want to block your website from being visited by certain countries. Many countries around the world, especially those with Muslim heritage or leaders, ban the sale of liquor. So you don’t want people visiting from these countries, or buying from you.

A geolocation app can sometimes be bypassed with a VPN, but you can also block shipping locations to prevent orders from being made in certain counties.

Create a Shopify Account and Get Details Right

To start your liquor store on Shopify, you need to create a Shopify account. You get a 3-day free trial, which is long enough to build your website. You can then use a drinks theme to create the basic design for your store and then add the relevant apps as mentioned above.

Be sure to create a store and add in the right shipping, tax and payment details. And you can also register your domain with Shopify to make website management easier for you.

Keep Records

Be sure that you have a way to save all your order information. If there is a problem with an order, like the police claim that you sold to a person under the legal age, you need to present the proof that you carried out all necessary checks to ensure they were legally able to make the purchase.

Some apps can help you with this as well. Always back up your data where you, sometimes digital data can be lost, stolen or corrupted.