Manage online alcohol sales
About alcohol sales
From your item library, you can create items that contain alcohol and sell them from your Square Online site—as well as third-party marketplaces like DoorDash—if permitted by law in your area.
Before you begin
Do some research to find out what is and isn’t permitted in your area. There may be additional licensing requirements or other restrictions related to selling alcohol online.
Only Physical good and Prepared food and beverage items can be marked as containing alcohol. To create these item types, learn how to create and edit items.
Step 1: Label alcoholic items
To start selling alcohol online, you must first indicate which items in your item library contain alcohol. This could be a prepared cocktail from a bar that’s set up for pickup, local delivery or QR code ordering, or a non-perishable item like bottled wine set up for shipping.
Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Item library.
Select an existing item or create a new one.
Under Fulfillment, Edit the online fulfillment methods and click Done.
Toggle on Item contains alcohol.
Click Save when finished.
To label multiple items as alcoholic, you can either update multiple items with bulk actions or bulk edit items.
Step 2: Set up and manage alcohol orders
If you have on-demand delivery enabled for Square Online, you may deliver items that contain alcohol. On-demand delivery of alcohol is only available via DoorDash.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Settings > Account & Settings > Fulfillment > Pickup & Delivery.
- Select Edit by the location you want to set up alcohol for.
- Go to the Delivery tab and be sure you’ve selected On-Demand Delivery.
- Indicate that you plan to deliver alcohol.
- Complete all other fields and click Save.
Note: For orders that contain alcohol, the stock levels for all items in the order are decremented at the time of successful age verification and not at the time of successful payment.
If an adult of legal age or older isn’t home, or if ID verification can’t be completed, on-demand delivery couriers will return orders that contain alcohol to the pickup location. A $4.25 + tax return delivery fee will be charged to you, which you can choose to pass on to customers. You can then issue a refund or contact the customer to arrange a pickup.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Settings > Account & Settings > Fulfillment > Pickup & Delivery.
- Click Advanced Settings and toggle on Restocking fee.
- Click Save.
If you have QR code ordering enabled for Square Online, you may serve items that contain alcohol after a customer orders from their table or seat.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Online.
- Select Fulfillment > QR code ordering.
- Select Edit by the location you want to set up alcohol for.
- Select Edit by the alcohol settings.
- Toggle on whether you intend to serve alcohol, and set an optional maximum quantity of alcoholic items that can be placed per order.
- Click Save.
Review alcohol sales requirements
Although you can add age verification pop-ups to your website, Square Online does not have a legally compliant age verification feature. It is your responsibility to verify the legal age of your buyers when selling alcohol for QR code ordering, in-house delivery or in-store and curbside pickup.
When selling alcohol using on-demand delivery, the on-demand delivery courier will manage the age verification upon delivery.
On-demand delivery of alcohol is only available in the following provinces:
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- Ontario
- Quebec
While Square does offer an in-house delivery option for local delivery, the legal requirements for delivery of alcoholic items vary from one area to another. Unlike using on-demand delivery, with in-house delivery, it is solely your responsibility to be aware of and comply with any local and national rules and regulations related to the delivery of alcohol.
You may also offer in-store and curbside pickup for online sales of alcoholic items in accordance with your local laws and regulations.