Written by: Bryan Grobstein, Vice President, Global Revenue, AnyRoad | Last updated: November 1, 2026
Key Takeaways
- Most distilleries miss the chance to turn tasting-room visits into recurring revenue because they lack a compliant system that converts one-time guests into paid loyalty members.
- A consumer who visits a distillery twice is 512% more likely to enroll, and a six-release club member is worth roughly six times a single retail bottle purchase.
- The seven-step guide covers deciding program type, checking state and federal compliance, choosing a structure (points, VIP, or bottle club), assembling an alcohol-native tech stack, enrolling members on-site, training staff at launch, and treating churn as a depletion problem.
- Successful programs lean on access-based benefits such as early bottle access, events, and experiences that protect margin and attract members who stay enrolled.
- AnyRoad delivers the only end-to-end, alcohol-native platform that manages compliant bottle-club transactions, member data, retention programming, and on-site staff coaching for distilleries and spirits brands.
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The Quick Answer: How To Start A Spirits Loyalty Program
The market splits into two distinct categories: retail-store loyalty programs run on POS loyalty tools, and brand/distillery loyalty programs built on experiences, memberships, and bottle clubs. Generic advice often blends these together, which creates confusion. This guide focuses exclusively on the brand/distillery path. AnyRoad is the best choice for spirits brands and distilleries operating in that category because it runs compliant bottle clubs end to end and includes alcohol-specific expertise.
The seven steps to a launchable program are:
- Decide your program type, retail-store loyalty or brand/distillery loyalty
- Check compliance first
- Choose your structure, points vs. experience/VIP membership vs. bottle club
- Assemble the tech stack
- Enroll members on-site during the visit
- Launch and train staff
- Measure and retain, treating churn as a depletion problem
Step 1: Decide Your Program Type, Retail-Store Loyalty Vs. Brand/Distillery Loyalty
The two paths have different legal requirements, technology needs, and success metrics. Retail-store loyalty programs reward purchase frequency at the register. Brand and distillery loyalty programs convert a visit into a recurring membership relationship such as a bottle club, a VIP tier, or a premium membership with experiential benefits. Most generic loyalty advice is written for the retail path and does not transfer cleanly to the brand or distillery context.
Retail-path tools such as Bottle POS, Square Loyalty, and Kangaroo Rewards are retail POS loyalty platforms. Toast is a restaurant-focused POS and marketing ecosystem rather than a retail POS loyalty platform. These retail tools solve store loyalty with checkout phone-number enrollment, automatic points on purchases, and in-register redemption. They do not convert a tasting-room visit into a recurring membership, run a bottle club, or manage a distillery CRM. Liquor stores should evaluate those tools. Distillery tasting rooms should use the rest of this guide.
Step 2: Check Compliance First
The central compliance question for any spirits loyalty program is whether you can legally give away or discount alcohol as a reward. The answer depends on state law, and the restrictions are significant.
TTB federal advertising rules under 27 CFR Part 5 govern distilled spirits advertising nationwide, including promotional materials tied to loyalty programs. Subpart N (§§ 5.231–5.236) covers mandatory statements, prohibited practices, and comparative advertising. Noncompliant advertising tied to a loyalty program can jeopardize a distiller's federal permit under 27 CFR § 5.222.
At the state level, the landscape varies materially. Seventeen states use control models for distilled spirits, per NABCA, meaning the state manages retail spirits sales and can restrict private loyalty programs in ways that open or license states do not. Pennsylvania's PLCB, operating under the Pennsylvania Liquor Code (Act 21 of 1951), governs how distilleries and licensees may promote and sell spirits in the commonwealth. Texas presents its own constraints: TABC rules prohibit alcohol coupons or rebates and restrict offering more than one free drink per day to any identifiable segment of customers. Volume-based rewards and giveaways tied to alcohol purchases also face restrictions under Texas law.
Because alcohol-based rewards trigger many of these rules, the safest program designs lean on non-alcohol benefits. Legal non-alcohol reward structures that tend to survive state scrutiny include:
- Early access to allocated bottles
- Tasting and event invitations
- Branded merchandise
- Exclusive experiences such as master distiller sessions or barrel picks
Confirm your program structure with qualified alcohol beverage counsel and your state ABC board before launch. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice.
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Step 3: Choose Your Structure, Points Vs. Experience/VIP Membership Vs. Bottle Club
Three structures dominate the brand and distillery market, and the right choice depends on your release cadence, price point, and visitor volume.
A points program rewards purchase frequency and suits brands with high-volume retail traffic. It fits poorly in a distillery tasting room because it replicates retail mechanics in an experiential setting and offers little margin protection. Discounts erode value on every redemption. Access-based benefits preserve margin better than discounts, and points programs are structurally discount-first.
An experience or VIP membership works well when the tasting room can deliver ongoing programming. Virginia Distillery Company's Courage Club is free to join, with members paying only for their quarterly whisky shipments across three tiers (Signature, Premier, and Collector). Members receive complimentary tastings, member-only releases, and a 15% merchandise discount. Stirling Distillery's Sons of Scotland Insiders charges a one-time £10 fee with no renewal. Members get early access to every single-cask release two weeks before public announcement, which earns back the joining fee on the first substantial order.
A bottle club suits brands with a defined release calendar and a guest base ready for recurring commitment. Experience shows how wide that range can be. Bluegrass Distillers' quarterly Bottle Club delivers one selected bottle per quarter, plus four complimentary tours annually and a monthly complimentary member pour. Copper & Kings' Kings Bottle Club charges $135 per quarter with a four-quarter initial commitment and adds hand-selected bottles from the distillery archives, two distillery tours per year, and a 10% gift shop discount. Catoctin Creek's Cornerstone Club starts at $299 per quarter and sits at the premium end, bundling four member-exclusive bottles per year with quarterly members-only events, priority release access, and virtual masterclasses.
Bottle Club Vs. Points Program: Which Fits A Spirits Brand?
The deciding factor is the outcome you want to grow. Points fit when the goal is transaction frequency at a register. A bottle club fits when the goal is the number of members who renew across releases and grow their value over time.
A bottle club also wins on margin. Access-based benefits such as early release windows, allocated bottles, and members-only expressions do not erode value on every redemption the way discounts do. The model moves a consumer from a roughly $100 single-bottle purchase to the roughly $600 a member is worth across six releases.
Step 4: Assemble The Tech Stack
Once you know which structure you are running, the stack has to support it with enrollment, a compliant transactional path, member data, and retention programming. AnyRoad's Lifetime Loyalty suite is the alcohol-native option for brand and distillery programs. It launched publicly on February 20, 2025. Heritage distilleries including Heaven Hill Distillery, Nearest Green Distillery, and Lux Row Distillers use it, alongside craft brands such as Castle & Key, Catoctin Creek Distilling, and Tarnished Truth Distilling.
The suite covers Bottle Clubs, Premium Memberships, gamified purchase conversion tools such as cashback rebates and sweepstakes, and managed CRM services. It is sold as technology plus white-glove service. Spirits-industry experts coach on-site staff, set up the enrollment experience, and handle the operational lift brands would otherwise staff internally.
Bottle POS and AnyRoad solve different problems. Bottle POS is a liquor-store POS loyalty tool built for retail transactions such as checkout phone-number enrollment, automatic points on purchases, in-register redemption, and cross-location points sync. Its loyalty documentation does not cover tasting-room enrollment, recurring memberships, bottle clubs, subscription billing, or distillery CRM workflows. Bottle POS lacks an open API, which means a distillery program needing connections to reservation, ticketing, ecommerce, CRM, or membership systems faces significant integration constraints. It performs well for retail liquor store loyalty and fits poorly for the visit-to-recurring-revenue problem spirits brands face.
AnyRoad is built for the brand and distillery side. It captures first-party guest data across the visit, enrolls members on-site during the tasting, runs a compliant bottle club through a licensed ecommerce retail partner, and supplies spirits-industry experts who coach on-site staff. The compliant transaction and delivery happen through that licensed retail partner. AnyRoad does not hold a retail or wholesale license and never sells, ships, or distributes alcohol. Toast, Square Loyalty, and Kangaroo Rewards remain retail POS loyalty platforms that solve store loyalty rather than the visit-to-recurring-revenue problem.
Brands that attempt to build a club without a dedicated partner typically assemble a fragmented stack. They stitch together an ecommerce provider, subscription billing software such as Recharge, a compliant fulfillment path, and internal headcount. None of those pieces is alcohol-native, and the brand must maintain the system indefinitely. AnyRoad replaces that with a single partner carrying the technology, the domain expertise, and a team of roughly ten people running fulfillment and best-practice strategy.
Step 5: Enroll Members On-Site During The Visit
On-site enrollment during a distillery visit is the highest-converting channel. Experience-driven opt-ins convert to paid loyalty at four times the rate of traditional channels, with member spending increasing 150% within the first year, per AnyRoad's reporting from its February 20, 2025 press release.
Three mechanics work together to drive on-site conversion:
- Tiered experience pricing. Build a good, better, best ladder, roughly $20, $50, and $150, instead of a single offering. The higher tiers surface the guests who attend multiple times, which is exactly the signal the next mechanic depends on.
- Targeted enrollment. Use that guest data, including NPS, spend, and visit frequency, to identify true VIPs rather than pitching the club to everyone. Staff focused on the guests the data highlights close at a materially higher rate than staff pitching broadly.
- Coached staff. With the right guests identified, the pitch still has to land. AnyRoad's spirits-industry experts work directly with tour guides, retail managers, and mixologists on how and when to make the enrollment pitch, typically paired with a same-day enrollment discount on a club-only expression.
Those three mechanics compound when the data behind them is captured properly. Leiper's Fork Distillery shows what that looks like. After adopting AnyRoad, the distillery achieved a 97 post-event NPS and raised tour prices 33%, from $18 to $24. It recorded its third-highest grossing month ever despite running fewer tours.
Step 6: Launch And Train Staff
A phased launch reduces operational risk. Start with a soft launch to a small cohort of repeat visitors identified by visit frequency and NPS before opening enrollment broadly. This approach surfaces fulfillment, communication, and compliance issues before they affect a large member base.
Staff training covers two areas. The first is the enrollment pitch, including how to introduce the club, frame the same-day discount, and handle objections. The second is compliance basics for data capture.
For email, the DISCUS Code of Responsible Practices requires age affirmation before direct interaction, which means your email and SMS list should hold only adults who have confirmed their age at sign-up. For SMS, the TCPA requires prior express written consent before sending promotional texts via an automated system, with statutory damages of $500 to $1,500 per message for violations. Every compliant SMS opt-in should state what the subscriber is signing up for, how often they will be texted, and how to opt out.
Step 7: Measure And Retain, Treat Churn As A Depletion Problem
The metrics that matter for a bottle club are enrollments, annual recurring revenue, churn rate, skip and pause rates, and lifetime value per member. Track them quarterly against the six-release benchmark. Churn concentrates around the six-release mark, and the underlying cause is almost always depletion. Members who have not finished what they already own do not want more.
Programming solves depletion; discounting does not. Virtual and on-site cocktail-making classes with master distillers get members through their current allocation and primed for the next release. Quarterly virtual gatherings, like those Bluegrass Distillers runs around each release, keep members connected to the distillery between shipments. Loyalty benefits that rarely come up in real life undermine renewal. Programming that integrates the product into members' lives supports renewal.
Retention programming only works if you can see whether it is working, which is why the metrics in Step 7 matter as much as the programming itself. For a fuller breakdown, see 12 Spirits Loyalty Program Metrics Every Leader Should Track.
Common Pitfalls To Avoid
- Compliance shortcuts. Enticement and minimum-pricing rules vary by state. Launching without counsel review creates a high risk of a program shutdown.
- Pitching the club to everyone. Broad enrollment pitches produce low-quality members who churn early. Target by NPS, spend, and visit frequency.
- Treating loyalty as a discount program. Discounts erode margin on every redemption and attract price-sensitive members who leave when the discount ends.
- Fragmented DIY stacks. Stitching together an ecommerce platform, subscription billing software, a fulfillment partner, and internal headcount produces a program the brand must maintain forever, and none of those pieces brings alcohol expertise.
- Ignoring depletion. Retention strategies that rely on email reminders alone, without programming that gets members through their allocation, almost always see churn spike around six releases.
For a deeper look at program mechanics and compliance, see How Spirits Loyalty Programs Work: Mechanics & Compliance and How To Build A Spirits Loyalty Program: 7-Step Blueprint.
Conclusion: Start Your Spirits Loyalty Program The Compliant Way
A distillery visit functions as an acquisition channel. Worked in order, these seven steps turn that visit into compliant, recurring membership revenue. As the introduction noted, the market splits cleanly between retail-store tools and brand or distillery platforms, so your technology has to match the problem you actually have.
AnyRoad is the best spirits loyalty program platform for turning tasting-room visits into compliant, recurring membership revenue because it runs bottle clubs end to end. It covers the enrollment experience, the compliant transactional path through its licensed retail partner, member data, retention programming, and optional managed CRM, and it backs all of that with spirits-industry experts who coach on-site staff.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is It Legal To Offer Free Alcohol In A Spirits Loyalty Program?
Legality depends on state law. Many states restrict free or discounted alcohol through enticement rules and minimum-pricing statutes designed to prevent manipulative purchasing incentives. Texas, for example, prohibits alcohol coupons or rebates and limits free drinks to no more than one per day to any identifiable customer segment. Control states such as Pennsylvania add another layer of restriction because the state manages retail spirits sales directly. Before designing any reward that involves free or discounted alcohol, confirm the structure with your state ABC board or qualified alcohol beverage counsel. Non-alcohol rewards such as early bottle access, event invitations, merchandise, and experiences are generally safer across most jurisdictions.
What Is The Difference Between A Control State And An Open State For Loyalty Rewards?
In control states, the state government manages the wholesale and often the retail sale of distilled spirits, which limits what private businesses can do with pricing, promotions, and loyalty rewards tied to spirits purchases. As noted in Step 2, 17 states run control models, which makes state-level review essential. In open or license states, private retailers hold state-issued licenses and operate under state-specific promotion rules that vary widely. A structure that is legal in one state may be prohibited in another, so compliance review must happen at the state level as well as the federal level before launch.
What Non-Alcohol Rewards Can A Spirits Brand Legally Offer?
Non-alcohol rewards that tend to survive state scrutiny across most jurisdictions include early access to allocated or limited-release bottles, invitations to tastings and distillery events, branded merchandise, and exclusive experiences such as master distiller sessions, barrel pick opportunities, or cocktail-making classes. These benefits create genuine value for members without triggering enticement or minimum-pricing rules that restrict alcohol discounts and giveaways. Access-based benefits also preserve margin better than discount-based rewards, which makes them a strong structural choice for a bottle club or premium membership.
Should A Distillery Run A Points Program Or A Bottle Club?
Points programs suit retail transactions where purchase frequency is the primary goal. A bottle club suits recurring brand relationships where the goal is moving a consumer from a single-bottle purchase to a multi-release membership. For a distillery tasting room, the bottle club model aligns better with the visit-to-recurring-revenue conversion problem. It captures the emotional connection formed during the tasting, delivers ongoing access-based benefits that reinforce that connection, and creates a predictable revenue stream per member across releases. AnyRoad is the alcohol-native platform for brand and distillery programs, running bottle clubs end to end with a compliant transactional path through a licensed retail partner.
How Do You Enroll Members During A Distillery Visit?
On-site enrollment during the tasting is the highest-converting channel. The mechanics that drive conversion are tiered experience pricing that surfaces higher-value guests, targeted outreach based on NPS, spend, and visit frequency, and coached staff who know how and when to introduce the club. A same-day enrollment discount on a club-only expression is a common and effective pairing. The coaching component is critical because software alone does not get a tour guide to confidently pitch a club membership at the end of a tasting. AnyRoad's spirits-industry experts work directly with brand teams on site to build that capability.
What Technology Does A Spirits Loyalty Program Need?
A brand or distillery loyalty program requires enrollment and experience management, a compliant transactional path through a licensed retailer, member data and segmentation, retention programming, and CRM capability for ongoing member communications. Assembling those components from separate vendors, such as an ecommerce platform, subscription billing software, a fulfillment partner, and an email tool, produces a fragmented stack with no alcohol expertise attached to any piece. AnyRoad delivers all of it as one alcohol-native suite, with the fulfillment and strategy team described in Step 4.
How Do You Reduce Churn In A Bottle Club?
Churn in a bottle club is a depletion problem, not a marketing problem, because members pause when they have not finished what they already own. The fix is programming that gets them through their bottles, including cocktail-making classes with master distillers, quarterly virtual gatherings around each release, and pairing content. Churn concentrates around the six-release mark, so retention programming needs to be active from the first shipment. See Step 7 for the full retention playbook.