Membership Has Its Privileges

No one ever wants to say “no” to a customer, but sometimes you have to.

Ken Arthurs owns Wolfendale’s, a party club catering to a college-age crowd in Indiana, Pa. The club’s policy is that everyone gets carded, whether they are “a regular or not a regular, age 21 or age 101,” he says.

Taking a hard line certainly helps protect Wolfendale’s from liquor liabilities, fines and lawsuits, but it also can hurt business — especially when the competition is not so strict. The challenge was capturing the data consistently without arousing any anger or resentment among regular patrons.

“Having a good, reliable customer identification system isn’t just an underage issue anymore, it’s a liquor liability issue,” Arthurs says.

But while he wanted to minimize exposure to fines, lawsuits — even the suspension of his liquor license — Arthurs didn’t want to create “a Gestapo attitude at the door or the bar.” So he needed a tool that would let the Wolfendale’s staff deal in a fast, friendly way with regular patrons who strongly dislike being carded each time they visit.

Arthurs found FSS Secure-ID, a biometric fingerprint ID system from Biometric Solution, at a tradeshow three years ago. Biometric Solution is a division of Altoona, Pa.-based FSS, a developer of identification systems for schools and institutions.

“When someone says to a doorman, ‘Hey, I know you, I know Kenny. I come here all the time,’ it’s hard to explain that you still have to card them,” Arthurs says. “But when we came up with the biometric program and we tied that into our VIP program, our regulars told us they felt that they have a better status than the average Joe walking in. Now we’ve eliminated the problems we used to have at the door.”

Many regulars enroll in Wolfendale’s VIP club which entitles them to special privileges. Instead of paying a door fee each time they visit, VIP members pay an annual fee: $40 fee admits a member on any regular night, while the $50 platinum fee also admits members on nights when special events are planned (platinum members also receive extras like T-shirts or hats themed to the special events). All VIP members receive discounts on their drink orders.

Wolfendale’s also employs a scanner to manually capture information from paper IDs (like driver’s licenses) from non-VIP customers. Not only have the scanner and the biometric fingerprint ID systems protected Wolfendale’s from liabilities, the biometric system has given the club a marketing tool that makes patrons feel special. “A lot of our customers use it to show off to their friends,” Arthurs says.

The club earned a return on its investment “the first time we scanned a fingerprint,” Arthurs says. “Every night we’re open, we’re susceptible to fines. So we look at ROI in terms of how many fines can we prevent, how many lawsuits can we prevent.”

It takes only two minutes for customers to register by providing their driver’s license number and expiration date, date of birth and either the left or right index finger for digital scanning. The system translates the electronic fingerprint into a mathematical algorithm, discards the print image and matches the numerical output to registered customer information. Once registered, VIP members can be admitted to the club in seconds.

Scanner, POS, camera combo
At Wolfendale’s, the FSS Secure-ID and the scanner technology interface with the POS system and a 32-camera surveillance system. That interface allows Wolfendale’s to confirm proof of age and how many drinks have been sold to each customer from the time they enter the club until the time they leave.

The video surveillance system is used, among other things, to help prove that a customer appeared sober at the time of their drink purchases.

“The two systems have saved our establishment thousands of dollars,” Arthurs says. “If something happens, we can trace a person down to when they came in, how long they stayed, how many drinks they ordered. Plus, if they happen to break something — bust a pool stick, for example — we are able to look at the camera, match their picture up with the picture we captured at the door and, from their license, get their address and phone number.

“We then give them a call and say, ‘Come pay for the damage.’ We’re not going to call the police — we just want our money back for the damage done,” he says.

The ID scanning also has helped the police capture perpetrators of serious crimes, including a man who raped a woman he had stalked at the club.

Liability protection
The biometric system is more effective and reliable than manual scanning systems, Arthurs says, primarily because IDs like driver’s licenses “can be forged or membership cards can be passed along to friends.”

Wolfendale’s surveillance cameras and ID scanners also proved invaluable when a customer was involved in an accident after leaving the club.

“There were people who said that this patron came in and was drinking from 8 o’clock on,” Arthurs says, but the systems showed “he didn’t come in until 11:32 p.m., he left at 1:30 a.m. and he purchased three drinks. If we hadn’t had that date and time stamp … we would have been liable for the accident.”

In the future, Arthurs may use the biometric fingerprint identification system to allow VIP customers to pay for drinks and to access the second-floor VIP room.