Premium-cigar retail and lounge operations on a single processor.
Cigar retail (humidor sales) plus lounge operations (food, bar, tobacco service) on one account, with inventory tracking that handles serial-numbered limited releases and bar tabs that close cleanly at end of shift.
Cigar lounges are unusual: they combine high-margin tobacco retail (boxes, singles, accessories) with on-premise lounge service (bourbon, whiskey, food, club memberships). Most processors only know how to do one or the other, and operators end up running two POS systems and reconciling between them. We place a single merchant account that covers retail and on-premise, configure POS for serial-numbered limited-release tracking, and set up locker memberships and cigar-of-the-month programs as recurring billing. Card-present rates run 2.2-2.7% effective for the retail side; the on-premise lounge side handles tip-out, bar tabs, and food checks the same way any restaurant POS would.
No. Premium cigar retail is classified as MCC 5993 (cigar stores and stands) and underwrites as standard low-risk tobacco. Where it gets complicated is if the lounge also serves alcohol or if there is significant online single-cigar sales (which can drift toward MCC 5921, package stores). We handle the underwriting file accordingly.
The lounge side runs on a restaurant POS configuration: bar tabs, food orders, server tip-out, table management. We typically install SkyTab, Union, or Figure for the lounge front-end and pair it with Clover or Material POS on the retail humidor side. If you are already on Toast or Lightspeed Retail and do not want to switch the POS, we focus on the processing economics underneath. Either way, the goal is one merchant account covering both sides of the operation.
Yes. Cigar-of-the-month boxes, membership dues, and locker rentals all run as recurring billing. We set up the customer vault, configure dunning sequences, and tokenize the cards so reissues do not drop active members from the program.