Maximizing Wine Sales for Bar Owners: Boost Profits & Customer Appeal

You're going to sell a lot more cocktails , a lot more beer than you ever will wine . But overlooking wine is overlooking a key product that you can sell and make great money on .

And the fact of the matter is , even though , if we look at , say , the United States or England or Australia or a lot of countries where the predominant person that goes to a bar , the predominant person that goes to a pub , wants to drink beer , there are people that want to drink wine . There are a lot of people that want to drink wine .

There are people that drink wine on a regular basis in all of these places . So when you don't have a product for them to drink , you're just cutting out on that piece of business . You're giving them a reason not to come visit your bar and it's kind of like everything back a few weeks ago when we talked about mocktails .

Sure , mocktails are growing a lot more than wine , but mocktails are still an overall small portion of what most bars will ever sell , but it's an important portion . It's a portion that helps you gain more customers . It's a portion that gives you more business and gives more people a reason to come to your establishment .

So , wine a lot of times we can think of the same way , and , again , wine is kind of an afterthought in most bar owners' minds , when really it should be in the forefront . It's just as important as liquor and beer as a category , and , while you won't sell as much and you don't need to carry as much , it is something that you need to have .

So what kind of wine you need to have , though , is all going to be dependent upon what kind of bar you have . Now , if you are that neighborhood pub , that dive bar , that kind of sports beer type place , obviously you're going to sell SWIM , but guess what ? Most of the guys that watch sports , they have wives .

A lot of their wives drink wine , and so there is a place for it . Still , the thing is , on a bar like that , you don't need a giant wine selection . Now , the higher up you go in the food chain , if you will . The more expensive you get , the fancier you get , the more likely you are to have guests that come in and want to drink wine .

Other thing that will bring in wine drinkers , or that will just bring in people that want to drink wine in general , is if you do a lot of food so say you do steaks on a certain night of the week . We've talked about that before how I , with my bars , always used to have a steak night that we would use to bring people in the door .

We sold a lot of wine that night because people like wine with their steaks . But that aside , the first thing you have to decide when you're going to build a wine program for a bar is how much wine do you need ?

Now , if you were the diavist of dive bars , if you are so blue collar that all you ever sell is beer , okay , you probably get away with two wines . You need a white and a red and you're good to go . But for most folks you're going to want to actually have a little bit more of an extended wine selection .

That's obviously because different wines pair better with different foods . Different people have different opinions of what wines they prefer the best . Now , in my mind , that means that pretty much every bar that exists , you should have at least six , maybe eight , wines on your list at a minimum .

In my mind it tends to come down to eight varietals that every bar should have , and starting with white wine , starting on the sweeter end , you need a Riesling , because that's going to appeal to a lot of your kind of more casual wine drinkers , then a Pinot Grigio or Pinot Gris , a Savillon Blanc , something nice , bright and acidic , and then probably a Chardonnay

for your white wines . On the red side , pinot Noir , merlot , cabernet , savignon and Zinfandel will give you a nice round selection that will appeal to a lot of people . Now , when it comes to your wine selection , the one mistake that a lot of bar owners make is that they go with one brand of house wines . So it's all Yellowtailer , it's all CK Mondavi .

They just pick one brand and they have eight wines and all wines come from the same maker , and that can work . I'm not saying that's a terrible idea . With all my bars , I always had a house wine . I had a house white and a house red . There were both CK Mondavi and it was a Chardonnay and a Cab . So real , simple and easy .

But frankly , I think that you have a great opportunity to find in the wine world some really good value wines that are going to be not necessarily the best known brands in the world but provide great examples of what that varietal should taste like and should be at a very good price point .

When I say very good price point , I mean wholesale sub $10 bottles , because unless you're a higher end bar , unless you're a cocktail bar , unless you're doing more with wine than the normal , say , neighborhood type bar , you don't want really bottles that cost over $10 because you don't want to charge that much for your wine , maybe 12 , maybe 15 .

But that kind of seven to 10 , seven to 12 range , that really is the sweet spot , and that's because of the pricing of wine , which we'll get into here in a little bit . But I would really encourage you to not do what your wine or liquor reps will try to have you do , which is to buy one brand of wine for everything .

Get it out , get good wines , get different wines , get things that people will enjoy , that like wine , because wine drinkers tend to be pretty discriminating though they're no different than your craft cocktail or craft beer drinkers when it comes to their knowledge of what they drink .

Now , another thing that a lot of liquor reps will try to push you towards when it comes to wine and something that I will avoid at all costs is don't do all your wine in split .

So when I say split , I mean one of those little 180 of 7 milliliter bottles essentially a glass in a bottle and they'll push you towards that because they'll say , well , there's no waste , it doesn't go bad , it is easy to keep inventory , it's easy to control and all of that is true .

But the thing is that a wine drinker sees you pull out a little bottle like that and pour it into a glass . You have a better chance of offending a wine drinker than making them happy by doing that , even if it's all .

We'll pick on Yellowtail again , because they have splits and they have larger bottles and a lot of bars , especially in the US , use them as a house wine , even if it's all Yellowtail , seeing a full-size bottle . Pouring a glass versus a split . Pouring a glass just gives the guest a better experience . It makes them feel better about what's going on .

So try to avoid doing all splits Now . The one place where you absolutely should do splits is with sparkling wine , and that's because , while wine in general doesn't have a great shelf life , right , most bottles of wine are only going to be good for two , three , four days , depending on how you store them . Sparkling wine has a shelf life of a couple hours .

Now if you're using sparkling wine in cocktails , absolutely you're selling through enough volume of them .

It makes sense maybe to get a whole bottle , but even when you're using sparkling wine for cocktails , having a little 1-8-7 splits makes it real easy to A have something portioned and B have something that's always effervescent , that's always fresh , where you're getting the carbonation you need to go into that wine cocktail .

So , in general , don't do splits , but with sparkling wine , always do splits . At least that's always been my approach . Now , the other thing you don't want to do with wine is you don't want to say you know what ? I love wine and I want to carry a bunch of really good wine and then end up with a bunch of wine sitting around that doesn't sell .

One of the bars I was involved in we had a partner that was a wine guy Actually , all of us were kind of wine guys and this guy really liked one particular brand of wine , so we bought a case because he came in at 8 , at least once a week and he wanted to have the wine that he liked available for him when he came in . So we ordered a case .

Now the thing about this wine is it wasn't a lower end bottle , it was a kind of moderate bottle . I want to say the bottle cost was around $15 , $18 somewhere in that range , and I believe he was the only person that ever drank that wine . It was just a little bit too much for that market price wise . And it wasn't a red blend .

It wasn't particularly well known by the guests that came in , so there wasn't any real demand for it where we had no problem selling a Cabernet . No one had heard of the red blend thing . Kind of scared people and obviously you can completely work around that . And when we're talking about red blends , I should also just step back here for a second .

There are a lot of sweet wines out there , whether it's mass market , national or international sweet wines that maybe shouldn't be sweet . We're not talking ice vines or Reese Lings or wines that are traditionally sweet . Sometimes we're talking about just sweet red wine , fruit wines , things of that nature . I personally am not a fan .

I'm a bit of a wine snob , but if you're in a market where those things sell , have them . Happens to be that where I live in Indiana there is a local winery that makes a wine James the name of it but they used to call it soft red . It is just sweet concord grape juice with booze in it .

It's basically what that wine is and it is the number one selling wine in the state of Indiana . So while personally I am not a fan , well , personally I would never order that bottle of wine Because to me it's concord grape juice that's been fermented . It's not real wine because , again , I'm a bit of a snob , but people would buy it the crap out of it .

So obviously I sold it , even though that wasn't in one of my main varietal sets . It's not really something that comes into my head when I think of wine . It is something that my guests wanted , it is something that my guests drank , it's something that I was able to sell very well and , again , was the number one selling wine in the whole state of Indiana

. Obviously , if you're in a state like California where you have a huge wine culture , where you have a lot of people that understand wine , that drink wine .

You may not get away with that , but , depending on where you are , you have to be aware that there are some regional differences , some types of wine that may fall outside of the norm that you should supply to your guests if they are going to drink them .

Because the bottom line is , whether it's wine , beer , cocktails , food , whatever we ever talk about the goal here is to make money , and you make money by selling people what they want to buy for a price they will buy it for . So even if you don't like a product , if people will buy it , you got to sell it . So that's the two sides of our coin , right ?

We don't want to sell wines that are too expensive , that are above the market that we serve , and we also want to acknowledge that wines that do sell in our market we need to sell .

It's simple when you think about it , but it's something that a lot of folks , especially folks really deep in wine , have an issue with because it's kind of counterintuitive to them because , well , wine snobs want to have wine be a certain way . Now , let's say , you have a little bit of a higher end establishment .

If you're doing high end cocktails , if you're doing better food , you have the opportunity to sell more wine .

Something like a craft beer bar or a higher end cocktail bar , a gastropub type concept , all have a phenomenal opportunity to sell a lot of wine , and in those sorts of establishments , when you start looking at the higher end wines , there are some definite things to pay attention to . And now this next point . It's very true at the higher end .

It's also true at the lower end . If you end up with more than just eight bottles of wine , one of each for idle is that your wine list should always be made in a way that's progressive and not by price . When you list everything , with the least expensive on top and the most expensive on bottom , everyone's going to buy in the middle .

It doesn't matter what it is , it doesn't matter if it's good , it doesn't matter if people like it , it doesn't matter what your server recommends . They don't want to seem cheap , they don't want to spend the most money possible . They're going to buy in the middle every single time .

So arranging a wine list by price , like was done historically , is really the worst way possible to design a wine list , and that's true for beer and cocktails as well . You should never have a menu that has items listed based upon price , what I do like to do , for one .

And what I think is by far the most effective way to generate a wine list is to make it progressive , based on how heavy the wine is . So you start sweet and light . You go to tannic , heavy , dark fruits , acidic . You make a list where you have Pinot Noir on one end and Zinfandel Petit-sur-Rah on the other end .

So you're kind of covering that spectrum where , if it's white , you're going from your re-sling all the way to a heavy-oaked Chardonnay . And a progressive list helps you in two ways .

First and foremost , it helps your guests decide what they want to order , but also it helps your servers and bartenders sell that wine , because the thing is they don't actually have to know all that much about the wine . Obviously , as you taste it , obviously they should be aware of what they are selling .

But , as we all know , not every bartender is a wine drinker , not every server is a beer drinker . People drink what they drink and a lot of times in this business we're asking them to sell things that they're less familiar with , and by making a progressive list it makes it very easy for them .

They can ask guests and say , hey , what kind of wine do you like ? And the guests can say , well , I really like lighter white wines , and they can point out to the top of the white list and say well then , all of these here will be a good selection for you . So a progressive list .

Not only does it stop people from ordering based upon price , it also gives your servers this extra tool in their hand to use to sell , because your servers , at the end of the day and we've said this before are actually salesmen . That's their job .

They are there to sell your product , your product being whatever is coming out from behind the bar or from your kitchen . So making it easier for them to sell increases your ability to make money .

The second thing you should do if you're going to have a bit of a longer wine list whether that's 10 bottles or 100 , is have a good selection of wines , where some of them represent good value wines and some of them represent well known wines . So , for instance , maybe you find a really good deal on a unknown Australian Savoyen Blanc that's from Marlboro .

That meets everyone's imagination of what a Marlboro Savoyen Blanc should be , but no one's heard of the winery . So it's a great example at a great price , and when it says Marlboro Savoyen Blanc , everybody who knows what a Marlboro Savoyen Blanc tastes like , imagines it . They drink it . It's exactly what it is and they're getting it for a steal .

That should be about half your list . The other half should be really well known wines . So if we're sticking with Marlboro Savoyen Blanc , maybe that's Ken Crawford . If we're talking Chardonnay , it should be .

Well , in the United States and the Midwest , when most people think of Chardonnay they think of a full-bodied , oaked , buttery Chardonnay , something like Kendall Jackson . So Kendall Jackson actually itself works in that way . What you want to avoid doing is giving people a wine that's not what they expect , especially if you have a shorter wine list .

So , thinking of Chardonnay Kendall Jackson , we have this big oaky , buttery brown , just big Chardonnay that's very American in style and it's not at all the same as a French chablis , even though it's made from the same grape , chablis , you know , being un-oaked , more acidic , fruit-forward not at all the same wine .

And so if you sell people an un-oak chardonnay but they're expecting an oak chardonnay , they will never be happy . So , wherever you are , make sure what you're selling matches what people expect when in Indiana , I'm always going to want that chardonnay to be that heavier oak style of chardonnay .

If I had a bar in Marseille , france , I'd probably want chablis , not American chardonnay , because American chardonnay wouldn't make any sense to anyone there . So make sure what you have , especially with your well-known wine selection , and even the ones that are good values . If you have a shorter list , make sure it's things that people expect .

Now , obviously , if you're going way high end , there's room for all of it if you have a long enough list . But if you don't have a long enough list , give people what they expect to drink , and that is just as true for beer as it is for wine . It's always important that what people order , what they imagine in their head , is what they get .

Now , another thing to consider if we're doing a little bit more higher end wines , a little bit broader list , is , if at all possible , don't buy a case of everything .

For a while and I'll tell a few stories , probably about this tonight , but for a while I was a food and beverage manager for Country Club and I wrote a wine list that was about let's say , we had about 60 bottles of wine . A lot of them I bought by the case , some of them .

I bought one or two or three of them because they weren't necessarily going to sell a lot , and mostly there it was really high end bottles of wine . It was the wine that I was selling for $200 , $300 , $400 a bottle .

Now I know most bars are not going to have that , but even in a high end Country Club environment those bottles were not selling every night . If I had one for the weekend I was fine . I might sell one . Somebody else might want one . I could sell them something else and then order it the next week and have one or two for the next weekend .

So if you know you're not going to sell through a case over the course of a couple months , don't buy a case . Buy a bottle If you can . Will it cost more money ?

Absolutely , but normally the case break price , where you can break a case , is going to be a relatively inconsequential amount when we're talking about a bottle of wine that you're buying wholesale at 50 , 60 , 75 , $100 . So a two or three or four dollar charge really isn't adding that much and you just work it into your price .

It's not like that will change your liquor cost or wine cost , as long as you build that cost into your pricing model . And the last thing if you have a higher end establishment and you have a deeper wine list is don't be afraid of buy the bottle , only wines . I think a lot of times people get caught up in that .

All wine and bars , especially when you're talking about mid range bars , places that are not high end wine bars , they're just kind of normal bars . Even I see this sometimes in gastropub type places or cocktail heavy bars where they want older wines available by the glass . There's no reason to do that , wine drinkers will buy a bottle of wine .

You can sell wine by the bottle and not by the glass . Well , it always sell . No , but if you get known for having a decent wine selection , if you have people come in to your bar for the purpose of drinking wine , you'll be able to sell a bottle no problem . In a lot of ways , a bottle of wine is the wine equivalent of a bucket of beers .

It's really not a big deal to sell it . So don't be afraid of having some nicer bottles or having a wine list that has 15 , 20 wines on it and only four or five of them are available by the glass . Now we've talked about what kind of wines to get , how to approach your wine selection .

Let's talk a little bit about what you should charge for a glass of wine , what you should charge for a bottle of wine , how to price your wines . It is kind of unique in what a bar sells in that you have some really low end . You potentially have some really high end and your price gaps in wine are huge .

You see that some indifferent liquors and cocktails , but let's be honest here you're not selling many 30 , $40 , $50 shots . Normally Most shots in most bars are going to be $7 , $8 to $15 , depending upon what it is , maybe a little cheaper in some markets , maybe a little more expensive in some markets .

Wine really is a product where you have these just vast differences in what you can charge for a bottle that are not as common in other things that bar sell . But when we're talking the low end , we're talking about the buy the glass wines .

A great rule of thumb is that your glass of wine should cost whatever the bottle costs . So if you buy a bottle wholesale for six bucks , a glass should be six bucks . If you buy a bottle wholesale for 12 bucks , a glass should be 12 bucks . Now what does that do ? It does a few things for you .

First of all , in theory , you're getting four , six ounce glasses roughly out of a bottle of wine . So if you charge for a glass , what you pay for the bottle simple math , 25% wine cost , which is great . That's where , essentially , you want your wine costs to be on things like that .

Now , the other thing it does is it protects you against your wine going bad . So , as I'm sure all of you are aware , wine has a shorter shelf life . Once you open it , you can keep it in a fridge , it's going to make it keep a little bit longer .

If you sell a lot of wine and you have something like an argon system where you can pump argon gas on top of the wine every night before you close , that's going to make it last even longer . If you use little stoppers where you pump all the air out , that will help increase the shelf life of your wine .

But wine goes bad period and it goes bad relatively quickly , depending on the wine . You're somewhere between two and five days in most cases , and again you might be able to use some argon or remove oxygen from the bottle or use good stoppers or different systems and that may extend you out to five , seven , maybe , maybe 10 days , but that's really pushing it .

So , most wine , two , three , four days , that's all you got . So when you pay for the bottle that you just opened , when you sell the first glass , if for some reason no one else orders that wine and you end up throwing it away , at least you didn't lose money . Which is why , for your lower end , buy the glass wines .

You should never , ever charge less for the glass than the bottle cost you . If you need to charge less for the glass than the bottle cost you . You should buy a different bottle or here , buy the glass wines .

And if you look at some of the lower priced wine brands that still produce some great wine , it is not hard to sell a glass of wine for more than what you paid for the bottle . I think on the wines I was using is kind of my generic house wines .

I was buying a bottle for I want to say it was 450 and selling a glass for six bottles , so I was making even better margin there and that made up for sometimes the losses and some wine going bad at the higher end of the buy the glass wines that I was carrying . But along these lines this is another great place and we've had this conversation before .

But it's really true of wine and it's something that you just always have to think about in everything you sell , which is your cost percentage versus your contribution margin . So cost percentage , right , real simple . This costs me $5 . I charge $20 . My cost percentage is 25% . Now your contribution margin , 20 minus 5 , is 15 bucks .

And the reason why we talk about contribution dollars in this case is because when you start getting into really , really high end wines , when you start talking about a bottle that costs you $70 , $100 , $200 , probably most of you will never sell wine that expensive . But let's say you added $200 cost bottle of wine .

You could charge $800 for that bottle , and there are definitely , definitely restaurants out there that do charge $800 for that bottle and then you're making $600 and all you're doing is pulling a cork out and pouring some wine .

That's great , that's wonderful , but the thing is they could have bought a $20 bottle of wine that you're selling for 80 bucks and you would have made 60 bucks instead of 600 . You're doing the same amount of work .

So what this concept of cost percentage versus contribution dollars really illuminates is that , especially with one , you have the opportunity to do the same amount of work and make more money if you sell a higher price bottle , which means that from an ownership perspective , from a purely numbers accounting perspective , it doesn't really matter what that line was .

If you make 50 bucks on the bottle , you make 50 bucks . If you make 75 , you make 75 . Obviously you want to make more , but then you can play around with your percentages . You don't always have to have a 25% cost .

So one thing that you have the opportunity to do is sell really really good wine cheaper than anyone else around , and that's something that when I was at the country club , I did . Now , granted , we had members . We had a different cost structure than , if you will , a standard for profit business a normal bar , but you can do this in a normal bar too .

If you're a bar that has the ability to offer and sell higher end wines . Really consider making your best wines pricing not based on a cost percentage but on a dollar value . Maybe you want to mark every bottle up 50 bucks from your cost , so you do a cost percentage , but it's capped at $50 . Maybe you do $75 .

Maybe you just have an incremental thing where the higher the bottle , the higher the cost percentage you're willing to accept . Whatever you do , the bottom line here is there are ways to sell wine at a great deal that will actually draw people into drink . I would have people come into my bar .

That was not one of my neighborhood bars , it's not a fancy bar at all , but we had a pretty good wine list and we'd have people come in just to drink wine , and they were people that would normally go to a lot fancier restaurants .

We were kind of the low end of where they would even go out to drink , but we had some really good wine deals and they appreciated that . So be willing to make a lower percentage , to give people a great deal , because they will come in the door and at the end of the day you make more money because that contribution dollars amount is higher .

Now last note on wine , real quick , don't forget that you can always do wine events and especially if you have local wineries around you , you can do wine tastings , you can do wine dinners and they don't have to be fancy Out of a neighborhood bar . You can do beer dinners . You can do wine dinners , you can do cocktail dinners .

If you have a cocktail bar , a gastropub , something a little higher end , that's drawing a little bit more of a white collar , not a blue collar crowd , you can do these type of events all day long . And it's one more thing that you do that helps attract and draw customers to your bar , and it's important that you draw a diversity of people .

So by focusing a little bit on wine , it gives you the ability to draw in and attract a different crowd than you may otherwise have . So wine events should be right in the lineup with your beer events , your cocktail events , whatever other liquor , booze , alcohol focused events you are doing to drive people in the door .

Now that wraps up our conversation on wine .

Before I let you guys go though for the week , I want to just mention that if you go into the show notes or head over to Facebook and look up the Facebook group Bar Business Nation , we are starting to do a monthly meetup and the whole purpose of this monthly meetup is to just have an open forum to bring bar owners together from all over the world , wherever

anyone is that wants to join us , and allow everyone to talk , really build a community , get ideas from each other , help each other develop and grow , because when we come together we all have different viewpoints , we all have different information and the more we can talk about things , the more we can learn from each other , the more money we can all make and

the better we can make all of our bars . That meetup first meetup will be a little bit over or a little bit less , I should say , than a week from now , october 9th . So the Monday after this episode is released , if you head over to Bar Business Nation , you join the group .

There is a post there that has the link to join the call , and we're going to do this every month . I'm really , really , really excited to get to have multiple people all coming together and really be able to swap ideas and learn from one another , so if you have the time , please join us .

We'd love to have as many people there as possible , and with that I will leave . You guys have a great week and we will talk again later .