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How to Stop Neglecting your Wine List (Wine Series #1)
- Warren Snyder
- May 6
- 6 min read
This is the first in a series of articles aimed at taking your wine program to the next level. Stay tuned for more in depth writing on how to build out your list, how to sell wine, and deep dives into wine regions and varietals.
Wine is too often an afterthought in independent restaurants. Most lists were built by a liquor rep prior to opening. They suggested 10-12 bottles, the owner said yes to most of them, the menus went to the printer and then settled into the background while everyone got busy running the restaurant. A year or two later, wine accounts for maybe 5% of sales, your staff barely knows anything about your wines to sell them, and no one can remember why this bottle or that got on the list in the first place. Your list is boring and predictable and indistinguishable from your competition. No one gets excited by it. Sound familiar?
When your wine program operates like this, you are leaving money and opportunity on the table. Wine can be one of your highest margin categories, bringing new customers in the door and markedly increases check averages. It can also be one of the most challenging and intimidating products to purchase and sell. This series will demystify the world of wine, help you gain the confidence you need to make the right selections, train your staff how to sell it, and bring more revenue into your business.
What your wine list is actually for
Your wine list has four jobs:
Generate revenue. Wine carries some of the highest margins in the industry, with big, easy contribution margins for bottle sales in particular. A well built list with good price-point coverage will increase check averages and revenue without increasing guest count or labor.
Take pressure off of your bartenders. Particularly for restaurants with high volume and a good cocktail program, selling wine lowers the ticket times for the tables ordering 5 different specialty cocktails and gives your bartenders more time to engage with their customers.
Make your food taste better. Your list must support, and be built intentionally with, your menu. This will make it easier to sell wine and enhance your guests' enjoyment of their food. We’ll go more in depth into pairing in a later article, but for now keep it simple. Italian wines pair with Italian food. Steakhouses need big, bold cabernets.
Tell guests something about your restaurant. Your wine list is a signal. A thoughtfully curated list, formatted professionally and presented confidently by the staff, tells your guests that you care about the whole experience. It says you’re creating something special. A generic list of bottles they see at the grocery store says you don’t, and aren’t.
Most lists fail all four of these jobs because they were not built with them in mind. They were put together haphazardly. The cost of this is bigger than most operators realize.
What an indifferent list costs you
Revenue loss - Beverages typically make up 30-40% of check totals in mid to high tier FSRs, and wine in particular often has the best contribution margins on the menu. A bottle that costs $70 on the menu should easily generate more overall margin than a couple’s entrees and appetizer combined. It is also stable inventory that doesn't start spoiling the moment it comes into your doors, unlike most of the products you sell.
Lower check averages - even on the wine you do sell. If your list does not have an intentional price ladder, it’s pushing everyone to the same wines at the same price point. There is little room to upsell, little to no celebratory or splurge options, and you leave money on the table as a result. Guests order what’s safe and cheap because that’s what your list is telling them to do.
Guest perception - Your wine list is one of the first things your guests will see when sitting down in your restaurant, and seeing an uninspired list full of supermarket brands with restaurant markups is a bad first impression. It feels disrespectful, some guests will even feel taken advantage of. Even if they fully understand the economics of restaurant pricing, the uninspired list will have your guests thinking “what else is uninspired here, the food?”
Staff confidence and service quality - your servers and bartenders know how much effort is put into the wine list. A perceived lack of effort or care will subconsciously affect your staff’s level of service and cause them to take the restaurant less seriously overall. An intentional, exciting list tells your staff that this is a serious restaurant with serious income potential. That increases morale, effort, service, and candidate quality when you need to hire.
These four things together compound, resulting in a serious missed opportunity from a revenue and guest experience perspective. Improving your wine program can have surprising knock on effects elsewhere as well, solving problems you did not think were related.
Who’s drinking your wine
It helps to understand who you’re building your list for. Most operators build their list with one “wine drinker” archetype in mind but there is more nuance than you’d think.
Familiar drinker - they want a chardonnay or pinot noir and expect it to taste a certain way. They know what they want, they aren’t looking for surprises or education. This is the largest category, and you cater to them by giving them better or more unique versions of what they want. Your goal is for your cabernet by the glass to become their new favorite brand, and one they struggle to find in stores.
Explorer - these guests read the list, get excited by it, and ask the server for suggestions. They want to try something new and exciting. They view wine as a large part of the restaurant experience and are willing to pay for your more expensive options. This is a smaller group but important as they will create free buzz and advertising for you. They are also easy to convert into regular returning guests, as a thoughtful wine list that caters to their taste is not always easy to find.
Celebratory drinker - They’re celebrating something and they want a bottle that marks the occasion. For these guests, the price tag is less of a consideration. You need to make sure you have a decent selection of higher end options - they may be willing to spend $100-200 on a bottle, but if your most expensive option is $70 you’re leaving money on the table.
Curious guest - when these guests sit down, they don’t know what they’re drinking, or even if they are drinking. They are waiting for your staff, menus and the environment overall to tell them what to do. An intentionally designed wine list combined with enthusiastic staff makes wine an easy decision for them to make. Serving wine professionally also helps with this demographic - when a bottle of wine is ordered, it should be a statement, an occasion, and be presented as such, including classic wine service standards. This encourages other tables to order their own bottle and get in on the action.
Most wine lists serve the first group only, and serve them poorly. Building your list with these different types of wine drinkers in mind will turn your program from a revenue liability to a revenue driver.
What taking your list more seriously looks like in practice
The vast majority of restaurants don’t need a sommelier. They just need to make a few intentional decisions and maintain them with discipline. A restaurant taking its wine list seriously looks like this:
List reflects the food, with deliberate choices on regions and varietals.
Bottles selected on quality and fit, not what is on sale or being pushed on you.
Proper formatting - producer, appellation, varietal presented professionally. We’ll go into an example of what a good wine list should look like in next week’s article.
Staff have tasted what’s on the list and can speak at least a few sentences about each wine.
The list gets reviewed and refreshed regularly, reflecting sales data, trends, menu changes, customer feedback, etc.
There is a visible price ladder so guests can more easily find a selection that fits their budget.
None of this requires formal training or heaps of effort. It requires dedicating a small amount of time to maintaining the list, tasting the wine and educating yourself and your staff.
Why this matters right now
The timing has rarely been better to invest in your wine program. Guests increasingly want products that tell a story, particularly when it comes to alcohol and spirits. More and more people also need an intentional reason to drink, and wines with a distinct sense of place and a corresponding intentional food pairing check that box better than anything else. With so many operators neglecting wine, and with the big players and chains maintaining generic grocery store wine lists, there is real opportunity to differentiate yourself and build better margins and a strong regular customer base with wine improvements alone.
The window is wide open - put effort into your wine program and you will build a distinct edge over your competition. It is one of the easiest ways for you to stand out and tell your audience that you take their dining experience very seriously. That care and effort will be rewarded.
Next week this series will look at how to build out your wine list, then we’ll discuss pairing and sales in more detail. If you have any questions, or suggestions on how to get your staff and customers excited about wine, leave a comment below! If you want to talk to us about how we can help you build out the perfect list, schedule a call today ->
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