Pricing
True cost, pour cost and why markup is not margin.
For restaurants, hotels and bars
Find the money hiding in your wine list
Practical guides and free calculators to price, design and sell wine, built on US pours and pre-tax menu prices.
Restaurants in numbers
3–5 cents
is what a typical full-service restaurant keeps from every dollar of sales.
5 oz
is the standard US pour. Five glasses a bottle, on paper.
$6,000
from three points of margin on $200,000 of wine. A tenth of a thin year's profit.
Source: commonly cited US full-service restaurant benchmarks. Example math is illustrative.
Your best seller is rarely your best earner
Wine list engineering puts each wine's margin in dollars next to how often it sells. One chart, four boxes, one decision per wine.
- Stars High sales, high margin
- Protect them. Never let one run out.
- Plowhorses High sales, low margin
- Reprice them. Guests already chose them.
- Puzzles Low sales, high margin
- Push them. Better words, better place on the page.
- Dogs Low sales, low margin
- Sell through by the glass, then cut.
Check a price in thirty seconds
Free calculators. Menu prices before sales tax, costs as your distributor invoices them.
All calculators
By the glass margin
Wine cost and margin per glass, before sales tax.
Glasses per bottle
How many pours a bottle really gives you.
Markup price
From wholesale cost and multiplier to menu price.
Bottle margin
Wine cost, pour cost and margin for any bottle.
Rather not spend the afternoon? Send me your list.
Within two business days you get your true margin line by line, your by-the-glass economics, how each wine fits your menu, and a page of changes you can make yourself.
Free Wine Profit Checkup
Marco Azzari, founder of Wine CFO. I do every Checkup personally, so I take on a few each month.