How to price a restaurant wine list (true cost, real margin)

Written by Marco Azzari on 3 October 2026

If your wine prices were set from memory, inherited, or multiplied by a round number that felt fair, you do not know your margin. You have a guess with a dollar sign. This page is the owner version: three lines, true cost, real margin, before anyone redesigns the whole list.

What "true cost" means here

Start from what you pay the distributor for the bottle (the net you actually pay, after the case discount or post-off you really get, not the frontline price you never paid). Add freight or delivery charges if they show up on the invoice.

Then leave tax out of it. US menu prices are pre-tax. State and local sales tax is added on top at checkout, and the tip goes on top of that. Neither is your money, so neither belongs in the margin. Your maths runs on the menu price directly: a $48 bottle is $48 of wine revenue, whatever the check says at the bottom.

If the price on the list was built years ago on a case price your distributor has raised twice since, the leak is silent. The guest still sees a number. The house keeps less than the owner believes.

Do three lines before you do thirty

Pick:

1. House wine (the pour when nobody chooses).
2. The glass that actually sells.
3. The bottle that actually sells.

For each one, write on a scrap of paper: distributor cost, true cost after discounts and freight, current menu price, what is left. If you cannot do it for three lines, you will not do it for the list.

You are looking for two failure modes:

• Priced to empty the room. Famous label, fat markup, guest checks Wine-Searcher, bottle sits.
• Priced to empty the register. House pour still at 2019 prices, volume high, gross profit embarrassing.

Most independent lists have both, on different rows. Raising everything is how you get only the first problem. See phone-check markup.

Glasses are not bottles

A flat "3× on the bottle, divide by five for the glass" treats waste, overpour, and mix as a vibe. By the glass, done honestly, is often the best gross profit in the house. Done lazily, it is where you give wine away and call it hospitality. Dedicated page: price wine by the glass. House as its own problem: price house wine.

Markup is a tool, not a method

A multiplier is a shortcut. Gross profit per glass and per bottle is the thing you can defend in a bad month. If you need the translation layer for a review meeting, use markup versus margin.

When the three lines are honest, you can decide whether the rest of the list is a weekend job or a conversation with someone who will do it on your actual bottles. The wiki stops at the method.