A debate is gaining ground in the trade: wine sales are eroding while younger drinkers turn to beer, whose language and marketing feel more accessible. At the centre of the criticism sits the complexity of wine — varieties, appellations, vintages, jargon — which can lose a guest who is in a hurry or new to […]
The climate is changing, and the wine map with it. Harvests start earlier in some regions, unexpected terroirs are asserting themselves, and the historic strongholds of southern Europe are having to reinvent. On the floor, that shows up as shifting aromatic profiles, less predictable vintage availability, and new questions from guests. It can become an […]
Menu engineering sorts the references on a list along two axes: margin per unit and sales volume. Four quadrants come out of it — stars, high margin and high volume; puzzles, high margin and low volume; plowhorses, low margin and high volume; and dogs, low on both — each calling for a different move. Applied […]
Twelve to eighteen percent of a typical restaurant cellar does not sell in six months. Those bottles tie up capital, take up shelf space, sometimes age past their window, and often end as a write-off. Dead stock is one of the most consistently overlooked lines in beverage profitability, and it is also one of the […]
Beverage margin is the most profitable line on most restaurant checks — commonly 65 to 75% gross on wine, 75 to 85% on soft drinks, 80% and above on cocktails and spirits. But that theoretical margin leaks through a hundred small holes: prices set wrong, references that never move, a by-the-glass program nobody steers, a […]
Wine markup is the ratio between the price on your list and what you pay your distributor. It is the central call in your beverage program — too low and you lose the margin that pays for the cellar, too high and you lose the guests who read the list and order a beer. Here […]
