One of the local wine stores is putting in a wine bar. Since I spend a lot of time in that area waiting for my son when I take him to stuff in the evenings, I spend a lot of time talking with the owner of the store.

We recently had a discussion about how to price wine by the glass for the wine bar. I know that there was an article in WS several years back about a woman in GA(?) or thereabouts who opened a wine bar and determined the price by adding $10 to the price she paid for the wine and dividing by 4 or 5 to get the price for the glass of wine.

The owner of the new place is planning on charging half of his wholesale cost for the bottle for a glass. He will open any bottle in the store if you buy two glasses of it. Now I think that is high, but he does have a very high overhead due to where his store is located. However, I think it is reasonable to expect to be able to get back your wholesale cost if you are going to open something for the customer, especially the rarer wines. (He has a nice, if expensive selection of wines)

How do others who own/run wine bars or restaurants price their by the glass selections?

When in doubt, open another bottle.

His formula sounds high to me. Will you pay $25 for a glass of wine from a bottle that he paid $50 for? Not sure.

I also think that using that formula makes the price of a glass too high. If you're going to buy two glasses you might as well have the bottle! A lot of places charge 25% of the bottle price for a glass but will not open the more expensive bottles. Maybe he could use the 25% price on lower to mid range wines and a higer formula (maybe 33%) for the higher end wines or maybe just keep those one of a kind, expensive wines to sell only by the bottle.

When you go into a wine bar, you know you're going to pay more for a glass of wine. I mean, otherwise, the owner would never make any money. Most restaurants charge for the glass what they pay for the bottle (why do you think Kendal Jackson Chardonnay is $7 by the glass?) and only open the more expensive ones if they buy the whole bottle. If the owner isnt careful, he can lose a ton of profit from opening a bottle, pouring one glass, not serving anymore from that bottle, and eventually that wine turning. So maybe he can try this approach: Only pour less expensive wines by the glass, charge about what you pay for the bottle for one glass ($6 to $20 in most wine bars I've seen) and pray that people drink more than one glass so you turn a profit. It's a simple formula, but I've seen it work well for many establishments.

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The owner of the new place is planning on charging half of his wholesale cost for the bottle for a glass.

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This pricing seems standard for the industry- and in fact quite reasonable in most cases.

I don't like to purchase "wines by the glass"! You never know how long the bottle has been opened, or even what's really in it! Plus, your paying a high retail price for that glass!

dinwiddie--
you gonna tell us where this is, or just keep us guessing.

Irwin

"Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
-Groucho Marx

quote:

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Originally posted by steve8:
His formula sounds high to me. Will you pay $25 for a glass of wine from a bottle that he paid $50 for? Not sure.

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In Ohio it is not a surprise to see markups of 100%. SO a bottle of wine that the store paid $50 for may sell of upwards of $100 ( I know Ohio prices are hig, but that is another story). Take into account that at a wine bar you usually get a healthy pour and they are lucky if they get 4-1/2 glasses out of a bottle. So to have the opportunity to try the wine for basically what I would have paid for the bottle, but I can essentially only buy a half bottle. (2 required glasses @ $25 each at the wine bar, instead of the 4.5 pours for retail price but I have to take it home) Add that I don't have to clean anything when I'm done...I don't think this is out of line at all. You get to try a wine that you normally might not buy, because you just don't want to spend that much on a bottle. Plus- This is a business and they do try to make money as odd as that sounds.

Kevin

Most restaurants, especially chains, who worship at the altar of the P.C., do seem to charge for a glass what the bottle cost them wholesale, someone clearly pointed out with the Kendall-jackson example. I think if your friend prices the wines based on 1/2 the wholesale bottle cost for a glass, he will be offering very fair, low for the area pricing. Let's look at a few purely hypothetical examples:

Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay at your average restaurant - Bottle cost: $7.50, selling price for a glass of wine: $7.50.

Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay at your friend's shop - Bottle cost: $7.50, selling price for a glass of wine: $3.75.

Just think of the possibilities!
Melville Chardonnay, wholesale $15; a glass $7.50! I guarantee you, most restaurants in the North and the South, where I split my time, would be charging $12 or $15 per glass without batting an eye.

I think your friend is right on target to offer below restaurant prices for wines potentially better than most restaurants would pour and he will make enough to cover waste, spoilage, mistakes, etc. I would happily go to a place with these prices and be pleased with the value and would be likely to purchase retail bottles as well, which, I assume is the function of the excercise.

Looking back at what was written I have to agree with the others about the pricing being fair. My calculation was done based on the menu price which normally has a huge markup and not the wholesale price as you mentioned. My apologies.

How is this person defining a "glass" of wine? That would make a lot of difference. Is he getting 4 "glasses" per bottle? 5? 7?

Here's a small high-end store that has themed tastings every day (one or two days per theme, open 5 days a week):
http://www.vinvinowine.com/tastingbar.html#0206
Always a lot of people in there, and the ultra-rich winos are buying this stuff by the case.

Having a policy to open anything in the store is pretty cool. But I think a well executed series of themed tastings would do well to build up the customer base and keep them coming back more often.

irwin,

The wine bar is not scheduled to open until about March 30, but the store is Olney Beer and Fine Wine in the Olney Village Mart Center.

Before you guys get excited, let me remind you that the store is in Montgomery County and the county is the wholesaler. The wholesale prices are very high (hence the fact that his prices are high)

The pricing is not a done deal yet. We were just discussing how he would do it. But there are a lot of wines in his shop that I'd love to taste but have never been willing to pull the trigger on to buy a bottle.

Of course, I am curious as to how he is going to price some of his older wines by the glass considering that he has had them in storage for a long time and his purchase price when he bought them was much different than what he gets for the bottle now. (There is a bottle of the 82 BV GDL that I really would like to taste)

As to wines going bad once the bottle is opened since there is no guarantee someone else will buy a glass, I assume that is why he is planning to require a two glass minimum purchase to open something special. I do know that he use a VinVac (?) when he opens wines.

I've tasted some interesting wines in his store since if he has something open he usually gives me a taste. In fact I shared my 1/2 bottle of Brian Loring's Brosseau Vineyard with him and one of the other guys in the store. (good juice) He does tastings once in a while, and plans to do more when he has the space set up.

When in doubt, open another bottle.

DW-- Will he be having any 'standard' wines available to taste, too, at this wine bar? It seems if he will only open a bottle if you buy two glasses (assuming here 4 glasses = a bottle), then he'd never having anything open at all, and, if he did, it'd be cheap stuff.

Maybe when he opens, the DC Crü should go there and we'll get him to open a bunch of bottles and split those two 'glasses' into 4-8 'tastes'.

www.vinocellar.com -- Mm-Mm-good

tj,

I'd assume he wil have quite a few (depending on business) "standard" wines open. The two glass limit is if you want him to open something special. BTW, he gets some very interesting wines in the $12-15 range and has good sources for more obscure wines. BUT, it is Montgomery County, so one never knows what will be available. He does have a good selection of Aussie Shiraz from wineries that are not well know.

When in doubt, open another bottle.