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Monday 06 September  

All you need to know about wine bar sales – but were afraid to ask…

I know we all think that bars are there simply to provide a great environment to imbibe our various tipples but I’m here to tell you that this is not their absolute raison d’être. The simple fact is they exist to make money.
 
Okay, not the biggest bombshell to drop but I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the ways bars try to get you to part with more of your cash and maybe some of the things you could consider when buying.
 
A couple of classic tricks of the trade are the house wine and most expensive on the list. Sure bars sell house wines, and depending on the venue sometimes by the bucket, but the most important thing of the house wine to the bar is to get you moving up to the next level. We’ve all chosen the second cheapest on the list to avoid appearing cheap. (Just consider that last sentence – the second cheapest to avoid appearing cheap!)
 
In some ways the most expensive wine plays a similar role. It’s not really there to be sold – although they’re more than happy to sell it – but there to drag up the price point a customer might pay. “They have three wines at £30 so the £27 wine will more than suffice.” Would you still pay the £27 if it were the most expensive or would you drop to the £25?
 
I should just point out that a number of bars, albeit not enough in this writer’s humble opinion, are starting to avoid the expression ‘house wine’. It implies cheapest and yet they attach the name of their house to it – you see the point?
 
The other two main points to consider are 1) glass size (my bug bear!) and 2) simple price multiples.
 
So glass size; often a bar offers three sizes of wine for purchase, 125/175ml (small), 250ml (large) or 750ml (the bottle). When ordering your measure take a look at like for like price. Really six glasses of 125ml should be the same as the bottle give or take a few understandable pennies. However, I was horrified to hear of one well known restaurant (owned by one of our celeb-chefs who’ll have a bigger legal team than WineDater so I shan’t name) selling their small glasses at what would equate to over £20 more than their bottle price. Not on!
 
Simple price multiples; most bars and restaurants will sell their wines priced at a simple multiple on what the wine was bought for. 300% is the standard but house or lower priced wines are often more. What you’ll notice though is that the more expensive wines have a lesser mark up. The classic example for this is on the Champagnes where you’ll see a Moët at somewhere around twice what you’ll pay in a supermarket. 
 
This rule usually follows – the more expensive the wine, the less mark up, resulting in your getting more value. When ordering your wine, try and find ones at different price points that you’re familiar with to see the multiplier they’re working.  
 
You could also look out for bars offering a standard £ mark up rather than multiplier, so each wine will simply be, say, £10 on retail price – a great practice offering real value to the customer.
 
There are loads of caveats I should put round this; loads of bars are really keen on offering value. I’m just aware, and want you to be too, that there are ways of choosing your wine and bar!

 

 

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