How to Design a Smart Wine Program for Your Restaurant in 2026

1. Translate Your Concept into Your Wine List

It’s a basic idea, but surprisingly often overlooked. If your concept was smartly created around the Five Aspects of the Meal Model[1], and if you have a pretty good idea of your target segment(s), this should be a simple task.

For instance, if you manage a Modern French Bistro appealing to the LOHAS[2] segment, at least fifty percent of your wines should be French, organic, biodynamic, or natural wines. The general design of your menu—including the cover material, graphic, font, colors, and language—should scream: “Modern French Bistro” to your customer.

2. Write Your Specifications Based on Food Pairing

Most wines are meant to be enjoyed before, with, or after food. I suggest writing your wine specifications around the food experience. For each dish, starting with your main courses, list 1, 2, or 3 wines that would be ideal match-ups.

You can think of one very “classic” match for comfort seekers (in which case you should stick to commercially significant grape varieties: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Riesling for whites, and Cabernet, Syrah/Shiraz, Merlot, and Pinot for red) and something more “unconventional” for your adventure seekers (Grüner Veltliner, Viognier, Carignan, or Xinomavro?).

You don’t need to be super precise at this time. For example, if you look for a match for grilled wagyu steak with pepper sauce, your spec may just look like: “Premium, rich & powerful red.” These specifications will help you communicate with your suppliers, service staff, and customers.

Write your wine specs before you buy

3. Develop Your Pricing Strategy

As a rule of thumb, the average selling price of a bottle of wine is a factor of your average price for a main course: Typically x 2. This means that if your average price for a main course is 1,200 THB, then your average bottle of wine should be sold at around 2,400 THB. This is the price point around which you want to develop your list.

Setting Price Ranges

The next step will be to determine the price range: setting limits for the lowest and highest price of your wine list. The key here is to propose a range that is wide enough for your customers to choose from and narrow enough for you to anticipate and secure desired revenue. Typically, the highest price on the list should be around three times the lowest price.

To determine these price points, you may proceed as follows:

A is the average price per bottle, H the highest price, and L the lowest price:

Average, Highest and Lowest prices on your wine list

As a result, your price range should be between 1,200 THB for the least expensive bottle and 3,600 THB for the most expensive bottle.

If you were to divide this price range (between 1,200 and 3,600) into three equal tiers, you would obtain the following:

• High-tier: 2,800 THB – 3,600 THB

• Average Price Mid-tier: 2,000 THB – 2,799 THB

• Low-tier: 1,200 THB – 1,999 THB

  
  

This is important because, to be coherent, half of your wines should be priced in the mid-tier (between 2,000 & 2,799 THB). The rest should be equally distributed in the low tier and high tier. For example, if you want to start with a small list of 60 wines:

• 30 of them should be priced between 2,000 & 2,799

• 15 of them should be priced between 1,200 & 1,999

• 15 of them should be priced between 2,800 & 3,600

  
  

Understanding Premium Wines

Now, almost every upscale restaurant proposes premium wines with prices that are way out of this range. There are at least five reasons for this:

• The owner is a wine lover. He buys what he likes, regardless of the price.

• The expensive wines play an “anchor” role (making the other wines look more affordable).

• The expensive wines contribute to the premiumization strategy of the restaurant’s brand.

• The restaurant targets a segment of customers who like to spend money on guests or business partners to show appreciation, impress, or celebrate with super premium wines.

  
  

However relevant these reasons may be, these expensive wines are off the chart and belong to a category of their own. So, I would create a “reserve list” for these prestigious wines.

By-the-Glass Pricing

As for the by-the-glass list, which is a great way to enhance customer satisfaction, it should be priced so it does not cannibalize other more profitable drinks. There is also potential for over-pouring and waste, which needs to be managed carefully. The use of vacuum and blanket systems are great options here. When these are available, a by-the-glass program is a fantastic way to let customers taste premium wines by the glass, in a way that is profitable for the restaurateur.

4. Set Your Gross Margins

There are many ways to do this. Back in the old days, restaurateurs used to simply factor the cost price of a bottle by 3, 4, 5, 6, or even 7 to obtain the selling price. For example, if you bought a bottle for 900 THB, you would multiply by 3 to obtain the selling price: 2,700 THB (Margin: 1,800 THB). For a bottle costing 2,000 THB, the selling price (x 3) would be 6,000 THB (Margin: 4,000 THB).

There are historical reasons for such (high) margins, and they were justified: Wines were selected by experts who had direct contacts with producers. They had very good prices and aged these wines for years in their restaurants' cellars before releasing them at their peak to customers.

Modern Approaches

Later, restaurateurs started to apply different multipliers by tiers: Higher multipliers for low tier, and lower multipliers for high tier. More recently, the trend is to apply a fixed mark-up figure per bottle: something between 500 THB and 1,500 THB across the board. Some restaurateurs combine all of these approaches: A low multiplier (x 1.2) + a fixed mark-up figure (600 THB), which can be different for super-premium wine.

The last option seems to be the best as it enables you to account for the direct fixed and variable costs involved with storing and serving wine. Whatever you decide should factor in the payback of:

1. Investment for your cellar, refrigerating units, by-the-glass dispensers, glassware...

2. Occupation cost of your cellar - expressed in THB per sqm.

3. The salary of your sommelier/wine waiters/sales commissions.

4. Your desired profit.

   
   

When this is done, you can set your purchasing price points for each wine. For instance, following up on the example above, given a combination of a multiplier of x 1.2 and a fixed mark-up figure of + 600, a bottle designed to be sold at 2,400 THB should be sourced at (2,400 - 600)/1.2 = 1,500 THB.

During the confinement caused by COVID-19, consumers in Bangkok learned how to source food and wines from online stores and sharpened their buying acumen. They know what's available on the market, who supplies what, and at which price! With online shops and mobile devices, restaurateurs are now at a disadvantage, and overpriced wines in restaurants are just NOT going to sell anymore!

5. Choose Your Distributor Wisely

There is an increasing number of wine distributors in Bangkok. Some have been around for a long time, while others are new kids on the block, bringing interesting wines to the market.

The basic rule here is this: You do not source the same wines that are available in retail stores; you need to source from HORECA vendors. You also don’t need to work with 20 different suppliers if you only have 100 references in your list. You do not automatically go for the cheapest. You need the most reactive, accurate, and reliable supplier.

Questions to Consider

Some of the questions you may want to ask involve shipping and storing, delivery of their wines, especially the premium wines. In our tropical climate, these wines need protection from heat. Your distributors are also great sources of information about new products, market trends, and your competitors. Some may be able to extend credit, which can be useful when cash flow is an issue.

6. Store Your Wine Properly and in a Cool Place

It always amazes me to see how poorly wines are stored in some restaurants. I recently went to a pricey restaurant in Bangkok that had a really nice wine list. I loved everything they had listed. I picked a Barbaresco, and the server just pulled the bottle from a shelf behind me! I couldn’t believe it. There were several other premium wines standing up on shelves at room temperature.

Not only was the wine served too warm (at around 24°C), but it also lost some of the violet aromas that are distinctive about this wine and which I really love. What a disappointment!

"Wines on shelves in restaurants are an insult to the customer and the winemaker."

Proper Storage Tips

Keep your wines in a cooler! The exact temperature is less important than the constancy of the temperature. Besides, the only bottles that can be kept standing up are screw-capped. Otherwise, keep your bottles horizontally or slightly tilted.

What you see in retail shops (standing-up inexpensive bottles) is less of an issue because they have massive stock turnover. If your wines are going to stay more than three months in your stock, and if they are closed with a real cork, keep them on their side in a place where temperature is low and stable day and night.

The arrangement of the wines in the cellar should be convenient. The fast-moving items should be close to the door. Everything else should be sorted according to the wine list. The use of bin numbers is fine. Any system that will help retrieve wines FAST is what you want. As alcoholic beverages are most prone to theft, you obviously need a lock on all cellars and refrigerators.

Keep bottles closed with a real cork HORIZONTALLY

7. Print Your Wine List by Yourself

You shouldn’t let someone else print your list. This is because wine suppliers may have only small allocations of some wines, and they cannot always commit to giving you the same vintage for one year. Also, you want to be able to add, suppress, and change things anytime you want, and real quick.

Print your list in-house, on quality paper, and insert it in a good quality menu holder. If you use a printing company, it may be aesthetically flawless (maybe), but the lengthy process and associated costs are likely to cause inertia. In the meantime, your guests will be extremely frustrated every time you tell them you run out of their favorite wine.

Menu Design Insights

Research has revealed a few theories in menu design regarding categorization, the strategic placement of the most profitable items, the write-up style of wine descriptions, the right alignment of prices, the use of different fonts, and the inclusion or not of monetary signs. All of these are interesting, but in my experience, when used alone (without well-trained service staff), they only have a minimal effect. What counts is that consumers find what they want quickly.

8. Motivate, THEN Train Your Team to Sell and Serve

Your concept may or may not require a dedicated person for wine selling and service. Whatever the case might be, your customer should always be able to get a basic description of any wine you have. If your staff can’t do that because of the language barrier or lack of knowledge, at least your MENU should!

Rewarding Sales Efforts

If you want your serving staff to act like salespersons, you need to treat them as such. Every salesperson I know earns some kind of commission on sales! So, you need to set up a system that will reward sales efforts. Only then can you start training. You can reward the team, or you can reward an individual; that’s up to whatever culture you want to install in your restaurant.

You can give the commission weekly or monthly. You can set a base and a ceiling. For example, a sommelier will receive a monthly commission (perhaps 3 percent of sales) on whatever figure exceeds 1,000,000 THB in monthly sales. If wine sales reach 3,000,000 THB for December, the sommelier will receive a commission of 3% calculated on 2,000,000, which represents 60,000 THB. You can also fix a ceiling of 50,000 THB if the base salary is already above average.

Training Opportunities

Keep in mind that the amount is less important than the symbol associated with the commission, and that it helps you variablize your labor expenses. Usually, when staff know that they will be rewarded for their sales efforts, they are more receptive to training and are more likely to apply selling and serving techniques that work for them.

There are several international wine certifications available in Bangkok. Sponsoring your best service people to complete these programs should boost your sales while increasing loyalty. Some employers may think: "What if I sponsor their training and they leave?" To which I would reply: "What if you don't provide training and they stay?"

Besides, as an employer in Thailand, you can benefit from a tax deduction equal to 200% of your training expense. You may also consider adding a legal contract clause for your employee to repay some or all of the costs associated with the training courses if they leave your company during or after training.

If you are in Bangkok, you can always place a job advert on this forum to source from a pool of already qualified applicants.

Motivate & Train your associates to sell more wines

9. Monitor, Evaluate & Adapt

Whatever you want your wine program to accomplish, you need to communicate it in quali-quantitative terms and measure & evaluate on a consistent basis. Employees usually respond to what you set, monitor, and reward. Low sales and bad service happen all by themselves; salesmanship is the same as excellent service.

Supervisory Skills

Basic supervisory skills require a clear mission statement and goal setting, some degree of monitoring, measurement, gap analysis, and sensitive coaching. As my old GM used to say: be “Tough on the standards, and soft on the people!”.

The guidelines outlined above are helpful mostly in start-up situations. Forget the idea of creating the perfect wine list on day one. Start with a limited list and then expand if it makes sense. Chances are that six months down the road, your wine list will look very different from the original one, and this is a good thing. It shows that you can adapt to your customers and your environment and that you stay up-to-date.

Conclusion

A successful wine program reflects the general concept of the eating place where each wine has a specific purpose: to match a specific moment or a specific dish enjoyed by a specific customer. The wines are sourced by HORECA suppliers and stored securely in an air-conditioned depot. Prices are in accordance with the food prices, to make a coherent, well-structured selection for the customer while permitting the restaurateur to reach their financial goals. Printed in-house, the wine list allows immediate response to changes and is easily readable. Finally, an excellent wine program does not happen by itself: It is carefully managed by highly competent managers and executed by motivated and trained service staff.

Want to conduct an audit of your wine program?

Give me a call or drop me a line at 0870380205

Christophe Mercier, DipWSET

[1] The Five Aspect of the Meal Model (FAMM) is a concept development tool developed at Örebro University by IB Gustafsson and her team, covering the Product, the Meeting, the Room, the Atmosphere & the Management.

[2] LOHAS: Lifestyles Of Health & Sustainability: Arguably the fastest growing market segment today.