Wine accounts for a non-negligible share of orders in restaurants and generates significant margins. Ensuring that inventory is well-managed and that stock turns over is therefore essential! In this article, discover a few tips for optimizing and reducing your stocks.
Importance of good inventory management
Good management of your stocks of wine will allow you to reduce expenditure by avoiding overstocking and slow turnaround. It is also a way to avoid cluttering your premises and losses due to bottles forgotten about in your cellar. What is more, managing your inventory closely will allow you to adapt more easily to customer demand.
People drink different things at different periods of the year. To avoid tying up cash flow unnecessarily in wines that won’t sell, plan ahead and stock up on the right wines for the season. Try analysing your sales over a given period and use this as a basis for your orders.
Tips for optimizing stocks
Start by categorizing your wines:
- High-priced wines that only sell rarely
- Mid-priced wines that sell quite well
- Low-priced wines that sell very well
Monitor your inventory regularly, preferably each week. Organize your cellar space and digitalize inventory data so that you can check stocks quickly.
Your wine should be stored by type (red with red, whites with whites etc.) and by region for easy cellar navigation. Make sure that the best-selling wines are the most easily accessible during food service sittings.
Tips for reducing stocks
There are many ways to promote a wine and trigger sales!
- Why not offer set menus paired with one or more specific wine(s) that you are having trouble selling? Regional pairings are a good idea, such as an Italian wine with an Italian dish, for example.
- Create customer interest by drawing attention to the wine you want to sell on your menu, with merchandising or even by displaying the wine in question on your tables.
- Offer discounts to customers ordering a bottle of a particular wine or give a free bottle away when a customer orders your special meal deal.
- Organize a week devoted to a specific wine. You could, for example, make Beaujolais Nouveau the occasion to promote your whole selection of Beaujolais wines.
When stock arrives, place new bottles behind older ones to ensure these are served as a priority, working on a first in, first out basis.
Last but not least, training your team will be crucial to your wine sales. Staff that are comfortable talking about the wines on your menu and selling them are certain to trigger customer purchases.
Learn more
Find you have leftover open bottles and don’t know what to do with them? Don’t throw them out, reuse them in the kitchen! Read our new article on How to stop wasting leftover open bottles of wine
