Restaurant and Bar Inventory: Tips For Managing Your Wine Inventory

The amount of wine a restaurant or bar has on hand in their beverage inventory varies from one location to the next. 

Some businesses have a small selection to serve in addition to their other beer and liquor offerings, some offer a well curated list of top vintages and others have a wide selection of wine to appeal to every price point and taste. 

Regardless of what you have in stock, there are some special considerations that come into play when managing your wine inventory. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the few top things to think about when it comes to your wine inventory.

• Think about how many wines your business should carry

Firstly, you want to consider your wine menu. It’s important to have a good variety, but you also need to maintain a sustainable stock. This will depend largely on the clientele that your bar or restaurant brings in. 

There’s no hard and fast rule about how many wines you should carry, but two important factors are how important wine sales are to your business and your customer base. 

• Are you a pub-style restaurant that has high beer sales and offers wine for the occasional drinker? 
• Do you have a variety of wine lovers in different price ranges? 
• Or are your sales dependent on well curated wine pairings?

Just remember, if you carry too many you may have a hard time managing your inventory (resulting in deadstock and slow-moving inventory) and you may make it harder for your staff to talk about each wine intelligently with customers, both of which can hurt your bottom line. 

Using bar inventory software can help you set PAR levels (period automatic replacement) for the wines you do stock, and this will help to ensure you always have the optimum number of wine bottles on hand.  

• Organize your wine efficiently

Next, you want to consider how your wine is being organized, especially if you have a large or specialized inventory. There are several different options. You can organize by: 

• Varietal
• Profile 
• Region 
• Vintage 
• Price 

What’s important to remember is that there’s no wrong answer when choosing how to organize your wine inventory. You do, however, want to select the method that is easiest for you and your staff to remember. This will help streamline restocking and inventory management. 

When storing wine, it should be stored out of direct sunlight to prevent oxidation. When possible, wine bottles should be stored on their side so that the cork can stay in contact with the wine. This helps develop the flavor profile and keeps the cork from drying out. It’s also a great way to optimize storage space! 

To help keep track of which wines are where when they are lying down, you can use wine tags with information that is important to your restaurant or bar. You can even use colour code tags to communicate certain information such as country or year. 

These systems can also be used to effectively identify wine that is coming up to it’s drink by date so that you can minimize alcohol losses due to spoilage. Alternatively, you can use a bin system by numbering each storage rack or bin. This can be especially effective for large inventories. 

When stored upright, the wine should be stored with the label facing out to make it easily identifiable and prevent disruption to the aging process by frequent turning. Upright storage is best used for short periods of time or for bottles that have screw tops instead of corks. 

When taking inventory, consider using a separate log so that you can track the unique characteristics of wine, such as region, vintage, varietal, vineyard, drink by date, etc. To help boost your wine inventory management, even more, consider using an inventory management system that provides your business with unique insights into inventory usage, profit margins and so much more.

For more information on wine inventory or our innovative inventory management system for bars and restaurants, please contact us today. Our team of inventory management specialists would love to answer any questions that you may have.