Wine Profitability in Your Pub: The Real Numbers

Last updated: 6 April 2026

Most UK pub landlords have no idea what their wine profitability actually is. You pour a glass. You take the money. You move on. But behind that simple transaction, there’s a margin story that most pubs get completely wrong — and it’s costing thousands every year.

At The Teal Farm, we discovered we were losing money on wine through sheer ignorance. We’d bought a mixed case at trade price, didn’t track which bottles were selling, couldn’t see which wines were dying stock, and had zero visibility into whether wine was profitable at all. Sound familiar? This is the reality for most hospitality venues.

The real opportunity in wine profitability isn’t complicated — it’s just invisible without the right tracking system. Pub Command Centre changed how we measure, manage, and optimise every bottle we stock. In this article, I’ll share the exact framework we use to make wine genuinely profitable, not just an afterthought on the bar.

What Wine Profitability Really Means

Wine profitability is the percentage of the sale price that remains as profit after you’ve paid for the bottle and the delivery. It’s that simple, but it’s the one metric most pubs completely ignore.

Let me break down a real example from The Teal Farm. We buy a bottle of house red wine for £4.20 (that’s our cost price, including VAT, delivery, and duty). We sell a 175ml glass for £5.50. That looks profitable, right?

Wrong. Here’s why:

• We get roughly 4.25 glasses per bottle (750ml ÷ 175ml)
• Total revenue per bottle: 4.25 × £5.50 = £23.38
• Cost per bottle: £4.20
• Gross margin: £19.18 per bottle, or 82% margin

But that’s only if we sell every single glass. The problem: we don’t. Bottles sit open. Wine oxidises. Half-empty bottles get thrown away. Someone breaks a glass. Suddenly that 82% margin becomes 60%, then 50%, then you’re barely making money.

The most important insight is that wine profitability isn’t about the price you charge — it’s about the percentage of each bottle you actually sell before it spoils. This is why tracking matters so much.

Why Most Pubs Fail at Wine Margins

I’ve run hospitality venues for over 15 years, and I’ve made every wine profitability mistake in the book. Here are the four biggest reasons pubs leave money on the table:

1. No Cost Tracking

You know what you charge for a glass of wine. But do you actually know what you paid for that bottle? Most venues don’t. They buy a mixed case for £50, shove it in a rack, and pour from memory. You can’t optimise what you don’t measure.

At The Teal Farm, we had ten different suppliers, buying wine at different times, at different prices. Some bottles came from cash-and-carry at £3.80. Others came from wholesale at £5.20. Some were special orders at £6.50. We’d sell all of them at £5.50 a glass without knowing which ones were profitable and which ones were eating our margin.

2. No Volume Tracking

You pour a glass of Pinot Grigio. Then another. Then another. But at the end of the week, can you tell me exactly how many glasses of Pinot Grigio you sold? Most venues can’t. They just know they’re selling wine, somewhere, somehow.

This means you can’t spot the difference between a wine that’s flying off the shelf (sell more, order more) and a wine that’s slowly dying in the corner (cut it or price it lower). Dead stock is the silent profit killer in wine.

3. Wastage and Spillage Are Invisible

Pour a glass, customer doesn’t like it, you pour it down the sink. Someone knocks over a glass mid-shift. A bottle drops and breaks. You leave a bottle open for six hours and it’s oxidised. None of this gets recorded. It just disappears.

At The Teal Farm, when we finally started tracking wastage properly, we discovered we were losing roughly 8-12% of wine volume every month to spillage, oxidation, and complaints. That’s equivalent to giving away 40-50 free glasses every month. When you multiply that by margin, it’s thousands of pounds a year.

4. No Pricing Strategy

Most pubs charge the same price per glass for every wine, or they charge by type (red, white, rosé). But actually, different wines should be priced differently based on cost, demand, and what customers expect to pay.

A budget supermarket wine shouldn’t sell for the same price as a craft producer wine, even if they’re both red. You should be able to move stock faster by dropping the price on slow movers, and you should be charging a premium on wines that customers actively ask for.

Building a Wine Tracking System That Works

You don’t need fancy software to track wine profitability. You need a system. And the system needs to capture three things: cost price, selling price, and volume sold (including wastage).

Here’s how we set it up at The Teal Farm:

Step 1: Create a Wine Inventory List

Every bottle you stock needs a line. Include the name, the cost price (what you paid), the size (750ml, 1L, etc.), and the sell price per glass. This takes about 30 minutes to set up and never needs to change unless you add new wines.

We use Pub Command Centre to do this because it’s already integrated with our sales and cost tracking. But even a spreadsheet works if you’re disciplined about updating it weekly.

At The Teal Farm, we have about 40 wines on stock at any time. That might seem like a lot, but it covers our customer base across price points, preferences, and origins. The important thing is that every single one has a cost price attached, and we know exactly how many glasses we get from each bottle.

Step 2: Track Daily Pours

Every time a glass is poured (whether sold, wasted, or given away), it gets recorded. This is where most venues give up, thinking it’s too much work. But it’s not. It’s one tally mark per glass. At The Teal Farm, our bar staff literally mark a sheet every time they open a bottle.

Modern hospitality venues are using SmartPubTools for this because manual tracking is labour-intensive. But the core principle is the same: every pour gets recorded. No exceptions.

Step 3: Record Wastage Separately

If a glass is poured but not sold (complaint, spillage, oxidation), mark it as wastage. This is crucial. It shows you exactly how much margin you’re losing to non-sales. If wastage is above 5%, you have a quality problem or a staff training problem.

At The Teal Farm, we discovered our wastage was 12% the first month. By improving training, using better preservation techniques, and reducing how long bottles stay open between services, we got it down to 4% within three months. That single improvement added thousands to our annual wine profit.

Step 4: Calculate Weekly Profitability

Every Friday, we calculate: (Total revenue from wine) – (Total cost of wine poured, including wastage) = Gross wine profit. Then divide gross profit by total revenue to get your margin percentage.

The most critical metric is not the margin percentage — it’s the absolute profit per bottle sold. A 50% margin on a £4 wine gets you £2 per bottle. A 40% margin on a £6 wine gets you £2.40 per bottle. You should be selling more of the second one.

Optimising Wine Margins Without Losing Sales

There’s a myth in hospitality that margins and sales are enemies. Raise the price, lose the sale. Drop the price, lose the margin. Neither is true. The key is being strategic about which wines you optimise and how.

Identify Your High-Velocity Wines

Some wines sell 8-10 glasses per week. Others sell 1-2. Your high-velocity wines are your profit engine. These should get your best shelf position, your best pricing (slightly higher), and your staff should be trained to recommend them.

At The Teal Farm, we have a house red and a house white that sell 40+ glasses every week. By tracking these properly, we realised we were underpricing them. Our customers actively ask for them by name. When we raised the price by 50p per glass, we didn’t lose a single sale. That’s an extra £20-30 profit per week on just two wines.

Price Low-Velocity Wines Aggressively

That Italian Barolo you bought six months ago? It’s been sitting there, aging slowly, tying up your cash and taking up shelf space. Don’t wait for it to go off. Drop the price by 20-30%. Move it. Get the cash back. Stock something that actually sells.

We had a Rioja that wasn’t moving. Cost price £5, selling price £5.75 per glass. We dropped it to £4.99 per glass. Within two weeks, we’d sold out. Yes, the margin was lower, but we freed up shelf space for a wine that was actually profitable, and we got our money back faster.

Create a Premium Tier

Not everyone wants house wine. Some customers want something special and are happy to pay for it. By creating a clear tier system (house wine, premium, ultra-premium), you’re signalling to customers what they should expect at each price point.

At The Teal Farm, our house wine is £5.50 per glass. Our premium range (better producers, specific regions) is £6.50-£7.50. Our ultra-premium (rare, allocated, or very good years) is £8.50+. Customers understand this and self-select. The premium tier actually has higher margins because customers expect to pay for quality.

Smart Pricing Strategy for Wine

Most pubs price wine by guesswork or tradition. You inherit a wine list from the previous landlord and don’t change it for years. That’s a profit leak.

Here’s a smarter approach:

Cost-Plus Pricing

The industry standard is a 2.5x to 3x markup on cost price. So if a bottle costs £4 wholesale, you should sell it for £10-£12. But this doesn’t account for demand, quality, or what customers expect to pay.

We use cost-plus as a floor, not a target. We calculate what a 3x markup would be, then adjust based on demand and competition.

Demand-Based Pricing

A wine that customers actively ask for should be priced higher. A wine that’s slow-moving should be priced lower. This isn’t rocket science, but it requires you to know what’s selling.

The most effective pricing approach combines cost price as a floor with demand as the ceiling. If a wine costs £5 and has 3x markup, the floor is £15 per bottle (£3.75 per glass). But if customers are queueing to buy it, price it at £4.50-£5 per glass. If they’re not buying it, price it at £3-£3.50 per glass until it moves.

Seasonal and Event-Based Pricing

Summer calls for lighter wines. Winter calls for fuller wines. A special event (Christmas, rugby match, festival) changes what people want to drink and how much they’re willing to spend.

At The Teal Farm, we adjust pricing seasonally and run promotions around key events. During the Six Nations, we offer a premium on pints but sometimes discount wine to drive food sales. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s responsive to customer behaviour.

Stock Rotation and Dead Inventory

Wine doesn’t improve in your pub. Unlike a cellar with the right temperature and conditions, your bar is warm, exposed to light, and subject to temperature swings. Wine deteriorates slowly but surely.

Every month a bottle sits unsold is a month of lost profit potential and a month closer to oxidation.

The FIFO Principle (First In, First Out)

The wine you bought first should be sold first. This is standard in food safety and it applies to wine too. Keep your stock moving in order, not by whim.

Identify and Kill Dead Stock

Once a quarter, review what didn’t sell in the last 90 days. If a wine hasn’t sold more than 1-2 glasses in three months, it’s dead stock. Your options are:

• Drop the price to move it quickly
• Use it for a promotion or wine-by-the-glass deal
• Take it back to the supplier (if you have that agreement)
• Accept the loss and bin it

Dead stock is money locked up in inventory that could be sold as something else. At The Teal Farm, we now do a quarterly “dead stock review” and either move or delete underperforming wines within two weeks. This keeps our margin clean and our cash flowing.

Temperature and Storage Matter

Wine stored properly lasts longer and tastes better, which means customers buy more and margins improve. Cheap point: a proper wine cooler for opened bottles costs £300-£500 and will pay for itself within months through reduced oxidation and improved customer satisfaction.

We invested in a quality wine cooler at The Teal Farm and immediately noticed reduced complaints about taste and longer shelf life for open bottles. That investment improved both margins and customer experience.

Frequently Asked Questions

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