Secret World Behind Wine Lists: How Restaurants REALLY Choose Your Bottle Pt. 2

6 min

•Apr 23, 2026about 1 month ago

Summary

This episode explores how restaurants and retailers curate wine selections from thousands of available options, revealing the complex relationship-driven process involving distributors, brand ambassadors, and real-time sales analytics. The host discusses how wine brands are built through restaurant trials and sampling activations, and how retail support through pricing, sampling, and promotions drives continued product placement.

Insights

Wine discovery and brand building happens primarily at the restaurant level before trickling down to retail, making restaurant relationships critical for suppliers
Real-time POS analytics now enable distributors and suppliers to measure product movement almost instantaneously at restaurants, though retail integration lags behind
Brand ambassador activations and in-store sampling are sophisticated, data-driven operations with realistic volume expectations (12-36 bottles per 3-hour period for moderate wines)
Consumer purchase behavior differs dramatically by price point: sub-$15 wines are impulse purchases, while $80+ bottles require specialized expertise and different sales strategies
Retail wine departments vary significantly in specialization, from dedicated wine specialists to generalist beverage directors, affecting how suppliers approach placement

Trends

Real-time POS integration becoming standard for restaurant beverage tracking, with retail systems lagging but moving toward same capabilityShift toward data-driven activation strategies replacing traditional relationship-only wine placement modelsGrowing sophistication in brand ambassador training and sampling ROI measurement across wine and spirits categoriesIncreasing price-point segmentation in retail wine strategy, requiring different activation approaches for premium vs. approachable winesConsolidation of beverage department specialization in grocery retail, with some stores creating dedicated wine roles while others maintain generalist positions

Topics

Wine list curation and selection criteriaRestaurant vs. retail wine distribution channelsBrand ambassador activation programsPOS analytics and real-time sales trackingWine sampling and promotional strategiesDistributor-supplier relationshipsPrice-point segmentation in wine retailRetail beverage department specializationImpulse purchase behavior for winePremium wine sales techniquesInventory management in wine retailWine brand building strategiesGrocery store wine department operationsSpirits vs. wine activation metricsCustomer discovery and trial in wine

Companies

Total Wine & More

Referenced as example of large-scale retail wine inventory (1,000+ wines) contrasted with restaurant selections

Cheesecake Factory

Used as example of restaurant with extensive wine selection where customers often default to familiar choices

People

Forrest Kelly

Host of the podcast discussing wine distribution and retail strategies

Quotes

"For the most part, wine brands are still in great part built in the restaurant community. That's where wine is generally trialed first. It's generally discovered first at restaurants."

Guest•~1:30

"There's a technology in place now for us that literally delivers in almost real time the very cocktail lined by the glass or draft of beer is sold at the POS level at a restaurant now."

Guest•~3:45

"When you're selling that approachable 12 to $15 bottle of wine at a store, those are almost impulse buys. It's a different decision tree when you're selling an $80 bottle of wine."

Guest•~8:30

"Typically, if the price point is a moderate price point for a bottle of wine, we have people that'll move anywhere from 12 to 36 bottles during a three hour period depends on the foot traffic."

Guest•~5:45

Full Transcript

Welcome, welcome to the best five minute wine podcast with Forrest Kelly. A person goes into a nice restaurant and they sit down and they see the wine list. The ore they go into, you know, total wines and more, you know, total wines and more has got an inventory of a thousand wines in the building and you go to the restaurant and there's only five or six or ten or whatever the number may be. How does that get called down? Is it all particular relationships or is that where you come involved in the promo aspect? That's such a great question. For the most part, wine brands are still in great part built in the restaurant community. That's where wine is generally trialed first. It's generally discovered first at restaurants. What we do at the retail level and our shared spirit app is built around working with restaurants and suppliers on the restaurant level, but on the retail side, the connection there is slightly different. We deal with suppliers who just really want to deliver volume and support to the retailers. So if they can introduce it to new customers, that's all the better, but it's really about supporting that retail relationship. So it's very much a relationship scenario. The distributor has placed that product in the stores and they hire companies like ours on the supplier side to send our people in and just really sell as many of those bottles during a three hour period is absolutely possible. And when that happens, that support is recognized by the stores and they continue to purchase those cases. So if you've seen wines that you like at retailers that you patronize and you've seen those products continue to be there over time, it's a function of the support they get in pricing, in sampling, and in really basic support from the supplier and the distributors. It's got to be competitive nowadays just because the analytics or our fingertips, they can tell at the end of the day how much product they're moving. I don't know if it's quite that instantaneous, but stuff doesn't sit very long if it doesn't move. There's a technology in place now for us that literally delivers in almost real time the very cocktail lined by the glass or draft of beer is sold at the POS level at a restaurant now. Wow. We are getting very close to being able for a distributor and a supplier. It's a little tougher on the retail side because those POS systems aren't feeding directly into the software that are used by distributors yet. So it's a little bit of delay, but you were very right. It is close to being able to know in real time. Our brand ambassadors can go to a store after, go to the management after they're sampling for three hours and know exactly how many bottles were moved during that three hours. When we send our people in to do what are called activations for wine and spirits brands, then our people are indeed trained on how to do that. So you can imagine a wine supplier sending us in for a demo or an education event at a restaurant where we've gotten an allotment of 100 glasses to customers that night just as complimentary. There's so much money invested in people don't understand the complexities behind getting a product demonstrated, do they? It is quite complicated when you get right down to it. And we're all kind of, I hate to generalize, but we're all kind of stuck in our ways and you know, I'll go to Cheesecake Factory. Yeah, yeah, that would be wonderful. Yeah, they've got hundreds of selections and I come back to I'll have a hamburger, a cheeseburger and you know, something. Interesting. First of all, when you do work with a supplier, they have realistic expectations. When I say supplier, I'm meaning a brand owner of any kind, they have realistic expectations. Typically, if the price point is a moderate price point for a bottle of wine, we have people that'll move anywhere from 12 to 36 bottles during a three hour period depends on the foot traffic. And that's not a real challenge with spirits. It's a little different, maybe eight to 12 bottles of vodka is a good outing. But what is so interesting about all this is it all depends on the store and the experienced people want to have their certain stores in Texas where there are little wine psalms for us to run the wine department in the grocery stores. No amateurs. And then there are other stores that basically have a beverage director that's responsible for placement of everything from soda to tea to water to wine. And there's no specialization there. So we see it all up and down the map. And when we're dealing with stores that really want their wine offerings, really high level, really high end, we're sampling bottles on occasion that are retailing at a grocery store for 50 to 80 to 90 dollars a bottle. And you think about the cost of that sampling and the expertise that's needed to try to move those bottles. Those are the challenges. You know, when you're selling that approachable 12 to $15 bottle of wine at a store, those are almost impulse buys. And if somebody were going to buy a white that night and you sample the white that you've got and they like it, they will give it a flyer. It's a different decision tree when you're selling an $80 bottle of wine.