Pricing
How to price a restaurant menu and wine list in the UK
Wine and menu pricing for UK hospitality: true cost, 20% VAT, markup versus GP and cash margin, house wine, by the glass. Stop guessing.
Written by Marco Azzari on
"Any wine sale is better than no wine sale" is a belief you can only afford if you know the true cost of the line. A lot of UK restaurants and pubs do not. Prices were set from memory, copied from the last owner, or multiplied by a number that felt normal in 2018. VAT was never taken out. Guests now check the supermarket price at the table.
This section is the number half of the wiki.
Start here if you run a small room and you guess: how to price a wine list in the UK. Three lines first (house, best-selling glass, best-selling bottle), true cost, 20% inside.
Start here if you have to answer an ops director: markup is not margin. Pour cost, GP, cash margin. The language of the review meeting.
By the glass is usually the highest-margin engine and the one on autopilot: how to price wine by the glass. House wine is the pour that happens when nobody chooses: how to price house wine. Kitchen and cellar use different cost % and operators mix them: food cost and wine cost. Guests already know your multiplier: phone-check markup.
The legal page everything else should cite: restaurant VAT in the UK. In the room, food and wine are both 20%. The leak is a price you never rebuilt, not a special wine tax.