Wine markup is not wine margin

Written by Marco Azzari on 26 August 2026

A multiplier on supplier price is easy to explain and usually wrong as a system. Bottles do not cost the same. Glasses are not bottles. VAT is 20% in the room whether the line is a £24 house or a wine you are scared to sell. A flat multiplier makes cheap wine look "healthy" on paper and famous wine look ambitious until the guest googles it.

This page is the translation layer. F&B already speaks pour cost, GP and drinks %. Sommeliers often do not, and then they lose the budget meeting to someone who does. The palate is not the problem. The missing number is.

Three words that get mixed

Markup / multiplier. Selling price compared with cost. "Times three" is a markup story. It says nothing about what is left after VAT, breakage, and the mix of glass versus bottle.

Pour cost (wine). Cost of the wine you sold, as a share of the wine revenue. GP % is the same number seen from the other side. Useful. Incomplete if you chase one % for glasses and bottles together and then strangle the glass programme because the % "looks high."

Cash margin (cash GP). What is left on the line after the true cost of that line. This is the number that pays rent. A glass at a "worse" GP % can still drop more pounds in the till than a bottle with a prettier %.

If an ops director asks why drinks are off plan, answering with a multiplier is how you look like you do not have the category. Answering with cash margin per pour, VAT included, is how the category becomes a sentence you can finish. Glossary dump: hospitality numbers.

Why flat ×3 (or ×4) fails in this country

US blog folklore loves a 4× bottle markup. UK guests know what the bottle costs in the supermarket. Famous labels with American multipliers sit. Meanwhile the house pour, still at a 2019 price, prints volume and no oxygen for the month.

Two rooms, same multiplier, opposite deaths:

• Multiplier high on googled names: full bottles in the rack, "people drink less."
• Multiplier low on the pours that actually move: busy glasses, no money.

Phone-check markup is the guest side. Price the list is the three-line start. By the glass is where cash margin is often best if you stop using bottle logic on a 175 ml pour.

For the sommelier in the meeting

You already know what a good pour does to a table. Management needs profit per pour, mix, and whether the programme is a cost or a line that floats a kitchen. Those are learnable. They are not a betrayal of the craft. They are how the craft stays on the payroll.