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A VinePair report describes how restaurant beverage directors are responding to higher costs, supply disruption and labor and administrative demands. Their approaches include offering alternatives to expensive wines, setting prices with guests and sales in mind, and coordinating bulk purchases where storage allows.
Restaurant beverage directors are changing wine selections, pricing and purchasing practices to manage higher costs and supply disruption, according to a VinePair report featuring professionals at restaurants in Alabama, Maryland, Washington state and José Andrés Group. Their examples show how operators are trying to keep drinks programs workable without making every increase fall on guests.
Rising prices have made some familiar bottles harder to sell at their former price points. Will Jones, wine director at The Hope Farm and Little Bird in Fairhope, Alabama, said he now offers less costly Burgundy-area wines, including Hautes-Côtes de Beaune or de Nuits and Bourgogne Rouge or Blanc, as approachable alternatives to Premier Cru bottles. Felipe de Assis Villela, beverage director at Bluepoint Hospitality Group in Easton, Maryland, said wines from northern Italy, Austria and Germany can offer guests a compelling story at a lower price than iconic Burgundy.
Villela said he does not set prices solely by applying a fixed percentage markup. He described balancing restaurant revenue with whether a bottle is likely to sell and what guests can afford. That approach, he said, can leave the percentage margin lower than in a previous job while still making money for the business.
Buying in volume can reduce costs or provide a buffer against shortages, but it depends on storage and the ability to move stock among locations. Amanda Reed, director of beverage at E3 Co. Restaurant Group in Seattle, said distributors may offer discounts for commitments of five or 10 cases. She said the group may arrange to commit to a larger purchase while accepting deliveries in smaller batches, a way to work around limited storage at individual properties.
Balancing Bottle Costs and Guest Value
The choices described in the report affect both a restaurant’s finances and the experience it offers diners. When a wine’s wholesale cost rises, a restaurant can raise its menu price, replace the bottle or accept a smaller margin. Each option has consequences: a steep price may put a once-accessible wine beyond a guest’s budget, while a substitute needs to suit the guest and the meal rather than simply fill a gap.
Supply and labor pressures also make the work more demanding than selecting drinks. The report says beverage professionals face administrative and managerial tasks alongside buying, while disruptions in distribution can complicate keeping products available. The strategies described are examples from individual operators, not evidence that every restaurant can use them; bulk buying, for example, requires storage capacity and predictable demand.
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Why Sourcing Has Become Harder
The report attributes pressure on beverage programs to inflation, tariffs and supply-chain issues, as well as upheaval among wholesalers. It points to the collapse of Republic National Distributing Company, or RNDC, which the supplied source describes as falling from the country’s second-largest beverage wholesaler to Chapter 11 bankruptcy in less than two years. The report says those changes have made maintaining steady supply more difficult.
For buyers, an expanding range of products and categories adds another challenge. Johannus Grevelink, beverage director for José Andrés Group, described receiving 40 to 60 product-related emails a day, including messages with the group’s name spelled incorrectly. His account illustrates how sales outreach can consume time that buyers also need for sourcing and program management.
“I cannot sell Premier Cru Burgundy for the same price we could five years ago.”
— Will Jones, wine director at The Hope Farm and Little Bird
Limits of the Reported Strategies
The report offers interviews and examples, but does not quantify how much costs have risen, how widespread the described purchasing practices are, or how much they change restaurant profitability. It also does not provide a current measure of product shortages or the effect of tariffs on particular bottles.
Whether alternatives satisfy guests, whether bulk orders produce meaningful savings after storage costs, and how wholesale distribution will develop are not established by the examples. The source also does not specify a publication date in the supplied material, so the timing of its market descriptions cannot be pinned down more precisely here.
How Operators May Adjust Their Lists
The report describes ongoing adjustments rather than a single announced policy or scheduled milestone. Beverage teams may continue to review prices, availability and guest preferences as they decide which bottles to keep, replace or buy in larger quantities. Where several restaurant locations can share inventory, operators may also consider staged deliveries to avoid filling each site’s storage at once.
No further changes or dates are specified in the source. The next indicators for readers will be whether the operators report updated purchasing practices or menus, and whether wholesale availability and costs ease or continue to constrain their choices.
Key Questions
What pressures are restaurant beverage programs facing?
The VinePair report cites inflation, tariffs, supply-chain issues, wholesale-market upheaval, labor costs and administrative demands. It does not quantify the effect of each factor.
How are beverage directors responding to expensive wines?
Some are offering alternatives from other regions or less costly appellations. Will Jones named Hautes-Côtes de Beaune and Bourgogne Rouge as examples; Felipe de Assis Villela described offering wines from northern Italy, Austria or Germany.
Can buying wine in bulk help restaurants?
It may secure a volume discount or help protect against shortages, but the approach depends on storage space and the ability to sell or distribute the inventory. Amanda Reed said her group sometimes seeks larger commitments with deliveries in smaller batches.
Are the reported strategies working across the industry?
The report provides examples from individual beverage professionals, not industry-wide results. It does not supply data on how common these strategies are or their effect on margins and sales.
Source: rss
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