'Wine Mondays' - a Modest Proposal to Help Increase US Sales
The wine industry is very good at blaming others for its woes. Among the defendants in the dock are:
Excise and import duties and tariffs
State and government monopolies
Restrictions on advertising and promotion
Warnings from health professionals
Anti-alcohol campaigners
‘Big wine’
Insufficient ‘wine education’
Discount-focused supermarkets
Greedy restaurants and bars
Obviously, the responsibility is never down to us.
Even if this were all true, it wouldn’t solve our problems. There’s no all-powerful judge who can find any or all of these ‘guilty’ and oblige them to change their ways and start to be nice to us.
The only people who are going to solve our problems are us: the wine producers.
Following my - highly popular - post focusing on the last item on the list - the ferocious prices American customers have to pay for wine by the glass - I wondered, how we could address that particular issue.
No shaming
The first thing to say is that we won’t solve the problem by criticising or shaming the owners and managers of the bars and restaurants. They have to make a living and their margin on wine sits in their toolbox alongside the ones on food, and the service charge. We can’t simply say, “please drop the price of your $15 glass of red or white to $10” without demonstrating how they can continue to generate at least their current levels of revenue.
The argument for switching to a cash margin rather than a percentage margin makes sense when talking about fine wines that look too pricy when marked up using the formula that has been applied to humbler ones. Applying it, or a lower percentage margin, to entry level wines does not. Unless a way is found for the establishment to attract more customers and to put more cash through their tills.
Learning from the movies
One way to do this would be to learn from cinemas which, in the US, offer Bargain Tuesdays. In the UK, the Odeon group has opted for Mondays, while CGR, France’s second-biggest chain, offers reduced prices on both Mondays and Thursdays. In all these cases, the discounts are only available to customers who have registered and allowed themselves to be targets for marketing.
Wine Mondays
In my model, the discounted wine would be available on Mondays - always a quiet day for the on-trade - and compensation for the reduced margin would come from brands and/or generic organisations that would treat these occasions as opportunities for customers to experience unfamiliar styles and flavours. Additionally, these Wine Mondays might include the option for customers to pay an attractively-affordable corkage charge for permission to bring their own bottles
Ideally, with the appropriate level of promotion, bars and restaurants would increase their trade on a previously less remunerative day, the total amount of wine sold per week would rise, and the wines involved would benefit from greater exposure.
The obvious flaw in my argument is that, in the short term, we won’t have done anything to stop these same establishments from charging an exorbitant $15-17 per glass on other days of the week. And, honestly, I have no answer to that.
But, hopefully, over time, greater ‘wine awareness’ and closer relationships between bar owners, restaurateurs and wine producers, distributors and promotional professionals, and greater use of kegs and wine on draft, will all help to create an atmosphere is which more thought is given to making wine a more attractive and more affordable option for customers in the US.