Poured, Then Forgotten: The Hidden Economics of the Sommelier

Jul 6

For over a decade, I lived in the quiet current beneath fine dining: a sommelier, a beverage director, a translator between glass and guest.

I’ve recommended Bordeaux to nervous first daters and poured Riesling into the trembling hands of people celebrating their 60th anniversaries.
I've paired Sancerre with oysters, Lambrusco with secrets, Nebbiolo with nostalgia.
But more than any pairing, I’ve learned this: beverage sales are the lungs of a restaurant.

And yet…we’re treated like expendable appendages.

During the pandemic, when the ship of hospitality began to sink, who were the first to be thrown overboard?
Not pastry teams, who often give away half their output in bread baskets and amuse-bouches.
Not line cooks, who prep labor-intensive dishes with single-digit margins.

It was the sommeliers.
The beverage directors.
The ones who built programs that quietly paid the rent.

Why? Because we were misunderstood. Still are.

The Math They Don’t Want to Talk About

Let’s talk numbers, since numbers make executives listen.

In many mid- to high-end restaurants, beverage accounts for 30–50% of total sales.
And within that margin lies gold: wine is often marked up 3–4x.
Cocktails 5–6x.
Even non-alcoholic pairings, if done right, can yield profits comparable to wine by the glass.

The food? Well, the food feeds the soul. But it doesn’t always feed the bank.

And yet, during COVID, many restaurants kept pastry chefs…teams who produce intricate, high-labor desserts that often get priced at $12–$15 a plate.
Pastry teams that bake bread daily, give it away with butter and salt, and rarely get the credit for a diner’s return visit.
I’m not criticizing them, I admire their art. I worked in a bakery for years as my experience to get accepted into culinary school.
But let’s be honest: their margins are often upside down.

Meanwhile, the somm (who can turn a $20 wholesale bottle into $120 in seconds) is let go. We, who have the emotional intelligence to upsell without pushing, who know when to stay quiet and when to wax poetic about the nose of a Syrah…we are cut.

Because too often, leadership sees us as a luxury. A frill. A wine poet in a linen suit.

But we are not frills. We are financiers with corkscrews.

The Invisible Profit Center

There is a secret that only beverage directors truly understand: we make the restaurant’s numbers work.

When food costs creep too high and labor soars, management starts looking at wine sales like a life raft. A well-run beverage program can float a struggling kitchen, and often does.

It’s not just about the wine list. It’s the glass pour strategy.
It’s the upsell from a $14 Pinot Grigio to a $19 Albariño.
It’s the low-waste mocktail menu.
It’s knowing which bottles can age and which ones must go fast.

It’s training your team to speak confidently about wines they’ve never tasted. It’s creating tasting notes that sound like short stories, not textbooks.

But more than that, it's emotional.

Wine is where people splurge. It’s where they celebrate. You can order steak and still feel like you're on a budget, but when you order a bottle of Champagne?
You’re declaring that life is worth toasting, even on a Tuesday.

A Sommelier’s Job Description (Unwritten, but Understood)

You may think a sommelier’s job is to recite grape varieties or recommend pairings. That’s the tip of the decanter.

Here’s what we really do:

Inventory alchemy: turning overstocked cases into thematic flights.
Menu psychology: placing mid-tier wines near high-end ones to make them look like a deal.
Staff training: teaching a 19-year-old barback how to pronounce "Gewürztraminer" without flinching.
Guest profiling: identifying, in 12 seconds, whether a diner wants a $300 bottle or a $30 one, and making both feel like royalty.
Diplomacy: dealing with guests who send back a wine because “it tastes like cork” when it’s just earthy.

We are hosts. Historians. Hustlers.
And yet, we are often left out of strategy meetings, off org charts, and outside the bonus structure.

Why We Were Let Go First

In the early pandemic days, as dining rooms shuttered and restaurant owners scrambled, the sommeliers were often the first to go.

It made sense, on the surface. Fewer guests. No table service. No need for a wine expert.

But it revealed something deeper: the lack of understanding around what beverage professionals actually do.

Without a good somm:
Wine sales plummet or stagnate at safe choices.
Inventory piles up. Wines go past their peak.
Servers are left guessing, or worse, selling based on price alone.

The sommelier is not just a talking wine list. We are asset managers in aprons. And when we are cut, the numbers suffer long before anyone notices.

Beverage Directors Are Business Directors

I didn’t just pick wine. I picked margins. I picked vendors.
I chose the $8 bottle that drank like $30. I negotiated discounts.
I spotted theft.
I scheduled tastings that boosted morale and sales.
I collaborated with chefs to create pairings that drove prix-fixe menus.

I was a one-person marketing department and procurement team…wearing polished shoes and a wine key.
I appeared on television and entertained the masses, while reminding the world our restaurants existed.

And I am not alone.

So many sommeliers operate at this level: quietly keeping restaurants afloat with decisions made between shifts.
But rarely are we treated like leaders. We’re still called “wine people.”
Still boxed in as servers with better vocabulary.

But we know the spreadsheets. We track depletion rates. We know what bottles turn. We know what sells on rainy nights and what sits untouched when the mood shifts.

We deserve a seat at the strategy table, not just a spot on the floor.

What Needs to Change

Let this article be a manifesto. A love letter. A warning.

Here’s what restaurants must do if they want to survive and thrive:

Respect beverage as a business unit. Not just a perk. Not just a splurge.
Retain sommeliers in leadership roles. Let us build the program, then empower us to run it like the revenue engine it is.
Cross-train and mentor. Too many beverage directors burn out from doing it all alone. Invest in the next generation.
Understand cost structure. Know that the $150 wine sale might have more profit in it than ten appetizers combined.
Stop treating wine as decoration. It’s not a backdrop. It’s a driver.

The Unspoken Labor of Wine Lists

Most guests don’t realize it, but every wine list is a thesis.

Hours go into each page…researching vintages, balancing price tiers, accounting for the emotional arc of the menu.

You can’t just toss in a Bordeaux and hope for the best.
You have to think: will this dance with the duck confit?
Will it excite the staff? Can I sell it on a Wednesday?

And then there’s layout, because visual psychology matters.
Put the most profitable bottle first?
You look pushy. Put it last?
You risk invisibility.

A great wine list is part storytelling, part strategy, and part seduction.
But here’s the thing: no one gets paid to write it.
If you’re hourly then chances are you’re making close to minimum wage.
It’s done off the clock, after the bar is closed, while the kitchen staff winds down and the dining room hums with crumbs and ghosts.

A sommelier builds this list with their whole brain, and then watches it be printed and passed around like a menu of optional luxuries. But it is not optional.

That list is the engine.

Why Beverage Education is Survival, Not Fluff

Education in the beverage world isn’t ornamental…it’s essential.

I’ve seen wine classes turn timid servers into confident sellers.
A 10-minute lineup on the difference between Pinot Noir in Oregon and Burgundy can mean the difference between a $12 glass and a $19 one.
Multiply that over 200 covers, and suddenly education becomes revenue. But many restaurants treat it as a bonus. Optional.
A treat when business is slow.

It should be a line item. It should be a ritual.
Staff who understand the story behind the bottle don’t just sell, they connect.
They speak with authority, not recitation. They create trust.
And trust, in the hospitality industry, is the currency that never devalues.

I’ve seen servers at other restaurants confidently tell my husband that Sancerre was not a Sauvignon Blanc, making every staff member who works there look incompetent.
When your staff spreads misinformation it sows doubt into my mind.
If my server doesn’t know Sancerre they pour by the glass is Sauvignon Blanc, do they know if the dishes I ordered have an allergen in them?

When you skip education, you don’t just lose upsell potential…you lose soul.

The Myth of the “Expensive Sommelier”

Let’s debunk something: hiring a sommelier does not cost you money, it makes you money.

The myth persists that a beverage director is a high-ticket hire, a luxury reserved for Michelin stars and major market darlings.
But what if I told you that a skilled somm can turn your backstock into liquid gold?
That we can reduce spoilage, increase check average, and train your servers to sell smarter in under a month?

That our average salary is less than your linen bill, but our impact reaches every guest, every night?

We manage theft, negotiate prices, find off-label steals that taste like first growths.
We’re part strategist, part magician. But because we don’t always wear chef coats or burn ourselves on the line, we’re treated as “nice to have.”

Meanwhile, we’re making you 10–30% in beverage profit on every ticket.
You don’t need to afford a sommelier.
You need to afford not having one.

The Loneliness of Leading the Beverage Program

No one tells you that running a beverage program can feel like standing in an empty room while music plays elsewhere.

You’re at the edge of every team: half front-of-house, half back-of-house, fully belonging nowhere.
You work when others rest. You sell without selling. You educate without preaching.
And when things go wrong (when a guest hates the Barolo, when a bottle explodes in the cellar) you clean it up alone.

There’s little glamour in the grind.

Inventory isn’t sexy. Margins aren’t romantic. And yet they matter more than any pairing.
A great beverage director lives in the in-between: passionate enough to inspire, analytical enough to report, humble enough to keep learning.

We aren’t just performers. We’re protectors. Of profit, of palate, of people.
And often, we do it alone…because few understand the quiet math behind every pour.

Why It Hurts to Be Cut First

The hardest part about being let go as a sommelier wasn’t financial. It was emotional.

I had poured serious time into building a beverage program that sang.
Trained staff who could wax poetic about skin-contact whites. Built relationships with small producers, negotiated prices, watched the numbers tick upward.

And then I was let go…not because I wasn’t doing my job, but because they didn’t see what the job was. They saw me as a poet in the corner, not the reason they stayed afloat last quarter.
Servers were kept on furlough, but the sommelier team was not.

That disconnect burns. Because we love what we do.

But loving wine isn’t enough. You have to love margins. Love spreadsheets. Love the balance between soul and sale.
When you’re cut first, it sends a message: art doesn’t matter.
Profit only matters when it’s visible. And yet, wine is where guests indulge.
It’s where they spend freely.
So why are the people who know that language always the first to go quiet?

A Final Toast

I remember the last shift I worked before lockdown.

It wasn’t personal.

But it felt like a betrayal…not of me, but of the truth we’d all been living: that the beverage program was the backbone, not the embellishment.
I watched as all my fellow sommeliers were let go around the world.
I watched beverage programs that used to be great crumble into ruins.
And I watched in the years that followed less and less sommeliers return to restaurants.

We are not the garnish. We are the structure. The ones who understand that a glass of wine is never just a drink, it’s a conversation, a comfort, a currency.

So here’s to the sommeliers who stayed.
To the beverage directors who reimagined entire menus in takeout form.
To those who rebuilt, retrained, and reopened.

And to those who were let go first, may the tides eventually shift and bring back the glory days of the sommelier.