Margin Protector #2: Poor Pours Will Make You Poor
Hospitality is built around generosity. We welcome people into our venues, encourage staff to look after them and spend an enormous amount of time thinking about how to create a better experience. The last thing most of us want is for a customer to feel they are being short-changed.
Perhaps that is why controlling wine pours can be surprisingly uncomfortable.
I've watched a staff member pour a glass of wine well past where I knew the measure should be and said nothing. They might have been standing at the table talking to the customer, or the guest might have been watching the wine go into the glass. Sometimes I simply didn't want to interrupt a moment of good hospitality by pointing out that the pour was too generous.
I knew there was too much wine in the glass. The staff member probably thought they were looking after the customer, and the customer was certainly unlikely to complain.
So I let it go.
I've done that more times than I care to admit, and I suspect I'm not the only operator who has. It is also how a surprising amount of wine gets given away.
Nobody thinks they are wasting wine
Overpouring is rarely malicious. In most venues, the staff member isn't trying to cost the business money. Quite the opposite. A generous pour can feel like good service; hospitable, confident and perhaps even a little luxurious.
There is also something strangely uncomfortable about pouring a measured amount of wine into a large glass while a customer watches. The correct pour can look small, particularly to an inexperienced staff member, so a little more goes in.
The problem is that the customer sees one generous glass while the business owner pays for every generous glass poured across every shift.
An extra 20 ml doesn't look particularly significant, but if a 750 ml bottle is intended to produce five 150 ml glasses, those extra pours quickly change the arithmetic. The bottle that should produce five glasses produces four and a bit, while the selling price remains based on a yield you are no longer achieving.
The margin looked good when you calculated it.
Then you poured part of it into the customer's glass.
The by-the-glass section should be working hard for you
A well-constructed by-the-glass list can be one of the strongest margin opportunities in a beverage program, particularly when the wines are well bought, correctly priced and wastage is controlled.
You can negotiate fiercely with suppliers, calculate the selling price perfectly and select wines with excellent margin potential, but none of those decisions can protect the margin once the bottle is open and someone begins pouring from it.
This is one of the frustrations of running a venue. You can spend hours making a good commercial decision and watch its value slowly disappear through a small operational habit.
I've certainly felt that frustration. The temptation is to blame the person holding the bottle, but usually the more useful question is whether we ever properly taught them what the pour should be and why.
Staff are trying to look after the customer
If the only time you discuss wine measures is immediately after seeing someone overpour, the conversation is almost guaranteed to feel like a reprimand.
“That's too much wine.”
“Watch your pours.”
“You're giving it away.”
What the staff member may hear is that you want them to be less generous with the customer. If they believe they were providing good service, criticism can quickly turn into defensiveness.
That isn't the lesson we want them to learn.
A 150 ml pour is not an act of stinginess. It is the agreed portion on which the selling price, bottle yield and margin have been built. A kitchen portions a steak, weighs ingredients and follows recipes because consistency is part of running a commercial kitchen. Wine should not somehow become exempt from the same thinking simply because it is poured at the table.
Once staff understand the purpose, the conversation becomes less about restricting hospitality and more about delivering a consistent product.
Make the right pour easy
Telling someone to “pour more accurately” is not a system, particularly if nobody has ever shown them what accurate looks like.
If your venue uses measured pours, give staff the right tools and make sure they can use them naturally without feeling awkward in front of a customer. If wine is free-poured, establish a clear visual reference for each glass style and give the team an opportunity to practise.
One of the simplest training exercises is to ask everyone to pour what they believe is the correct measure using water, then measure the result. Do it several times rather than once.
The exercise isn't about catching anyone out. In fact, it can be surprisingly entertaining, particularly when the person most confident in their ability to free-pour discovers they have been consistently pouring 170 ml.
More importantly, it gives staff a reference point. They can see the difference between what they thought they were pouring and what was actually going into the glass.
It's rarely what you think. It's often what you know.
How to improve wine pour consistency
If you suspect your pours are inconsistent, you don't need to redesign the entire beverage program. Start with a few simple controls.
Agree on the measure. Decide exactly how many millilitres constitute a standard glass and make sure everyone knows it.
Check your glassware. Different glass shapes can make the same measure look dramatically different. Show staff what the correct pour looks like in every glass you use.
Practise with water. Ask staff to free-pour the agreed measure, then check it with a measuring cup. Repeat the exercise until the pour becomes familiar.
Use measuring tools where necessary. Jiggers, measured pourers or other portion-control tools remove guesswork, particularly with new or inexperienced staff.
Include pouring in induction. Don't assume someone knows your venue's measure because they have worked in hospitality before.
Check periodically. A five-minute pouring exercise before service can quickly reveal when measures have started to drift.
Explain the commercial reason. Show staff how bottle yield works and what repeated overpouring does to margin. Give them a purpose, not just an instruction.
Praise consistency. If we only mention pouring when someone gets it wrong, it will always feel like criticism.
Consistency is good hospitality
It is tempting to frame portion control entirely as a way to save money, but consistency protects the customer as well as the margin.
A guest should not receive a noticeably smaller glass because a different staff member served them, nor should staff have to guess what “a glass of wine” is supposed to look like every time they pick up a bottle. Clear measures remove uncertainty and give everyone the confidence to deliver the same product.
They also remove one of those small, repetitive frustrations from the business owner. Instead of watching every pour and wondering whether you should say something, you have established the expectation, trained the team and created a way to check it occasionally.
Hospitality should feel generous, but generosity doesn't have to mean giving away the product you are trying to sell.
Decide what a glass of wine is, show your team what it looks like and give them the opportunity to practise until it becomes natural. Then encourage them to be generous with their welcome, their knowledge and their attention.
Those things are far more valuable to a customer than an extra 20 ml of wine.
