Profile of the ‘Average’ Casual Dining Wine List

Winemetrics recently updated its 2016 casual dining wine list data and discovered a number of significant milestones which will be featured in our 2016 Wine Buyer’s Report. However in compiling this data, we were struck by the realization that despite over a decade of providing on-premise market intelligence to the wine industry, we had never sought to define the average casual dining wine list.

In 2016 we surveyed over 110 casual dining chains representing nearly 10,000 accounts throughout the U.S.. For this exercise, we averaged the numbers of By-the-Glass (BTG) and By-the Bottle (BTB) by chain, treating each chain as a single entity, this way distribution in a handful of the largest chains would not overwhelm that of the majority of smaller chains. The average is 20 wines BTG and 22 BTB with 13 varieties offered BTG and 14 available BTB.  The average presence by variety, both By-the-Glass (BTG) and By-the-Bottle is listed below. Note that Syrah/Shiraz is no longer found on the ‘average’ list, its presence is now to minor to make the final cut. Zinfandel is only present as a minor BTB selection and many lists no longer carry this quintessential California variety. Sangiovese just makes the list due to its considerable presence on Casual Italian Chain lists, which represent 13%  of the Casual Dining chains Winemetrics surveys.

The distribution by brand/variety was similarly calculated; each of the wines listed are ranked by number of chains with distribution,  not total listings. To learn more about brand ranking by variety and account type, please download an excerpt of our 2106 Wine Buyer’s Report from http://www.winemetrics.com.  In varieties were multiple producers are present, they are ranked in descending order from the leading brand. Pricing is also an average across chains

 

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