please help

[Randy Caparoso]

Sounds fair enough. I'm definitely into "volume," by the way; although in the restaurant business we just call it turnover. I prefer -- and always get -- monthly sales that are at least twice the amount of end-of-the-month inventories; and I do it with bottle prices largely in the $25-$85 range. Never really understood why restaurateurs (including many esteemed colleagues) would accept anything less. It's a business, is it not?

But for kman, I have one final suggestion: besides teaching yourself and your staff, do try to bring your wine program up to snuff. The wines you mentioned are distinctly average in quality, but below average in pizzaz. You won't exactly light up the sky with those choices, which means you'll also have trouble keeping your staff (not to mention yourself) excited about things in the long run. So it won't matter how much inventory you carry, how much volume you achieve, and how much or how little you do your markup. As with menu items and service personnel, quality starts with the selection.
Plus, having an exciting, innovative selection certainly does not have to cost any money. I've seen it done with wine lists with as little as 10 selections, inventory costs below a $1000, yet monthly sales of over $10,000 -- talk about volume!