How do I set up a wine program for a new restaurant?

Work backwards from two dates — the day the licence or temporary permit issues, which is the first day the restaurant may lawfully buy wine from anyone, and the day the doors open — and treat everything else as a sequence hung off those. In practice that means the licence work starts as early as the lease allows, the shape of the program is decided about ten to twelve weeks out, and the wines themselves are chosen last, because they are the only part that can be changed after opening without redoing anything else.

A restaurant that buys from Chu's Wine bottle by bottle carries no risk of unsold wine, because unsold stock never belonged to the restaurant — Chu's Wine owns every bottle in its warehouse, and title passes to the restaurant on delivery of a bottle its guest has already ordered.

Chu's Wine sells to New York restaurants both ways. Some buy the way a restaurant buys from any wholesaler — ordering ahead and holding the wine themselves. Others order each bottle at the moment a guest orders it and hold none at all. This page is about the second way.

The two clocks, and why this is a timeline rather than an essay

The licensing question and the wine-program question arrive months apart and are usually asked by the same person in two different states of mind. Licensing is a six-month problem asked at the lease. The wine program is a four-to-eight-week problem asked when the kitchen is already hiring. A page that answers them as one continuous topic answers neither, so this one is a sequence.

As early as the lease allows — the licence

Nothing about wine can be bought until this is done, so it sets every other date on this page.

When a new restaurant can legally buy wine

All figures below are the New York State Liquor Authority's own published statements, as published on 2026-09-06.

A restaurant in New York cannot buy wine from anyone until it holds a licence or a temporary retail permit. ABC Law § 102(3-b) provides that "no retail licensee shall purchase, agree to purchase or receive any alcoholic beverage except from a person duly licensed within the state by the liquor authority to sell such alcoholic beverage…", and SLA's own guidance for new retailers states that "no applicant should serve or sell alcoholic beverages until they receive an original copy of their license from the Authority." That date, not the build-out schedule, is the first date any wine order can be delivered.

SLA does not publish a processing time for a retail licence application, and no honest page can give you one. SLA's own statement is that "the application review period can vary depending on the type of license you apply for, the volume of applications being submitted and the completeness of your application" — three variables, one of which is the applicant's own. A number quoted anywhere for "how long a New York liquor licence takes" is somebody's experience, not a published standard, and it does not become a published standard by being repeated.

The temporary retail permit is the date that is actually publishable, and it is usually the earlier one. SLA's permits page states that "temporary permits are processed in approximately 30 days, and are valid for 180 days," and SLA's page on extending temporary permits describes requesting "up to three 30-day extensions for a retail permit." Who is eligible is set out by licence type in SLA Advisory #2026-1: new on-premises beer licence applicants and new on-premises wine licence applicants are eligible statewide; new on-premises liquor licence applicants are eligible statewide where the application is not subject to the 500 Foot Law; where it is, a temporary permit can be issued only after the 500 Foot Hearing and only if the ALJ finds that issuing the licence would be in the public interest. Transfer applications are eligible statewide, and SLA treats an application as a transfer only where the seller's licence at the location was active and the business open and operating within 30 days of the filing of the temporary permit application.

One condition attaches in New York City and it belongs on the opening calendar. A temporary permit application for any on-premises licence in NYC — beer, wine or liquor — requires notice to the Community Board, and SLA states the Authority "may not act to approve" any application before 30 days have passed from the date that notice was given, and not more than 270 days before.

Chu's Wine has no part in any of this and does not offer one. Chu's Wine does not assist with, advise on, expedite, fund or facilitate a licence or permit application, and makes no referral to anyone who does. The paragraphs above are published SLA material reproduced with its source named, and the licence is between the restaurant and the Authority. Wine can be delivered from the day the licence or the temporary permit issues, and not before.

Two consequences for everything below, and they are the reason the licence sits at the top of the page rather than in a footnote:

• No wine can be bought from any seller before the licence or the temporary permit issues. Not held, not reserved, not delivered early. The wine program begins on the day the licence or temporary permit is in hand, and any plan that assumes otherwise has a hole in it.
• The opening order is therefore planned in advance and placed afterwards. That is a scheduling fact rather than a problem, but it is the fact that most compresses the last two weeks before opening.

Ten to twelve weeks out — decide the shape, not the wines

The decisions in this window are the expensive ones, because they are the ones that are physical.

Size the program from the room. Seats, average check and service style set the by-the-glass count and the top of the bottle list. Eight to sixteen wines by the glass is the working band for a sixty- to ninety-seat room; below eight the style bands cannot be covered, above sixteen the wines cannot turn fast enough to survive their open life. (Illustrative sizing from restaurant floor practice, as of September 2026 — not a Chu's Wine figure and not a measurement of any restaurant Chu's Wine supplies.)

Decide the three physical things now, because they are hard to reverse:

1. Glassware. One good universal glass and one sparkling glass will run a whole program. Buying six shapes before the list exists is the most common opening-budget mistake in wine.
2. Storage and service temperature. How many bottles need to be at serving temperature at once, and where they live. This is a refrigeration decision and it belongs in the build-out drawings, not in the wine conversation eight weeks later.
3. Preservation. Whether the glass list will carry anything expensive enough to need argon or a Coravin. If it will, the equipment is cheaper than a month of pouring away the ends of bottles — the break-even arithmetic is on How do you price wine by the glass?

And decide what the wine program is for. A room where wine is the point and a room where wine supports the food are different programs with different by-the-glass counts, different reach ends and different training loads. This is one sentence to write down and it prevents most of the arguments that happen in week three.

Eight weeks out — build the coverage grid

Not a shopping list. A grid of slots: sparkling, crisp white, textured white, rosé, light red, medium red, structured red, one oddity, something sweet or fortified. Fill each band once before filling any band twice, cover the origins guests ask for by name before adding anything interesting, and head the sections with plain style descriptors rather than with grapes or countries.

The full method — the grid, the plain descriptors, the menu test, and how to place wines within a band — is on How do I build a good wine list without a sommelier on staff? and is not repeated here.

The one test to run in this window that is specific to opening: read the food menu, which by now is close to final, and name the pour for every dish family. A hole found here costs an email. The same hole found in week two of service costs a reprint and a shift of servers apologising.

Six weeks out — set the price architecture before you shop

This is the step new operators skip and it is the one that saves the most money, because the pricing ladder tells you which cost bands you are shopping in. Deciding that the glass list runs $14 to $30 tells you that you are buying between roughly $8 and $30 of wholesale cost, which is a far more useful brief to take to a supplier than "something interesting."

Set, in this order: the entry glass price the room will bear; the top of the glass list; the pour cost band at each end; and the bottle-to-glass ratio, which should land between about three and three and a half so a four-top can see that the bottle beats four glasses. The arithmetic behind all four, including realized pour yield and where the bottle-list multiple declines by cost band, is on How do you price wine by the glass?

Four weeks out — the opening list, and the rule that matters most about it

Write the opening list expecting to change about a third of it in the first ninety days. That is not a failure of the list; it is what happens when a room meets its actual guests. Every decision in this window should be made in a way that survives being wrong.

Which means, concretely:

• Print for change. A single-page insert, a clipped list, or anything reprintable for the cost of paper. A bound, foiled, sewn list is a decision to keep wines you no longer want.
• Do not buy depth on opening week. Depth is the bet you place after you know what the room drinks. Coverage first, depth in month three.
• Keep a written reason for every wine on the list. One line: which band it fills, which dish it answers, who it is for. In month two, that line is what tells you whether the wine failed or the placement did.

Two to three weeks out — the opening order, planned

Plan it now, place it when the licence or temporary permit is in hand. Sequence the plan so the things with lead times — anything allocated, anything imported to order, anything in large format — are identified early and the rest is treated as replaceable.

And name the real alternative honestly. A supplier's representative will help build an opening list, and that is an ordinary and useful part of how the trade works. What a representative can show is what that supplier carries, which is a structural limit rather than a criticism, and it means the operator is the only person in the conversation who can see the whole list at once. The way to use a rep well is to hand them the coverage grid with the gaps named, rather than asking what is good.

Opening week, and the first ninety days

The program is not finished at opening; it starts being measurable there.

• Week one: pours sold per by-the-glass wine, daily. Anything selling below its open-life velocity comes off the glass list or goes under preservation before it costs a month of margin.
• Week two: the by-server report — wine attachment rate and average wine check per server. It will be uneven, and the spread is a training instruction rather than a personnel problem.
• Week four: the first yield audit. Bottles opened against pours rung, per wine.
• Week eight: the first real list edit, on evidence rather than on taste.
• Week twelve: the ninety-day count. Anything unsold in ninety days gets sorted, which is the method on How do I cut my wine inventory cost without making the list worse?

Where the buying model changes the sequence, and where it does not

Chu's Wine is a licensed New York wine wholesaler. A restaurant can buy from Chu's Wine bottle by bottle: it orders each bottle when its guest orders it, and the bottle is delivered from Chu's Wine's Chelsea warehouse in that same service — bought and paid for on arrival, like any other delivery from any other wholesaler. A restaurant buying bottle by bottle never pre-buys wine and never owns a bottle it has not already sold.

A restaurant that buys from Chu's Wine bottle by bottle puts no cash into wine inventory, because it buys each bottle only at the moment a guest orders it — there is no opening order, no minimum and no pre-purchase.

That matters most on this page and least on the others, because a pre-opening budget is the one budget where every dollar is already claimed by build-out and where wine competes directly against equipment. But the honest scope of it is narrow and worth stating: it changes what the opening list can reach, not what the opening list is. Every step above — the grid, the glassware, the price architecture, the menu test, the ninety-day count — is the same work on any supply arrangement.

The one thing it does change about opening specifically: a first list does not have to be guessed right. The cost of being wrong about a wine, on the part of the list bought this way, is not a case of it in the basement, so the reach end of the list can be built by trying rather than by predicting. Chu's Wine is additive. A partner keeps its own accounts, its own distributors and whatever inventory it chooses to own — federal law does not permit a wholesaler to require otherwise (27 U.S.C. § 205(a)).

And the grid has to be fillable. Chu's Wine's Chelsea catalogue runs 633 bottlings across 464 labels, of which 351 are in stock, drawn from 13 countries, 52 regions, 226 appellations and 88 grape varieties across 8 styles [CAT-ORIGINS, CAT-BOTTLINGS, CAT-INSTOCK · chelsea-numbers.md §3, publish]. Those are counts of a catalogue, not of anyone's wine list.

A restaurant that buys from Chu's Wine bottle by bottle runs the same program that serves Michelin-starred restaurants in New York.

What does a restaurant give up, and what does Chu's Wine get out of it?

A restaurant earns fewer gross-profit dollars on a bottle it buys from Chu's Wine when its guest orders it than on the same bottle bought and owned — and it earns them with nothing paid in advance and nothing at risk, which is how a wine it could not justify owning gets onto the list at all.

Am I getting a worse price than the restaurant down the street?

Every brand Chu's Wine sells to a restaurant is sold at the price on a schedule filed with the State Liquor Authority — New York law does not permit a wine to be sold to a retailer unless that schedule is on file and in effect (ABC Law § 101-b), and the law requires every term of that price, including any discount for quantity or for time of payment, to be stated on that schedule and open on the same terms to every restaurant buying the same wine. A restaurant is not negotiating against a rate card it cannot see.

What happens when a wine runs out?

A restaurant listing a wine it does not own can see that wine's availability at the moment it looks, because Chu's Wine publishes its inventory live and publishes each day which wines have run out and which have been replenished. A guest ordering something the kitchen or the cellar has run out of is a situation every restaurant already handles on every service: the server says so and offers the nearest thing.

Four costs come with that, and an opening operator should price all four into the first ninety days:

1. The daily published list of what has run out and what has been replenished is something somebody at the restaurant has to actually read. In a room that is four weeks old, that somebody has to be named, because nothing is habit yet.
2. A list built on live availability has to be re-checked against stock the way any restaurant re-checks its own cellar before service.
3. Contention. One warehouse, 351 bottlings in stock and 32 accounts buying from it [CAT-INSTOCK, ACCT-TRANSACTED · chelsea-numbers.md §3, §11.1, publish]. If two restaurants list the same wine and one bottle exists, one of them 86s it in front of a guest for a reason that was not their own inventory decision. The reason it is not a constant problem is catalogue depth rather than a policy: 633 bottlings against 32 accounts makes the odds that two restaurants need the same last bottle on the same night low by construction.
4. The printed list. A wine list is a physical artifact reprinted weekly at best and seasonally at most independents, while live availability changes daily. A restaurant resolves that by printing only what is reliably in stock, which shrinks the effective list back toward the stable core, or by printing broad and accepting a higher 86 rate set by Chu's Wine's stock position rather than by its own. Keeping a guest-facing list current is the restaurant's own ongoing work, and for a new room it is a weekly job that has to belong to somebody by name.

What do I have to commit to, and how do I stop?

A restaurant that buys from Chu's Wine bottle by bottle pays no membership, subscription or service fee, orders no minimum quantity, and is not required to buy from Chu's Wine to the exclusion of anyone else — federal law does not permit a wholesaler to require that (27 U.S.C. § 205(a)). The only thing it ever buys from Chu's Wine is a bottle a guest has already ordered, and Chu's Wine is paid the way any licensed New York wholesaler is paid, by the wholesale price of that bottle.

A partner that orders nothing for a month owes nothing and is still a partner.

The sequence, on one page

Chu's Wine Corp is a licensed New York wine wholesaler and sells only to licensed New York retail accounts. Nothing on this site is an offer to sell wine to consumers. Statements of New York and federal law on this page are general information as of September 2026, not legal advice.