Save the Wine Industry and Host a Pop-Up Wine Bar
The definitive guide for hosting a pop-up wine bar in your city
Full disclosure, I’ve hosted three pop-up wine bars this year, which makes me far from an expert, but here are some tips from my limited experience.
Following two successful pop-ups wine bars in Paris back in February and April, which you can read about here, I hosted a similar event in Vienna between 26-28 June. Only three-days, as opposed to an entire month in Paris, and in Hietzing, a quieter and less hip part of Vienna, compared to the uber-trendy Le Marais, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the results speak for themselves.
Across three-days we had 123 guests who purchased 89 bottles totaling 1,516€ of wine. In addition, I received a few hundred euros in tips for my efforts — and if you believe Instagram followers are a type of currency, I added around 40 followers to my account. And while not measured in Euros and cents, I met and had dozens of conversations with people who live in my neighborhood, who no longer ignore me and offer a friendly “guten morgen” when we walk past each other on the way to the bakery in the morning.
How Did We Get Here
Back in May I was offered, for free, a small art gallery space from M2K, a museum quality frame shop, from the owner who knew about the Paris pop-up. It’s located at Maxingstrasse 3, just at the end of a pedestrian street with a small restaurant directly across and 7 minutes from the u-bahn and tram — and, best of all, conveniently 5 minutes from my apartment.
As you can see in the photos below, the space has an industrial-chic aesthetic with exposed bricks, cast iron coat hooks and subway tiles.
Now that you have the basic concept, let me list some concrete tips, in no particular order:
Location: Check with local art galleries or community centers which will benefit from the additional foot traffic. The location should be easy to reach and find, have a bathroom, drinking water, dishwasher and refrigerator. I brought in the tables, stools and chairs, except for the large table in the top left corner above. And I purchased 24 wine glasses, which combined with my own stock, gave me 45 in total — you never want to run out of clean glasses.
Cost Structure: Wineries donated 6 bottles for the free tasting and then supplied me with 6 or 12 bottles for sale at full retail price. Bottles not opened or sold would be returned to the wineries and 100% of the sale price went directly to the winery.
Wine List: Knowing that Hietzing is an older demographic, I didn’t want to alienate my neighbors and make this a “natural wine pop-up”, but of course I also wanted to attract the younger market, therefore, the wine menu reflects a plethora of styles including sparkling, white, orange, red and rosé, produced both classically and naturally/low intervention. I also offered no alcohol wine and low alcohol sparkling tea. All of the beverages are certified organic or undergoing certification and being in Austria I also focused on mostly small, boutique producers from the state of Lower Austria. The reason was simple, I picked up the wine and will return the unsold bottles, and I didn’t want to drive across the entire country. I also kept the menu simple, only listing the vintage, wine name, grape variety, alcohol by volume (ABV) and bottle price. I didn’t want to intimidate the non-wine experts breaking down regions, or sustainability practices or even tasting and aroma notes. I preferred instead to verbally provide this data to have a dialogue with them — if they wanted to know if it was “barrel-aged” or “kept on the lees” I had the information ready or if they simply asked for something “refreshing” I could deliver.
Marketing: To promote the pop-up I employed both traditional and digital media. Postcards are inexpensive to produce and with a little help from ChatGPT I put together the design below using the prompt “Create a pop-up wine bar logo in the style of Roy Lichtenstein”, I then added the text and rearranged the graphics to fit the postcard dimensions. The concept was simply, pop-art for a pop-up. I also made some window stickers, which were not only helpful for our guests to find the pop-up, but were also attractive for social media posts from guests, as you can see in the video below.
In addition, I spent around 100€ on boosted Instagram campaigns, which you can see here. On Instagram I built a target audience of 18-35 year olds, both men and woman, with an interest in wine or no alcohol wine in the Vienna area. I posted the first ad on 17 June and then followed up again on 24 June and 28 June using a mix of video and still images. I tagged all of the wineries, many of whom reshared and posted stories, and I contacted the accounts for Hietzing, who posted the content on their website and social media. I also put all of the content in a Google Drive and emailed it to the wineries so they could post everything directly. Finally, I made a very simple event website, which was linked to from the Instagram campaigns, but was also easy to share via WhatsApp and iMessage — this also drove an increase in traffic to my winery website, which was a nice bonus.
Point-of-Sale: Nearly all bottle sale transactions were with credit card and nearly all tips were in cash. For the credit card transactions I used SumUp, which is a popular point-of-sale system in Europe. I used the Tap to Pay function on my iPhone, which SumUp takes a 1.69% transaction fee. It takes some time to set up the SumUp account to get all of the banking approvals, so do this well in advance. Stripe and Square offer similar functions based on your region. Just make sure you have Wifi or a strong cellphone signal or transactions can be delayed.
Partnering: For the Paris pop-up I worked very closely with the Austrian Wine Marketing Board and Austrian Tourism, which is responsible for promoting Austrian wine and culture globally. Since I was in Vienna this time I needed less support, none-the-less, the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, offers maps of the wine regions and other branded merchandise like bottle bags and postcards, that I offered in the pop-up to give a more professional look and the maps were handy to showcase the specific wineries and where they are located. I would encourage you to partner with your regional or country-specific wine marketing organization for support and materials.
Permits: (Updated 4 July) In Paris, we hosted the pop-up at a venue with an alcohol license to both serve and sell wine, when the operator was with us. In Austria, it was easier for me, since I own a winery, but a license wasn’t required to serve wine at an art exhibition. Obviously, permits and licenses are going to vary greatly by region, so look into this, but the easiest solution is to host your pop-up at a location with a license or hire a licensed caterer and have one of their employees pour the wine. There are also 1 day permits in some US states. Get creative.
Staff: Who is serving the wine is probably the most important tip. In addition to myself, one of the other winemakers poured along with my wife. I armed them both with a cheat sheet about how each wine is produced, which they could explain to the guests. I would say on average, most guests tasted 60-70% of the wines on the menu and stayed for 60-90 minutes and this to me is the biggest success. When compared to the big wine fairs where guests are attempting to taste while being pushed and shoved, at a pop-up you can have a dialogue and make a connection. Finally, whether it was Paris or Vienna, a three-person staff is the minimum to host the pop-up effectively without too much stress, while still keeping the glasses from going empty.
Food: Similar to Paris, we offered free bread and cheese along with tap water. We don’t want anyone to get too tipsy. I also had some spittoons for pouring out or spitting. My budget was 10€ per day for bread and cheese.
So there you have it. Everything to host your own pop-up wine bar. If I missed something or if you have any questions, post them in the chat below and I’ll help as best I can. And if you have additional tips please also share them.
Good luck and Prost!
Brilliant, Chris! Thank you.