Valecroft Cellars for Wrenfield Hotels

$18 here, $22 there

Same guest, same glass, two prices.

What forty hotels pour today

Wrenfield's guests move between your hotels. The wine list doesn't move with them.

$18 and $22

A guest pays $18 for a glass of Sancerre in Charleston. Two hours down the road in Savannah, the same guest pays $22 for a smaller pour of a different Sancerre.

11 and 1,940

Forty hotels buy from eleven distributors and carry 1,940 different wines between them. More than half sell less than a case a month, and every one of them ties up cash on a rack.

31 of 40

Last quarter, 31 hotels ran out of their best-selling glass at least once, most often on a Saturday night. The fix today is a call to a local rep on Monday morning.

One cellar

Valecroft replaces all eleven with one list of 312 wines, three regional cellars and one price in every hotel. The rest of this proposal shows how it works, starting with the list itself.

Pull the bottles. Build the list.

Twenty-four of the 312, on the shelf

Pick a Wrenfield hotel and tap bottles to pull them onto its list. The card checks the mix against what that hotel's guests order. Tap any wine on the card to pour it in all forty hotels.

Charleston listSee the list

The Wrenfield Charleston

Flagship, 280 rooms. Glass and bottle prices, the same in every Wrenfield hotel.

0 of 14wines on the list

$0average glass

This list

Guests order

SparklingWhiteRedRosé, orange, sweet

Pour it in forty hotels

Pour it in any hotel.

Same glass, same price, same pour

Choose a wine, then flip between today and Valecroft. Each tile is one Wrenfield hotel, with its price, its pour and what's on the rack tonight.

The bar under each price is bottles on the rack against two weeks of cover.

Four signatures. Four questions.

Each one answered here, so nobody needs a call

Will this grow wine sales, or just tidy the invoices?

Renata, VP Food and Beverage

It does both, and the sales half is bigger. Guests trade up when there's a glass one step above the one they'd usually order. Today eight of Charleston's eleven glasses sit between $14 and $17, so there's nowhere to step to.

The new list puts a glass at every step from $13 to $26. When Valecroft rebuilt the list for a 22-hotel group last year, wine revenue per occupied room went from $11.40 to $13.90 in twelve months.

The glass ladder at Charleston

Eleven glasses on a $12 to $28 scale

$12$16$20$24$28

Do I still choose the wines?

Theo, Group Head Sommelier

Yes. You own the list and we run the cellar. All 312 wines go through your tasting panel, and nothing is added, dropped or swapped without your name on it.

Each quarter we bring up to thirty candidates for the rotating bins and you choose. If a wine runs short, the hotel pours one of two stand-ins you approved in advance, at the list price.

When a wine runs short

The rule, as it would run in the East cellar

203Sancerre is down to three days of cover after a late producer shipment.

211Grüner Veltliner, approved by Theo in January

207Albariño, approved by Theo in January

The hotel pours one of the two at $18, and the list doesn't change.

4tasting panels a year

30rotating bins each quarter

0swaps you didn't taste

What does $7.2M buy, and what happens if volume drops?

Priya, Chief Financial Officer

It buys every bottle on the list, delivered weekly, at prices fixed for twelve months. Wrenfield spends about $8.06M a year on wine today across eleven distributors. The same pours from Valecroft come to $7.2M.

There's no volume floor. If occupancy falls, your orders fall with it. Reserve wine sits in your cellars on consignment, so you pay for a bottle when it's poured, which takes about $1.3M of stock off your books.

Today against Valecroft

Across all forty hotels, a year

Line	Today	Valecroft
Suppliers	11	1
Wines across the estate	1,940	312
Wine spend a year	$8.06M	$7.2M
Stock on your books	$2.9M	$1.6M
Invoices a month	1,480	40

Will my hotel still feel like mine, and what about Saturday night?

Forty general managers

Every hotel chooses twelve wines from a local shelf of sixty, so Asheville's list still reads like Asheville. The core list is shared because guests expect it to be.

Running out stops being your problem. Each rack reports its count to the cellar, and top-ups arrive within a day, seven days a week. Here's a Saturday at the Nashville bar.

Saturday at The Wrenfield Nashville

Bin 305, Pinot Noir

21:40SaturdayThe last bottle of Bin 305 goes out to table twelve.
21:41SaturdayThe rack drops under two days of cover and the Central cellar sees it.
06:30SundayA case is picked and loaded on the Sunday van.
12:15SundayIt's on the rack before the lunch rush, and nobody made a call.

What the cellar costs, line by line.

One exact number, built from five lines

Every version starts on the same core list. Each line below can come off on its own, and it tells you what changes when it does.

The core list

180 wines in all forty hotels, weekly delivery from three regional cellars, the rack-count app and a quarterly list refresh.

$4,860,000

In every version

How deep the list goes

The reserve adds 72 bottles at the eight flagships. The local shelf adds sixty more, so each hotel picks twelve of its own.

Wines by the glass

Preservation taps, pour measures and stock tracking, priced per wine across all forty hotels.

Staff training

On-site days at every hotel, run by a Valecroft sommelier.

The Wrenfield house wine

A red and a white made for Wrenfield, 2,000 cases a year.

A year

Forty hotels switched by April.

Then three years of the same glass

Hotels switch in three waves so no region changes over on the same weekend. Every hotel sits on a weekly van from one of three regional cellars.

Tasting panelNovember and December 2026

Theo's panel tastes 520 candidates down to 312. Every wine on the list passes through his glass.

Cellars stockedJanuary 2027

Three regional cellars hold eight weeks of every core wine before a single hotel switches.

Wave oneFebruary 2027

The eight flagships switch first, with a Valecroft sommelier on site for the opening weekend.

Wave twoMarch 2027

Sixteen hotels across the East and Central regions.

Wave threeApril 2027

The last sixteen. Old distributor stock is sold through or bought back at cost.

List refreshEvery quarter

Up to thirty rotating bins change, and Theo's panel signs off each one.

Price reviewEach January

Any move is capped at three percent, with the producer price shown behind it.

Three cellars, forty doors.

Each hotel gets the same van on the same day every week, and a top-up within a day when a rack runs low.

West cellar, Sacramento14 hotels, Thursday
Central cellar, Louisville13 hotels, Wednesday
East cellar, Baltimore13 hotels, Tuesday

The terms, in plain words.

Six promises, each one written into the contract

Prices hold for a year

Glass and bottle prices are fixed for twelve months from the first delivery. Each January we can move them by up to three percent, and we show you the producer price behind any change.

You pay for reserve wine when it's poured

Reserve bins sit in your cellars on consignment. We invoice them once a month as they leave the rack, so unopened reserve stock never sits on your balance sheet.

Substitutes are Theo's call

Every wine has two stand-ins approved by your sommelier in advance. We never send a wine he hasn't tasted, and a stand-in always pours at the list price of the wine it replaces.

Broken or corked bottles are on us

Send a photo the week it happens and the bottle is credited on the next invoice. No returns, no forms.

One invoice per hotel a month

Each hotel gets one invoice on the first of the month with thirty days to pay. Group finance gets a single roll-up across all forty.

Leaving is simple

After year one either side can end the agreement with ninety days notice. We buy back unopened stock at what you paid for it.

What we don't know yet.

Four questions we'd rather ask than guess

1
Do the three airport hotels have to buy through their landlords?
Airport leases often name a concession supplier. If yours do, we'd supply 37 hotels and reprice the core line for that count. Nothing else moves.
2
Who signs off each hotel's local picks?
We've assumed Theo signs with the GM's input. If GMs sign alone, we'd add a quarterly review so the local shelves don't drift.
3
Should the house wine carry the Wrenfield name?
We've priced a Wrenfield label. An unnamed house wine costs the same, so the question is whether you want guests asking for it by name.
4
When does your largest distributor contract end?
Wave three is timed for April on the understanding that it ends in March 2027. If it runs longer, wave three moves and the first-year total drops by the months we don't supply.

Pour the first glass in February.

Accept the proposal and we'll book Theo's tasting panel for the week of November 16, at whichever Wrenfield he picks. The first eight hotels switch in February.

Reply with questions