Wine fair merchandising: should headquarters plan the aisle down to the SKU?

Type: Industry watch  |  Keyword: wine fair merchandising  |  Slug: merchandising-foire-aux-vins

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Wine fair merchandising: a global guide or a SKU-level plan? Local assortments, stock levels, AI and 3D: our ideas for managing the wine aisle store by store.

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Merchandising for the French "Foire aux Vins" wine fairs held by supermarkets is one of the trickiest exercises of the year for category management and merchandising teams. In just a few days, the wine aisle is transformed: the assortment expands, pallets take over the aisles, and endcaps fill up with limited-time cuvées. Then everything has to go back to normal. The same question comes up every season: should stores be guided down to the individual SKU, or should they be given an overall framework and trusted to apply it?

The wine fair: a major event that weighs heavily on the wine aisle

The wine fair is anything but a secondary operation. According to NielsenIQ and Circana data reported by Le JDD, the wine aisle generated nearly one billion euros in revenue in French supermarkets and hypermarkets during the 2024 edition, with 168.5 million bottles sold. At Carrefour, the event accounts for 15 to 18% of annual wine sales.

The season has also grown longer. In 2026, in-store operations ran from late August to mid-October depending on the retailer, as detailed by Supermarché.tv, with online operations sometimes starting before the stores. Retailers are broadening their wine profiles: whites, sparkling wines, organic cuvées, lighter wines and, still at the margins, dealcoholized wines.

Why the wine aisle is so complex to manage

Wine is a category of its own. Whereas a grocery aisle is managed with stable national SKUs, the wine aisle combines appellations, vintages, formats, price ranges and regional preferences. The wine fair pushes this complexity to the max.

A limited-time, broad and partly local offer

During the fair, some SKUs are only available for that period. On top of that come regional wines, in high demand in some areas and almost absent elsewhere. The same national catalog therefore translates into very different aisles from one store to the next. Le JDD reports, for example, that around 90% of E.Leclerc stores are taking part in the 2026 edition: even within a single retailer, participation and assortment are not uniform.

Stock levels that dictate shelf placement

Quantities are often limited, especially for the most anticipated cuvées. A SKU that sells out on the first weekend leaves a gap on the shelf that needs to be filled quickly. Shelf placement therefore evolves day by day, based on the stock actually available, not just on the plan drawn up at the outset. The aisle doesn't behave like a fixed planogram, but like a setup that needs constant readjustment.

Global shelf placement guide or SKU-level plan: which to choose?

Going down to the SKU level seems reassuring, but an overly detailed plan quickly becomes obsolete in the face of out-of-stocks and local specifics. Conversely, a guide that is too vague leaves each store to reinvent the aisle, with major gaps in readability and performance. The right answer often lies somewhere in between.

What headquarters should define

• Aisle structure: classification logic (by region, color, price or occasion), hot zones, placement of pallets and endcaps.
• Promotion rules: placement of flagship cuvées, signage, POS materials and price cues.
• Replacement rules: what to do when a SKU sells out, what to replace it with, and how to avoid gaps on the shelf.

What is best left in the store's hands

• The local assortment: the department manager knows their customers, their regional wines and their best-sellers.
• Adjustments as stock evolves: reallocating freed-up space, doubling down on what sells well.
• Advice: in many stores, wine expertise lies on the shop floor, closest to the customers.

In other words, headquarters sets the framework and the rules of the game, and the store adapts. But that framework still has to be understood and applied the same way everywhere.

Alcohol-free wines: integrating a new category into the aisle

How do you bring an emerging category into an already crowded aisle? Alcohol-free wines are the perfect example. According to the 2025 No/Low Barometer by the agency Backline, reported by Le Monde de l'épicerie fine, 49% of French people consume no/low beverages, compared with 39% in 2024. Yet the same study shows that dealcoholized wines are consumed by only 12% of French people, down 3 points year over year. The demand exists, but it remains fragile and uneven from one store to another.

Where should alcohol-free wines go?

Several options coexist:

• In the wine aisle: customers can easily compare them with the wines they already know.
• In a dedicated alcohol-free section: the offer reaches customers who don't visit the wine aisle.
• In a dual placement during a key event: an endcap lets you test demand without disrupting the permanent aisle.

Making room for a category without penalizing the others

Adding a category means taking space away from somewhere else. Before rolling out, several questions arise: how much space to allocate at the start, what signage will help customers understand the offer, which SKUs to delist to make room, and which KPIs to track in order to adjust? 3D simulation lets you compare these scenarios before implementation, and our virtual shopper studies, conducted with partner research institutes, measure how customers spot and perceive the new offer, with results in 7 days.

Can AI recommend a shelf placement for each store?

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Across the market, several uses of AI in merchandising are emerging, and the wine aisle is a natural field of application.

• Forecasting demand by store: combining sales history from previous fairs, customer profiles and store size to estimate volumes by wine profile.
• Recommending a local adaptation: starting from a national guide, proposing a version tailored to each store or cluster.
• Readjusting during the event: suggesting replacements when a SKU sells out, taking available stock into account.

We covered these uses in detail in our article on generative AI applied to planograms.

A few caveats are in order, however. A recommendation is only as good as the data behind it: poorly reported store inventory, badly coded local SKUs or incomplete sales history quickly skew the result. AI doesn't taste wine and doesn't know the customers the way the department manager does. It suggests; the team decides. And before rolling out a recommendation across hundreds of stores, it's better to see it first.

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Wine fair merchandising: 3D to validate before implementing

This is where 3D simulation really comes into its own. With Retail VR, you design the wine fair aisle in 3D, including pallets, endcaps and POS materials, and check its readability before setting it up. You can compare several scenarios without touching the real aisle: classification by region or by price, placement of flagship cuvées, adaptation for a small store format.

Once the fair is over, updating the assortment remains simple: you import the new assortment from your product catalog or an Excel file, and the platform identifies which products to remove, add or keep. The return to the permanent aisle can therefore also be prepared in advance.

Finally, 3D makes it easier to align headquarters and stores. A visual guide is easier to understand and apply than a flat plan, and it gives each store a clear basis for its local adaptations. This was, for example, the micro-merchandising challenge for which Botanic relied on immersive 3D to harmonize its store layouts.

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Conclusion

Wine fair merchandising comes down neither to a national plan applied to the letter nor to total freedom left to the stores. It requires a clear framework, replacement rules planned ahead of time and real room for local expertise. AI opens up interesting possibilities for adapting this framework store by store, provided you stay in control of decisions and test its recommendations before rolling them out. Already preparing your next wine fair, whether in the fall or spring? Let's talk about how to simulate your shelf layouts in 3D.

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