You have two basic choices for off-site wine storage: self-service locker facilities or full service wine storage. The vast majority of wine storage providers in the U.S. are self-service, mainly because they’re easier to operate since you’re doing virtually all of the work. Full service wine storage providers exist in markets like New York and San Francisco but serve geographically dispersed customers since there’s no need to ever visit the facility.
Self-service facilities are basically specialized real estate plays as the customer is renting “space.” The pricing methodology is usually expressed as a monthly rate for a locker of a given case capacity. For example, $40 per month for a 40-case locker. Mentally, you quickly calculate $1.00/case per month and it’s this $1.00/case that you remember. However, often your particular 40 cases won’t fit. Maybe you can only fit 32 because you have a mixed group of cases of different sizes (like most of us) and the “estimate” was based on a standard size (usually the smallest). This means your $1.00/case is now $1.25/case ($40/32).
What about the effective cost per case before your locker reaches its capacity. For example, even if you start with 15 cases, you are still paying $40 a month! This equates to $2.67/case per month ($40/15). You get the point.
The alternative is to use full-service storage which is almost always charged for by the case, whether you have 1, 15, 40, or 500. In short, you only pay for what you use.
Applying the above thinking is fundamental to making an educated comparison between using self-service or full-service wine storage as it normalizes the differences in pricing models. You can then decide which option appeals to you and what the real additional cost of the full service approach (if any) might be.
Note: Vinfolio offers full service wine storage. Click here to learn more.
(You may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)