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Wine Displays In Your Restaurant Will Increase Wine Sales
March 5, 2010
Walk in the front door of a restaurant and you usually get an immediate impression of the place. It could be the smell of fresh baked bread, roasted garlic or big pastry displays. It could be a smiling owner or the sound of the piano bar.What about a wine display?
Placing beautiful displays of wine and wine peripherals in different areas of the restaurant will help get customers thinking about wine even before you have seated them.
Many high end restaurants have placed wine rooms and racks in plain view of diners, giving them a direct view of the breadth of wines offered. For those restaurateurs on a tighter budget, just a table display could be effective. Empty bottles, glasses, corks, decanters, screws, are all tools that can be used to create a display.
Place the displays in view of customers, but not in high traffic or service areas. Keep the displays current, clean and bright. Take the opportunity to place your featured wines in the display. You can use bottles of interest, wine magazine covers or old wine manufacturing equipment as a focal point.
Place fliers or cards announcing wine dinners or features on or near the displays. Have the hostess travel by the displays so guest can see them. Use the displays as a compliment to all your internal marketing efforts.
If you are not inclined to being artistic, have a contest with your staff and see who can show their creative talents of display art for a small prize. Hey, why not?
Build a wine display and watch your wine sales increase!
Originally posted 2009-03-11 10:46:18. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Jump Start Wine Training with Staff Incentives
March 5, 2010
Grow Your Wine Sales Training Initiative for 2009
Over the next weeks, I would like to motivate you and give key steps to jump starting the Grow Your Wine Sales training initiative for 2009. Let’s start with the staff……..
Most servers come in to work and go about their side work and get ready for the shift. Little excitement, not much in the way of moral boasting! My staffs would get to work early, and make their way straight to the board- The Tracking Board.
The Wine Tracking Board was a graph that tracked the performance level of each staff member on any particular promotion or incentive we were currently running. Wine Incentives are a great way to increase sales in a low performing category or to boast employee moral.
Tracking throughout the period kept staffs interested and motivated. It may be a okay to pair up staff in a team building promotion, include cooks, bussers, host staff and even the dish room!
It is key that the tracking be fair and current. Nothing will kill a promotion like the same people always winning or tracking be late in posting. Make sales numbers post by shift average or check average. That way it is fair for the part timers also!
Most of all, have fun with it and make the goals obtainable. If no one can get there what have you accomplished!
Getting your staffs excited and looking forward to coming to work can be easy with a little planning and execution of well designed wine promotions or incentives.
Originally posted 2009-01-08 19:25:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Wine…..Tools of the Trade
February 26, 2010
When a baseball player goes up to bat it seems to me it would be very important to have the proper tools with him for him to be successful. Of course he needs a bat, a helmet and maybe some batting gloves. Short of having these things it could be a very miserable at-bat.
The same principals apply to just about every job in life. It is no different for a server selling wine. If he/she takes the order for a bottle of wine but does not have the proper tools to serve it, then it goes without saying it will be a very miserable sale.
Let’s review some of the tools that a server would need to serve wine properly. It may seem a little obvious but I can’t tell you how many times I have seen servers scramble around looking for these items when they get an wine order.
1) A corkscrew- Yes, believe it or not a server needs to keep a wine screw with them at all times. There are many different corkscrews and styles of openers to choose from. I like a cork screw that has at least 5 “turns” on the screw and is at least 1 ½ inches long, tip to end. This is especially important to have if you are opening quality wines with age or with Italian and some South African wines. These wines tend to have longer corks then their counterparts and a longer screw helps release the cork with the proper leverage.
Learning to use a corkscrew is fairly easy but again it can be used poorly and destroying the cork on a nice bottle is both embarrassing and time consuming. Let new servers train by opening a few by-the-glass wines for the bartenders. With a little practice they will be opening wines like a pro in a short amount of time.
2)Wine Chillers and stands (if possible) – Most white wines benefit from staying chilled. Supplying your staff with a proper chiller is the restaurants responsibility. Ensure the chillers are cold, clean and rust free (if metal) and also in good repair. A matching stand may also be necessary.
It is also important to have enough wine chillers. Although you can never predict how many wines you will sell each night that need chillers, it is always a good idea to keep enough of them on hand for those special nights.
3)Wine Cloth- I believe it is a good idea to keep a wine cloth handy to help in the event of dirty corks, dripping or god forbid, spillage.
4) Wine Inventory- Some bottles which may be running low in inventory need to be communicated to the wait staff. With this information it will help eliminate embarrassing shortages for large parties or multiple wine bottle purchases.
5) Other items may include vintage charts, tasting notes, Food/Wine paring notes, decanters, candles, wine filters and piece of string. (This last one is for those who may have “pushed” a cork and need to remove it from the bottle, with practice fairly easily.) These all depend on the level of service for each restaurant.
Keeping your staff equipped and trained will help your restaurant develop the confidence need to help sell wine and assist in development of a strong wine service reputation.
Originally posted 2009-02-12 12:35:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Your Customers need Wine Training Too….
February 19, 2010
Wine Tasting and Wine Training for Your Customers.
That’s right! Train your customers and let them try it too. I believe that nothing can bring out the passion of what you are trying to do better than by example.
Your regular customer base believes in you and your restaurant. They have taken a little piece of ownership in your establishment and look for reason to come back again and again. Well why not give them a reason that can benefit them even beyond the scope of dining. Try starting a wine class for your regular customer base, (of course it’s open to all) and give them the opportunity to learn hands-on.
With a little planning and an easy to follow curriculum, you can put together a great series of classes your customers can get excited about. Here is what you need:
1) Wine Class Schedule- Make up the class schedule using regular intervals such as bi-weekly or monthly, but always start at the same time. It’s easier for your “students” to schedule you this way
2) Wine Curriculum- Develop a series that explores fundamentals, winemaking, regional influence and production. Make it fun!
3) Wine Tasting- Plan to incorporate wines you have available on your list, both for inventory challenges and future sales ability. Invite students to share their stories about a specific wine or trip to wine country. But remember, it is just a tasting. Teach people to respect wine as well.
4)Wine Guides for each class- Write out a syllabus of the class complete with an area for tasting notes. This gives your students material to review and keeps them interacting. You need to stress how important discovery is in wine drinking and that this class is really just an exercise in discovery.
5) In house Wine Marketing Plan.- Don’t just rely on flyers to spread the word. Get your staff excited about the classes. Keep them up to date on the curriculum, where the class is at, and what the weeks feature wines were. Check presenters and cards are a good way to keep the guests interested. It should be posted on your monthly mailers and email blasts. Starting a wine club?………
Anyway you do it, an educated wine customer will increase wine sales. Making your guest feel welcomed and part of the family builds loyalty and keeps your name on their minds, not your competitions.
Originally posted 2009-01-20 12:37:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Regional Influences of Wines
December 11, 2009
During your stages of wine program development it is go to go back and revisit wines that maybe you had overlooked or forgotten about. The easiest way to do this is of course refer to your tasting notes. But maybe a more enjoyable way is to look at your wines by region.
Let me explain. If your wine list is a weighted list, meaning you heavy into say French wines, or Italian, start to revisit wines from different production regions. This way is not only educational but user friendly. It will certainly assist is remembering a specific wine or area which you liked but may have overlooked. It could also be an eye-opening exercise into new regions or micro climates within that region.
A smart operator then takes the information and creates an event from it. It could be a complex as a wine dinner, it may be just a micro climate flight of wines. Anyway you do it, it will add interest to your restaurant and give your customers a reason to think about you. Get the staff involved, training and teaching along the way. Explain the subtle differences that climate change or terrior can impart on grapes and the final product, wine.
Most countries have specific regions, pieces of a bigger puzzle, that produce wines. Get to know them and enjoy their unique history, culture and foods. Which reminds me, get the chef involved again! The will certainly love the opportunity to create something different.
Enjoy!
