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.

Let me explain. Presentation of wine is a key element in selling. By presenting wine itself as a featured “event” of the restaurant, wine sales should increase. Just how do you do that effectively? Let’s look at a few components of Presentation.

In many restaurants wine sales, if offered, are almost an afterthought. You spent a lot of money to get the guest in your establishment to dine and oh by the way we have these wines they can drink It would be hard to get any customer excited about your program if the restaurant is not. So, the first thing we need to do is establish an effective wine program.

1) Develop a Wine List- Take some time and analyze your restaurant and see exactly how wine “fits” into your overall package. A good place to start is the menu. By recognizing what type of menu you work with you can see what types of wines will enhance your menu and compliment your restaurant. I have stated before it would be unwise to create an elaborate wine list for a burger and wing joint.

2) Staff Training- A key element in producing an effective program has to include your sales staff. They are your “optimizers” so make sure they know what they are selling. I know you understand this part because you are reading this on a wine service training site. Bravo!

3) Wine Events- Create a rotation of great wine events that are marketed directly to your guests. Maybe it is a wine tasting, or a wine education class. Maybe it is a Wine dinner with a winemaker or just a featured wine flight of the week. Which ever events you decide on, space them out to maintain a level of interest and continue to market them with cards, word of mouth, newsletters, memberships ect.

4) Create Excitement- Your staff can create all the excitement you need simply by talking about them with every guest. Bartenders, hostesses and floor managers can aid in this the same way. Make them a big deal and your guest will too!

5) Consider your profitability- Using creative purchasing practices and a bit of market study, you can incorporate the use of higher profit wines as your features. As you develop your features consider how you will market the features to your guests. Will it be table tents, menu clips, menu placement? Framing those wines that bring a better margin and effectively highlighting them will add to the bottom line

6) Keep the Momentum going- by continuing the program for the long haul, you have in effect created interest and destination. If your guests recognize you as a place to wine and dine you have become a destination. Ask regular customers for referrals, people they know who might have an interest in wine. Now go court them and keep the ball rolling!

Using these tips should help you get started on the right track for establishing wine features. The key is to use your intuitive skills and create opportunity. A great golfer has the skills to win, but needs the opportunity to shine! Create your opportunities for greater segment sales growth!

I am sometimes amazed when I frequent restaurants to see just how theatrical the service can be. There is a very popular restaurant in Tampa that gives the guests a tour of the kitchen, the wine cellar and the dessert room, prior to seating the guests. I love this idea and it works for this restaurant. They have an interesting floor plan and layout so it works.

The same may not work for you however. But one thing you can take from that example is that you don’t have to do things the same way everyone else does it. Take your wine service for example. How do you service your wines? What makes the way you do it the way you do? What can you do different?

Is there a right way and a wrong way? Certainly. But why not make service a bit more memorable, more theatrical. Find a unique way to bring the wine to the table, open the wine, serve the wine, dispose of the bottle, whatever. The point is to make it part of your sales approach and make it memorable.

Customers will appreciate the extra attention and it will add a bit of excitement to the dining room too! Can you go over the top? Sure you can, so try out a few different things. Have some fun with it. Get the staff involved and see what they can come up with.

Look, this may not be for you. Maybe you don’t feel you need to do anything like this. But the fact is you can always bring a little theater to your service, somewhere. What you are trying to do is stimulate sales, make a rather stuffy portion of service a bit more exciting.

Use your imagination and maybe, just maybe you’ll come up with a semi-signature portion of service.

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!

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.