Profit from Wine
Mutual benefits: boost profit and sales through wine service, while enhancing the customers’ experience.
Food is perishable, wine is profitable.
For time-pressed readers, that is the core message of my first drinks article in a new series for The Hotel & Restaurant Times magazine. This simple fact highlights the very profitable part wine contributes to a restaurant’s sustainability and growth. A Server in the restaurant equipped with wine knowledge has the confidence to engage more fully with the customer and offer advice and suggestions. Wine knowledgeable Servers pay exceptional dividends in developing customer loyalty. Earning the customer’s trust by giving helpful and informed suggestions, the Server has more opportunities to up-sell and enrich the diner’s experience.
It is a given that profitability can be driven and delivered by service excellence. Traditionally, the focus has been on food service and daily briefings by the Chef on how dishes have been prepared. Understandably, because of the very perishable nature of food and to avoid costly waste, some dishes are given more promotion by the Server when taking diners’ orders.
However, wine, despite its long shelf-life and high profit margins, has not always enjoyed the same attention. Wine may be regarded as an optional and generic extra instead of an integral part of the meal with many alternative choices adding to the diners’ overall experience and enjoyment.
My up-bringing in a family pub in Mayo sparked my interest in beers, ciders, spirits and wines. Wine especially fascinated me because unlike the other beverages, wine is a living drink and evolves in the bottle, continuously changing and maturing over time.
However, it was a Sommelier in a Dublin restaurant in the late eighties who helped turn my interest into a decision to study drinks over the following years and I graduated with my WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wine & Spirit in 1994. That commenced nearly three decades of tutoring wine courses, writing for magazines and newspapers and judging at overseas wine competitions. My eternal gratitude to the Sommelier at the much-missed Dobbin’s restaurant, Niall Dooley whose knowledge and enthusiasm opened my eyes to the endless choices of wine when my wife and I celebrated a wedding anniversary dinner over thirty years ago.
A Sever lacking wine knowledge and therefore confidence with wine service at the table, may be tempted to fill each glass almost to the brim to avoid returning to the table in case asked any questions about the wine.
Read the full article below:
Read the full November / December 2022 Magazine Publication.
