Everyone is going to order food at your restaurant. The question is - how many are going to order wine and will it be a glass or a bottle? Smart restaurateurs know what wine sales mean to their bottom line and smart servers know what wine orders mean to their tips.

Whether you have 50, 150 or 500 labels the Restaurant Wine List Challenge is the same. You have a mix of clientele. How do you create a wine experience that maximizes wine sales across a spectrum of different guests with different levels of interest and knowledge?

The Knowledgeable, Frequent But Casual, Aspiring Beginner and BTG For Sure 

Some know wine well - let’s refer to them as The Knowledgeable. They may be familiar with your wine list and certainly know about the restaurant awards you’ve won with your wine program. They may be looking for values, certain vintages, specific producers, special wines for special occasions or wines that will pair with their food. They may not be wine connoisseurs but they know fine dining, fine wine, wine regions, and might want to find a dessert wine. And lastly, The Knowledgeable may or not be inclined to engage with a sommelier, which may just come down to their company or mood. 

Some are frequent wine drinkers but are much more casual about the whole thing. The Frequent But Casual are likely to stay in their comfort zone and fall back on the wine brands, and the grape variety they know. The dining experience and food menu are likely their top of mind interests. But they surely would appreciate a new wine discovery from time to time and be quick to tell their friends about it. They likely have opinions about chardonnay versus sauvignon blanc. Will they order just a glass or will their table with friends order glasses and bottles?

Some you might call Aspiring Beginners. They may be willing to explore but at the same time wary of taking a chance. Natural and authentic intrigue them and they mabe inclined to hang out at wine bars occasionally. They may be willing to spend more $$ than their lack of wine knowledge may indicate. To that end, whether it's a school night or special occasion matters when it comes to the right wine. Decision making may be the biggest challenge for the Aspiring Beginner. Wine competes with cocktails and the wine menu with its traditional wine listings can be comparatively boring. The ABs have an interest in tasting notes but not wine trade talk. 

Some are even more basic - they’re inclined to have a glass of white or rose and that will do it. BTG For Sure. It’s going to be a red wine or a white wine. Simple wine lists are more their style. A bracketing strategy to the BTGs versus just an ascending price approach could get the BTG For Sure to a higher price point where your profit margins are higher. 

The service, the type of engagement and the information each of these customers are hoping for are all different.

Maximizing Wine Incidence and Wine Revenue 

So how does the restaurateur address the Restaurant Wine List Challenge in a way that maximizes wine incidence and wine revenue? What are the levers you have at your disposal as a restaurant operator? 

You have basically two levers:

1) Your staff and their ability to provide wine service.

2) Your wine list - its presentation and selection.

Your staff and wine service.

Given staff training challenges, plus the expense and competing demands associated with operating your front of house, how much time and bandwidth is available to try and maximize wine incidence at every table. Is it essentially a triage situation where the most interested get the most attention?

Nothing wrong with that as they are most likely to spend. But it's still triage and as a percentage of your guests how much do they represent? How much money are you leaving on the table because your staff doesn't have the time and/or they don’t have the capabilities to be a wine guide and maximize wine incidence across those who are quite willing - but just need to be led to water - wine?

Your wine list.

Think about the food restaurants serve these days: the quality of the ingredients, the capabilities of the chefs and kitchen staff. The level of culinary quality has advanced over the past several decades in a spectacular fashion. Has the wine list?

It needs to all come together - right? Imagine your entire staff is wine motivated, interested personally in wine, confident and capable of having a conversation about wine with each of your guests no matter where they fall on the spectrum of interest and knowledge. Imagine you have a wine list that similarly engages The Knowledgeable, Frequent but Casual, The Aspiring and BTG for Sure.

What is the possible for restaurants in 2024 and beyond? It is possible to give your staff a fun and easy way to be:

1) Interested in wine, knowledgeable about your wine list, confident and capable of engaging with your guests.

2) A wine list experience that serves and engages your range of potential wine customers.

For your staff

Imagine an interactive, fun app easily accessible 24/7 on your staff’s own smartphones or tablets you make available for them or both. This is an app that gets your staff excited about wine through an understanding of their own preferences all in the context of your wine selection. The app trains your staff to think like a Somm and informs them with a Somm’s knowledge of your wine list. Now they are confident, motivated and interested to engage with customers at all levels of wine interest and knowledge. From there the app keeps them constantly engaged, with alerts, wine menu updates, features, promotions, food and wine pairings and more.

For your customers and guests

Your first consideration might be - how do you want to project and present your brand, your concept, your vibe through your wine selection, service and presentation. If it's going to be digital in nature it can’t be a one size fits all; it needs to be highly adaptable to everything about your ambiance, colors, fonts, styles, and design.

With 2020’s technology compared with just ten years ago there are a variety of digital approaches for restaurants to consider and choose from, as well as a range of features that can be easily configured on/off with the press of a button, all of which need to be the right fit for your venue.

Perhaps an eReader Paperwhite with the exact look of your current wine list plus interactivity is the right fit for you. The eReader could be configured with a hyperlinked table of contents, pop up tasting notes, search and bookmarking. Or maybe you’d like to make more of a statement with a Tablet/iPad that projects your brand’s colors, and images and is easily configured to provide additional informational content about your wines, food and more.

Whatever look and feel you choose, most importantly, it must be an experience that is fast and easy for the entirety of your clientele.

The Knowledgeable may know what they want - an Oregon Pinot Noir - no more than two taps gets them right there. Another Knowledgeable at the table says we need a lighter bodied white- a Sancerre. Ok, bookmark the Pinot and with two taps there is a filter showing available Sancerres. The Knowledgeable know their way around a wine list. They may be specifically interested in half bottles and want an easy why to find them - like in a simple table of contents. They don’t want sliding carousels with pretty pictures and lots of detail. They already know that stuff. 

A Frequent But Casual at another table wants to see Caymus Cabs - all they need to do is enter Cay in the search bar and the selection of Caymus Cabernet Sauvignons appears. They want a Caymus Cab but aren’t sure which one and don’t know their vintages and you have several. They are happy to take some time to look at the critic review, e.g. Wine Spectator, and different tasting notes. Their Significant Other recalls a Rombauer Chard on the list. They bookmark the Caymus, enter Rom in the search bar, are ok with the price and they are ready to order and talk about other things than wine.

The Aspiring Beginner- a couple - have a special occasion. They use the price filter to identify white wines priced between $100 and $150. They hand the tablet to their server with the filtered wines in their price range and ask for advice. Their server asks what food they are thinking of ordering and based on their response their server (who has used the food and wine pairing education and information on their smartphone) shows the couple a wine in their price range which pairs well with their food. But not only that, the server taps on the wine details page where the couple sees the food pairing recommendations. The server's suggestion is accepted and the order placed. The couple is inquisitive and keeps the tablet to read and learn more about the wine. The couple have discovered a new wine. The server’s recommendation is successful and a memorable experience is made.

It's Thursday and you want to update your BTG selection for The BTG For Sure.

You have specific wines you want to sell and you have a specific bracketing strategy you want to implement right now. You use the portal that comes with your digital wine list to place your wines in the exact order you want. Your BTG strategy with your Thursday evening BTG For Sure customers is a huge success. You use your portal to update your BTG list for Friday night.

A last word on staff, servers, customers and technology.

“Let me check if we still have that wine in stock.” “I’m sorry we sold the last bottle of that wine.” “Never mind, by the time we find another wine our food will be cold.” This is 100% avoidable in the 2020’s. With the current capabilities of restaurant technology, POSs, Inventory and APIs a wine menu can always be up to date with your available stock of wine and other beverages. Not only that, the days of your staff having to enter and maintain wine data in multiple systems, e.g. POS, inventory and menu management, can come to an end.