The Ways to Win Over Millennial Drinkers and Diners

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Millennials have been increasingly under the microscope. Marketers from every industry want to know how to appeal to this increasingly influential and baffling demographic of people born between roughly 1982 and 2002. These young people represent more than 80 million people (larger than a quarter of the U.S. population); the largest generation in the entire world. They’re also the first generation (ever!) to spend more money dining out than on groceries. Each year brings even more of these customers to your tap or table. Here is how to lure them in and keep their interest. Read more

3 Essential Features of a Great Restaurant Beer Program

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Restaurants need to have a great beer list. With so many high-quality beers available on the market it’s easy for restaurants to put together a top notch beer program that can meet the tastes of all beer drinkers. There’s more reason than just taste preference to stock craft beers. Working with local brewers is a great way to support small businesses in your own community, and when your guests have a connection to your beer list, they will order will likely order those beers. Here are some great tips for putting together an innovative yet approachable beer program. Read more

Spring Wine Guide: Selecting the Most Refreshing Styles this Spring

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Spring is a transitional season for wines just as much as it is for those of us living somewhere with four distinct seasons. Implementing a seasonal rotating wine menu is a great way to keep customers engaged. Just like choosing the proper jacket when the weather can fluctuate 20 degrees in a few hours… selecting the right spring wine is about weight – not color. Implementing a seasonally rotating wine menu is a great way to keep customers excited. Uncorkd offers just the solution.   Read more

5 Smart Ways to Freshen Up a Stale Wine List

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Trying to keeping pace with the wine market can make you dizzy. Parsing between trends and fads, personal taste and market preference; it’s enough to make you pour a glass for yourself. For many customers, wine can be intimidating and confusing, but it’s also ever-present and familiar. Modernizing a wine program can be just as confusing but necessary. As a restaurant operator, you have to step outside your comfort zone and update your wine program to make sure your menus excite and appeal to your guests.

But where to start when you’re updating your wine list? Well, we’ll help you out.

These 5 areas of your wine program and operations are prime places to make changes. These changes are simple to implement, and they will do wonders to modernize your program. Read more

Where to Drink and Dine in Chicago During the NRA Show

5 Simple Steps to Modernize Your Bar Program

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There has been a revolution in the past decade. Diners and drinkers are now more in control of what they consume than twenty years ago. Whichever the buzzword may be – gluten-free diet, craft drinker, scratch cooking – the culture has collectively raised its expectations on what it wants from bars and restaurants. In 2016, there is no reason your bar should feel dated. There are few practical tweaks to your beverage program that will make it fresh and vibrant again. No, you don’t have to call your bartenders mixologists. Honestly, you shouldn’t. And you don’t have to reinvent the martini. You just need to take a few simple steps that show commitment to a good program.  Read more

Cocktail Trends 2017

10+ Simple, Classic Cocktail Recipes Your Bar Needs to Know

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Cocktails are back. Whether shaken or stirred, nothing is more hip than ordering a classic cocktail. A good bar becomes great when your staff can nail drinks that many bartenders have never heard of. The drinks I will go over are straightforward, simple cocktails. They don’t take much preparation. They don’t require a shopping cart’s worth of ingredients. They do require proper execution, but avoid advanced technique that makes them inefficient. There is no fluff with these cocktails; just simple drinks made well. They will surprise and delight your guests.

Classic cocktails can revolutionize your bar by creating a cocktail program that is exciting and easy to execute.

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Uncorkd Restaurant Management Resources

How to Succeed: Getting Return on Your Restaurant Tech

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It’s important to take the right steps when integrating new solutions to restaurant problems. As tech services for the restaurant industry continue to expand,  you should know what it takes to see successful return on your new service investment. Restaurateurs and managers know that on-boarding new technology creates a learning curve for staff. For some, this may seem overwhelming. Others understand that investing in better ways to do business will lead to big returns in the future. Read more

Don’t Lose Your Sparkle: Tips for Selling Sparkling Wine By-the Glass

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As wine drinkers become more likely to order wine by-the-glass with dinner than purchase a bottle, it’s important for restaurants to offer a stellar selection of glass pour options. One category of wine that poses problems for by-the-glass consumption is sparkling wine. This is a shame, because sparkling wine is a growing option for wine drinkers, with growth of 4% in the U.S. and U.K. in 2014. With this demand in mind, it makes sense for restaurant operators to add a sparkling wine to their glass list. But what makes bubbly so attractive is, well, the bubbles. So how should you store an bottle of sparkling wine once it’s been opened? You can’t lose that sparkle and still serve it to guests, so here are some tips on storing and serving sparkling wine by-the-glass. Read more

Uncorkd Why Managers Quit

How to Increase Restaurant Sales and Cut Losses in 2016

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With our new year just a few days away, it’s time you start thinking about how to improve your restaurant in 2016. For savvy restaurant operators, this starts with taking a fine tooth comb to your 2015 financial reports. As a business resolution, this is the equivalent of cursing that last piece of honey baked ham you ate before stepping on the scale, noting the pounds, and then analyzing your eating habits to identify the junk and grease you need to cut from your diet. Instead of the resolution to loose weight, a restaurant’s resolution should be to increase profits. Like any New Year’s resolution, this means you eliminate bad habits, accentuate good ones, and add a few productive bits to your routine. There are now a host of new restaurant technologies available to help you do all that. Read more

Uncorkd digital beverage menus

New Study Shows Why Wine Tasting Notes Are Important

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The Drinks Business recently detailed a study commissioned by wine subscription service taste4. The study sought out the top 10 wine terms that consumers are most confused and put-off by. The 2,000 consumers surveyed gave insight into the way many wine drinkers approach buying a bottle. While some of the terms on the list may be surprising, like “tart,” “legs,” or, “nose”, the take-away message of the survey is something very familiar to us at Uncorkd.

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