3 Wine Tips to Keep Customers Coming Back

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Tell me if you’ve experienced this scenario: You have a table that looks at the wine list and is clearly confused. When you ask them what they want to drink, they look flustered and they order a wine, but it seems their choice is random. When they taste the wine, they really seem to like it. They compliment the wine, say they’re excited to try more on the wine list… and never return. Here are three tips to get those wine-newbie guests to come back again and again.

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Selling Wine Every Day Uncorkd

Start Selling Wine Every Day

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On the surface, selling wine seems easy. Your guests come into your restaurant ready to spend money and have a great night, but somehow, when their server gets to the table, your guests choose not to order wine, opting instead for something flashy, like a cocktail; sturdy, like a beer; or choosing the conservative route and going with a non-alcoholic drink. As a restaurant owner or manager, this situation can get stressful because you didn’t allocate funds to stock a lovely looking wine cellar, you planned on selling every last drop of the wine you ordered. But you can’t do that unless every one of your tables sees wine as a necessary complement to their meal—not as an added expense meant for special occasions. Here’s how to convince your guests that at your restaurant, wine is an everyday thing. Read more

iPad Wine Menus, More Affordable Than You Think

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iPad wine menus are popping up across the country.  But it isn’t only celebrity chefs using the technology.  Although you can find iPad beverage menus at Gordon Ramsay’s or André Rochat’s restaurants, restaurants of all sizes across the country are using electronic wine menus, from independent operators to regional and corporate operators nationwide.

One of the hesitations we usually hear from prospective customers is around cost.  Having all of these iPads must be so expensive.  After all, using paper is cheap, pennies.  Let’s break down the costs a little further… Read more

What Restaurants Can Learn from Olive Garden to Improve Alcoholic Beverage Sales

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The last few days has seen quite a bit of news about Olive Garden and their parent company, Darden.  Starboard Value, a hedge fund that is one of the largest shareholders of the public company, has recently put forward a slate of 12 new board prospects to replace the entire board of Darden.  Now, Starboard has released a 300 slide deck blasting the inefficiencies they see with Olive Garden and other concepts like Longhorn Steakhouse, while outlining turnaround steps they would take to get the brands on the right track.  According to Starboard, Olive Garden is missing out on $56 million in annual earnings by not taking basic steps with their beverage program.

If you are in the hospitality industry, I highly recommend taking a look at Starboard’s analysis and proposal for yourself.  But after spending hours reading through their materials, I’m going to highlight several things called out in the report that all restaurants should be focused on to improve the guest experience and bottom line.  While there are a lot of problems identified and solutions proposed in the report, I’m going to focus on alcoholic beverages based on our experience at Uncorkd and provide information on how to improve your beverage sales. Read more

How to upsell wine in a restaurant with staff incentives

Increase Restaurant Wine Sales through Staff Incentives

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Upselling, cross-selling, and other high-level sales techniques, when balanced on a strong wine knowledge foundation, form the backbone of your restaurant wine sales. This is good news, as it means that the power to increase sales rests only on your willingness to educate your staff. In addition, when you do motivate and educate your wait staff, they are likely to go to great lengths to assure your wine list’s sales success. Uncorkd has published many articles in the past that help you to teach your staff about wine, sake, scotch, beer, absinthe, and other alcohols; today’s post focuses on two strategies—a simple one and a complex one—that you can use to motivate your servers. Read more

Why Wine Tech is so Challenging and How it Can Improve

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There is a large problem with the current state of technology in the wine and beverage industry that hinders innovation across the entire supply chain, from producer to distributor to restaurant/retailer and ultimately the consumer.  It’s the reason why many tech startups in the wine, beer and spirits space have a hard time gaining traction; leaving dozens of web and mobile apps in the graveyard over the past twenty years. Whether technology at the table, such as Uncorkd, or consumer-facing apps, the problems all stem from the same place.  There are huge rewards for the companies that can change the status quo and for those that get on board with the technological advances.

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Using Technology to Improve Wait Staff Training

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Training your wait staff on your beverage menu can be difficult.  With frequent turnover among servers, new wines, beers, spirits and cocktails to learn and so much else to do, we hear frequently that staff training if one of biggest challenges for restaurant owners and managers.  Most of your staff already has smartphones and tablets, or at the very least, access to the internet.  So why not have your servers brush up on their knowledge away from the restaurant using their own devices?

Uncorkd digital menus make it easier to train wait staff on wine and other beverages.  Servers can use their own iPads or borrow them from the restaurant to study up on all your drinks, reading tasting notes, understanding producer information and learning food and wine pairings.    Many of our customers allow staff to take an iPad home for the night to study up on the menu, which can be very helpful when new beverages are added.

Beyond the iPads, Uncorkd provides a web-based version of the menu, complete with pictures and tasting notes.  Staff can access the beverage menu online from their computers or smartphones, to read up on things as well.  With access to the internet everywhere, there’s no excuse for servers to not be up to date on your latest menu changes.

If you’re focused on ensuring your staff is knowledgeable and well-trained, and all successful restaurants are,  then Uncorkd can better educate your staff (and your customers) on your beverage selections.  Cheers!

Three New Restaurants in Milwaukee Switch to Uncorkd iPad Wine Menus

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Three well-known restaurants in Milwaukee have started using Uncorkd digital beverage menus in July.  The restaurants include:

Mason Street Grill (425 E Mason St) inside the Pfister Hotel

Kil@wat (139 E Kilbourn Ave) inside the InterContinental Hotel

Milwaukee ChopHouse (633 N 5th St) inside the Hilton City Center Hotel

All three restaurants feature an extensive wine list currated by Sommeliers and also highlight specialty cocktails, local and craft beer.  If you’re in Milwaukee, be sure to dine at one of these great restaurants to experience the digital menus.

 

increase drink sales with a picture uncorkd

How to Increase Your Drink Sales without Saying a Word

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A lot of my tips revolve around training your servers or bartenders to memorize information and repeat it back when needed, or to ask key questions at opportune moments. Sometimes though, words just get to be too much. Here’s a tip to increase your drink sales without having to say a single word. Read more

law of reciprocity for wine sales

Sell more wine. It’s the law.

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Okay, okay. It’s not illegal to have bad wine sales, it’s just a darn shame. However, today’s post offers a method for using a law of psychology to sell more wine. Get ready to learn all about the Law of Reciprocity.

What’s the Law of Reciprocity?

This psychological law states that when you give people something, or you do a favor for them, they are much, much more likely to return the favor. Apparently, this human behavior is a throwback from our prehistoric days, but it affects us all the time in the modern world. Don’t believe me? Here’s an example of this law, using something you’ve probably experienced recently.

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