Whining and
Dining ...complaints,
considerations and solutions...
It is
altogether possible that a restaurant dining
experience may be the most common introductory
portal to the pleasures of fine wine. Once one's
preference for wine is established and knowledge
of wine begins to accumulate, however, the bloom
is off the rosé and attempting to enjoy
wine in restaurants can be exasperatingly
thorny.
Wine consumers
regularly complain about wine service in
restaurants, more often than not. They complain
about being gouged by highly inflated prices.
They object to wine lists with limited selection
choices or that have incomplete information, are
poorly organized, use small type, or are
otherwise difficult to read. They complain about
servers without wine knowledge, who can neither
recommend wine nor even answer simple questions
about what brand of Chardonnay is offered
by-the-glass or what wine from the list is
driest. They object to glassware that seems
selected primarily to endure the bull in the
china shop, rather than to enhance the wine.
They complain when reds are served tepid and
whites icy. Do these complaints and objections
have legitimacy? Does anyone listen?
SYMPATHY
FOR THE DEVIL
Owning a restaurant is a high-risk, often
low-margin venture and operating one is a
constantly demanding, intermittently
frantic-paced, and frequently unforgiving
pursuit. Restaurants come and go with regularity
in most cities and resort areas.
Restaurateurs
must carry a substantial inventory of perishable
goods that are highly susceptible to waste and
theft. They spend many hours of preparation and
cleanup for each hour they serve meals. Employee
turnover is among the highest of any
industry.
Diners can be
impatient, rude and demanding and tend to have
short, silent memories when it comes to pleasant
surprises in food and service, but long, loud,
and unforgiving ones when expectations, even
minor ones, are not met.
Weekly
"professional" dining critics may extol virtues
or expose weaknesses in public, in print, and
without warning. Even a favorable review can
turn out badly for the establishment caught off
guard and unprepared for a curious public
response. How often does a newspaper review a
furniture store, a medical office, a
supermarket, or a stock brokerage? Certainly not
weekly.
Customers may
take offense at "rules" such as a minimum charge
per table, gratuities calculated automatically
for large parties, charges to credit cards for
"no show" reservations, or a "plating" charge
for splitting an entrée. These tariffs
are all results of abuses to the
establishment.
On the other
hand, most Restaurateurs love their work. They
are a breed that is part artist, part
businessman and part performer. They often reap
as much satisfaction from the act of creating as
they do from earning profit and praise. The
trick is in managing to produce a blend of all
three.
DRINKING UP
THE PROFITS
The number one consumer complaint about wine in
restaurants is price gouging. This is a problem
that is half perception and half
reality.
Think about
it: whether the marquee says McDonald's or
Maxim's, the beverages they offer have high
markup. Although diners complain about wine
prices, soda pop, coffee, and iced tea are far
more inflated. A McDonald's 24-ounce Coke sells
for US$1.49 -- the entire ingredients, cup, lid,
and straw cost under US25¢ -- that's very
nearly a 600% markup.
Wine consumers
are spoiled by the relatively low markup on
retail wine, such that independent shops
exclusively dealing wine are practically
nonexistent, unable to profit enough to sustain
their owners. A bottle that wholesales for
US$10, for example, might be found selling for
US$14 retail. If that same wine is offered at
US$30 on a winelist, it would probably raise
some hackles. But if that same wine were served
at McDonald's, under their business economics,
it would be US$60!!!
Some
restaurateurs lack a personal appreciation for
wine, take a cynical view of those who do and
have a P.T. Barnum attitude toward quality and
profit. It is easy to spot their symptoms by
their wine lists: domination by only two or
three brands; lack of familiar brand names;
failure to list vintages and appellations;
"house wines" listed only by type with no
mention of producer. Just avoid these
places.
A far more
pervasive problem is that many restaurateurs
fail to comprehend that profits are measured in
dollars, not percentages. Hospitality School
theories of keeping Pouring Costs under 20% are
ancient history and could cause a restaurant to
follow suit. Most restaurateurs don't consider
that high wine prices have contrary effect to
making profit, because high prices retard
sales.
Margin on
steak and potatoes does not equate with margin
on wine. Wine
requires the least preparation of any commodity
of fine dining. There is very little spoilage or
waste, since distributors or producers will
normally take care of replacing off-condition
bottles.
Surveys
strongly suggest that, as a category, wine
drinkers are the most frequent diners and also
the most generous tippers. Logic follows that
the most frequent diners would also be the most
likely group to talk about and recommend dining
establishments.
Instead of
trying to make $100 selling wine to 10% of the
tables, why not make $100 selling wine to 50% of
the tables and get the bonuses of a fashionable
"buzz" and a well-compensated staff? Smart
owners know this and consequently are busy
filling tables and selling wine to a high
percentage of those tables.
WINELIGHT
Besides learning that reasonable profit margins
will lead to strong sales volume, the other area
where restaurants most often need improvement is
staff training. It is very disconcerting and
time-wasting for the server to have to leave the
patrons and find a manager or bartender in order
to answer simple questions about the
selections.
At minimum,
the servers should be familiar with the wines
offered by the glass, the types and brands and
be able to provide a basic description of how
they taste. It also helps a great deal if the
servers enjoy wine themselves; there no
requirement for them to be expert, just
enthusiastic.
A reasonable
frequency for training would be monthly sessions
to sample wines and suggest compatible menu
matches.
THE PERFECT
WINELIST
Much like the food menu, the winelist is a
convenience, a stock catalog so the dinner host
doesn't have to browse the actual inventory in
the pantry or the cellar. Common wine list
problems are listed a few paragraphs back. To be
successful, a wine list has some basic
considerations beside selections and
prices.
An ideal
winelist should be listed in an organized way to
make choosing simple, rather than a research
project. The most sensible is to divide by
color, then style -- light, heavy, off-dry, etc.
-- and, within those categories, in price order.
The type font
should be easy to read and the point size large
enough with regard to the ambient light in the
dining room. This last factor is especially
important to keep in mind since more than half
the population will be older than 45 by
2007.
Jim
LaMar
RELATED
LINKS
Washington Post wine columnist Ben Giliberti
has some additional thoughts in his article
"$15
at Home, $30 Out:
Why?"
Meridian
Vineyards offers a brochure to help boost
women's wine confidence, "7 Things Every Gal
Should Know About Ordering Wine," subtitled
Restaurant
Survival Guide.
Regarding that
occasional awkward situation, Jim Gordon makes
good sense and good suggestions in
How
to...Send a Bottle
Back,
his article on the Wine.com site.
