Building more than sales: wine tastings foster loyalty and visibility at little cost

Nation's Restaurant News, May 8, 1989 by Mort Hochstein

BUILDING MORE THAN SALES

Many years ago I attended a dinner featuring the wines of Robert Mondavi at the Ocean Club in New York. It was a sold-out event, and Mondavi had the unpleasant problem of spreading his message over two rooms.

Another problem was that everyone was having too good a time. While that might be desirable in most situations, it is not too good when the speaker must project over the tinkle of glasses and the hubbub of happy celebrants.

Everything went fine with the opening statement, but as more wines were served, the guests grew louder and were less attentive to the information Mondavi was trying to impart. After three valiant efforts, he wisely sat down after announcing that he was available at his table for guests who had questions about wine.

A few weeks later I attended a similar function for Deinhard wines at the Sagamore on Lake George in upstate New York. Speaker Brian Moffatt knew how to handle a wine dinner. He mingled with guests at cocktails before dinner, gave an overview before the first course was served, and spoke briefly halfway through the event. Then he did a wrapup at the end, sending everyone home happy.

Wine dinner promotions are becoming increasingly popular in fine restaurants. They present problems of pricing, marketing, staff training, and execution, but they are worth the effort. Successful dinners increase the visibility of a restaurant, enhance its reputation, build new clientele, spark the enthusiasm of staff as well as customers, and can mean business on otherwise dull nights.

Finding a speaker is easy. It's free advertising for wineries, so that, according to Joseph Settineri of Joseph's in Montvale, N.J., "Sometimes we make the request and sometimes a rep will say, for example, that Ed Sbragia, winemaster at Beringer, or Tucker Caitlin, enologist at Sterling, will be in our area at a certain time and would be available to speak before our group."

The wine is usually more important than the speaker, as at Vincent Guerithault on Camelback in Phoenix, Ariz. Guerithault last spring ran a series of six seminars, each focusing on a different type of wine, using guest speakers, some from the industry and some other experts in the field. Guerithault's extraordinary series cost $430 a person, and that included a seventh event, a graduation dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Spago in Los Angeles, airfare included.

Most are sold on a per-event basis, as at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead in Atlanta, which this year featured the wines of Robert Stemmler, William Hill, and Vichon at its Winemakers Dinners. Atlantans paid $100 each plus tips and taxes for the Stemmler event, which featured crayfish soup, red snapper, black truffles, stuffed pheasant, and pear strudel with poppyseed ice cream.

Food and beverage director Jim Beley urges speakers to keep their statements tight. "Each speaker did about 15 minutes up front and then commented briefly as other wines were poured."

On a less exalted level, Joseph Settineri of Joseph's charges from $45 to $65, tips and taxes included, for his popular Wine & Food Experience series. To satisfy his avid following of 250 wine lovers who reserve at the first hint of a wine dinner, Settineri holds back-to-back dinners and finds speakers quite willing to appear on two nights.

Settineri's price is tied to the cost of the wine. A recent evening featuring R.J. Phillips wines was on the low end of the price scale, as opposed to $65 for the rare wines of Bob Long.

"We barely break even on the wines, and we don't make a whole lot on the food," says Settineri, "but it's the residuals that are important. Many of the people in our wine group eat with us at least once a week. They bring friends and our customer base just keeps expanding, people get to know the restaurant and the winemaker, and very often the people in the club form new friendships. It all becomes a big social event."

Guerithault spread the word about his wine seminars with publicity in Phoenix newspapers, promotions in the restaurant, and a mailing list developed through "interest cards" given to patrons at the end of each meal. The cards asked diners for their names and addresses and described events that might interest them -- cooking classes, theme parties, take-out foods, wine tastings. He sent mailers to those who checked off wine education. The seminars ran from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays, normally downtime for the restaurant.

In most states restaurants are bound by law to pay for all wines. In some cases arrangements and tradeoffs can be negotiated, and often winemakers will bring library wines, older vintages that aren't otherwise available.

"If you're just starting, start with a brand name," says Holly Long, co-proprietor with her husband, Bob Long, of the Frenchtown Inn in Frenchtown, N.J. "Don't do a really obscure vineyard. We had Schug in the beginning and didn't do well. We did Kistler, and we were packed, but now that we've got a reputation, we'd fill the house for Schug.

"We started at $45, and that wasn't too good for us, but as we built a reputation, we were able to bring it up to a more realistic level, $59. The dinners bring us people who've never been here before, and it means business in mid-week, when we're not busy. We built our mailing list with fliers we left in local liquor stores and asked our distributors to spread along their routes."