Increase Wine sales with this one simple menu change
If you sell wine in your business, there is a simple way that you can increase wine sales today. I was reminded of this on a recent visit to The Wine Guy Wine Shop in Gahanna, Ohio. The Wine Guy Shop is a retail wine store with a bar and dining facilities.
There’s something special about sitting in the middle of a wine store surrounded by wines from around the world while snacking on tapas and trying a selection of wines.
Many customers are afraid of wines and feel intimidated by the range of wines on a menu, the price variations, the regions and don’t want to look foolish if they make a poor choice.
To overcome this, the Wine Guy Wine Shop has arranged their wine menu into “flights” instead of regions or price ranges. Wine Flights are basically a selection of wines made available to taste. Flights can range in size from 3 to more than 50. In this case, The Wine Guy has arranged their flights into selections of four wines at a time. For a more detailed explanation of wine flights, click here.
For $12.99 to $14.99, you can taste 4 half-glasses of different wines presented in a nice little tray. Considering they sell wines by the glass for around $7.99 each, this is a great way to get customers to taste many different wines without committing too much money to their initial decision.
I would also recommend giving customers a little wine card or notebook to record the wines tasted so that they can remember what they liked on the next visit.
Anything you can do to remove the fear customers have about your products, the easier it will be to get them to part with their hard earned money. Every little helps.
See the picture below of the menu in The Wine Guy Wine Shop:
I'm Barry Chandler and I'm The Bar Blogger. I've been involved in the bar and hospitality industry for 16 years. From Bartender to Bar Manager and from Food & Beverage Controller to Small Business Owner, I have worked with more than 500 bars in the last five years to help them streamline their costs and run a more profitable business and more than 800 bars and clubs use my Management Toolkit which can be accessed at ManageYourBar.com.
I do agree, great up selling idea (result 100% guest satisfactions, value for money).
Also branding and loyal guest .
That is a really good idea, I think that would help the restaurant I work at!
I’m in the process of buying a bar/restaurant that features 65 wines by the glass delivered thru massive cruvinets-the key to the the sucess of this venue is their menu of wine flights.
I’ve researched the various on line customer reviews and customers rave about this menu option.
This can also be adapted to single malts-high end Irish & bourbons
Serve the food on a plate that really keeps food hot: a “heat retentive plate”; people will enjoy the food slowly and order more wine. There is lots of information about “heat retentive plates” on the internet; they stay still hot after 30 minutes
Flights are a great idea and a little note on the wine is helpful. I recommend avoiding note cards unless it is a special tasting event. Guests fell pressured to use them and makes them nervous about the wine experience. Wine should be enjoyable and pleasurable, not work.