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Home > Blogs > Uncorked > Archives > 2006 > December > 18 > Entry
Restaurants want to sell you more wine — and they’re learning how
Research conducted through Cornell University and the University of Houston has come up with some strategies for restaurants to sell more wine. See if you agree. A summary of the research can be found at this Wines & Vines piece. And there’s also this news release from Cornell. The full report is available for download from Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research; free registration is required.
Here are the highlights, courtesy of Wines & Vines:
1. More recommendations equal more wine sales. Promoting five wines increased sales of the promoted wines by 39%, without “cannibalizing” other wine sales.
Suggested wine and food pairings are effective, but only in small doses. More than three wine recommendations “and people give up,” according to study co-author Collin Payne, Ph.D., a research psychologist at Cornell.
Tasting portions sell: Two-ounce tasting portions increased sales by 18-47%.
Promotions can cannibalize: Between 69-87% in sales of promoted wines came from other wines that patrons would have ordered anyway. The authors recommend promoting higher-margin wines, mid-priced or above, and avoiding margin-cutting price promotions.
Hmmm. “promote higher-margin wines.” Does that mean what I think it means?
What do YOU think of the recommendations?
As an aside, one of the study’s authors is Glenn Cordua, founder and director of the Wine and Spirits Institute at the University of Houston, who also happens to be one of the chief organizers of the wine competition for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, for which I served as a judge last month. I spent some time talking with Cordua, who has founded and operated several restaurants. The guy knows the business (and his wines too).
Thanks to WineBusiness.com for tipping me off to this story.
And as always, thanks for reading — and cheers!
Mark Fisher
Comments
By Erwin Dink
December 19, 2006 10:18 AM | Link to this
Reasonable prices (rarely happens and no amount of wine-ing by us seems to have an effect); Reasonable corkage fees; free 1 oz. tastings of any wine that is sold by the glass (it would be reasonable to limit how how many tastes one party could ask for). Simple, no?By Erin
December 19, 2006 9:22 AM | Link to this
I recently paid over $50 for a bottle of wine that I later found for $17 retail. I literally couldn’t afford any other wine on the list (this was the cheapest by almost half) and was forced to order it despite knowing that the markup on the cheapies is often ridiculous…I just wasn’t aware that it was $40 ridiculous. It cuts into the amount of money I’m willing to spend on dinner as a whole, and sullied my view of this rather famous establishment.By wine-o
December 18, 2006 1:59 PM | Link to this
I know how they can sell more wine at restaurants: Stop charging an arm and a leg for it. While I would never presume to tell anyone else how to run a business, charging 3x wholesale let alone 3x retail is outlandish at best and criminal at worst. As more Americans are enjoying wine, the options will be to either start offering more wine at inexpensive prices or to lower your mark up. I know which one I am in favor of.