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Creativity and Cost Control Drive Timpano Chophouse & Martini Bar’s Profit Spikes

    Imagination in drink conception and promotion, teamed with practical and basic cost-control measures, has given one smaller chain a focused and highly profitable improvement in its beverage program.
    E-Brands Restaurants, a multi concept restaurant group based out of Orlando Florida, owns and operates 13 restaurants. One of its six concepts, Timpano Chophouse & Martini Bar has found great success with its beverage program over the past year by mixing some intuitiveness with some fundamental beverage philosophy.
    Timpano Chophouse, once part of the Carlson group before being purchased by Rashid Choufani in 2002, is known for its dry-aged, bone-in steaks, fresh pasta and sizzling mussels. When arriving at any of the five current locations, patrons can expect to hear the music of the Rat Pack, and as they enter, the vibe is big city supper club.

Beverage Sales Increase
    The first couple of years E-Brands focused on perfecting the food and the service, but as of the start of 2006, it turned much of that same focus to developing a premier beverage program. Since then, each of the location — Orlando, Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale in Florida; Rockville, Md., and Naperville, Ill. — have seen an increase in sales and a decrease in costs. As a group, Timpano locations have witnessed a 12 percent increase in beverage sales over last year, which equates to an overall 1.5 percent increase in sales. Combined, the Timpano locations have seen a decrease of 1.78 percent in beverage cost.
    We attribute the sales increase to a little bit of creativity and the decrease in costs to getting back to the basics. The creativity came from rolling out a Martini menu which included more than 30 Martinis, of which half where originals and the others, though familiar, had a creative twist.
    Among the most popular of the originals is the Starlight Martini, a combination of Q Gin, chilled and layered on pomegranate and garnished with a speared cucumber slice shaped like the letter “S” for Starlight. The Sex on the Baby Grand is another hit for this music-driven lounge. This Martini is prepared with Ketel One Vodka and Inniskillan Ice wine and is garnished with three speared red grapes.
    The Viva Vino Martini was inspired by the Red Hat Ladies. It’s made with Fonseca Port wine, Shakka apple liqueur, Midori and cranberry Juice and is garnished with a red sugar rim.
    Some more familiar Martinis, such as the Chocolate Martini and the standard Vodka Martini, are stirring conversation at tables because of special little touches. For instance, the Chocolate Martini is totally clear, with no chocolate, no cream — nothing but Three Olives chocolate vodka and white crème de cacao, garnished with a twisted chocolate licorice stick.
    The expression on people’s faces is priceless when they order it. They think they were served the wrong drink, but once they taste it, they are in shock and start passing it around the table.
    Timpano’s Vodka Martinis can be served shaken or stirred. The stirred version is called Singing in the Rain and is served in a Martini pitcher and stirred at the table. We then offer the guest an atomizer of either vermouth or olive juice to coat their Martini glass prior to pouring the Martini. This Martini is made with Rain vodka, and the kicker is that the drink is half price when it is raining.

Points of Difference
    One of the keys to developing a beverage program is to have some point of difference and not to be afraid to change things up. So many times we have seen restaurants doing the same thing over and over, hoping for different results. Times are changing, new products are popping up daily, and our consumers are becoming more knowledgeable.  They know what they want and they are starting to expect more when ordering a drink. We as operators and directors have to adapt to that or we will lose that consumer.
    However, it isn’t just the Martinis that have guests talking. Timpano’s currently has a 150-bottle wine list with 45 varietals by the glass, with bottle prices ranging from $24 to $295. This wine list, though extensive, can be found at other high-end restaurants, but Timpano’s has a point of difference in monthly educational wine dinners, hosted by wineries. In the first year to offer wine dinners, we’ve had 50-60 percent return guests each month.
    We wanted to do something other than the same old wine dinner, in which the food comes, you drink the wine with the food and the speaker tells you what to taste and what to smell. Instead, we wanted to teach our guests how to taste, savor the aroma and then pair the wine with food so when they ordered wines at Timpano they would know exactly what food pairs best with wines.
    Kobrand Wines presented a Jelly Belly wine tasting, with 12 flavored jelly beans — six that were flavors found in white wines and six that were flavors found in red wines. For example we had vanilla, lemon and butter jelly beans for the white wines and cherry, black licorice and chocolate for red wines. The Kobrand reps then instructed the guests to tear each jelly bean in half and smell it, identify the flavor and then eat half to confirm the flavor.
    Once the patrons were done with the six, they then took the other six halves and put them in their mouths at once, and the combined halves created a chardonnay or cabernet flavor.
    The Timpano Chophouse Educational Wine Dinner Series will kick off again in March 2007.
    All in all, being creative and staying just ahead of guest expectations is key.         Use your imagination and establish a point of difference.                      NCB