Creating and Increasing Wine Sales

The right wine in the right setting with the right kind of customers should sell itself. This is especially true today, in an age where haute cuisine, with its requisite wine and food pairings, has gained the same kind of foothold in America as it has long enjoyed in Europe. Although domestic beers have suffered in terms of sales at the hands of harder spirits in the past decade or so, wine held steady and then took off in bars, lounges and restaurants settings throughout the United States. So who needs a strategy to increase wine sales? Any restaurant or bar looking to introduce wine to its beverage menu or any operator out to sell more of it — that’s who needs a wine selling strategy. Indeed, by this line of thinking, that could include the majority of venues in the United States. Yet how should a bar manager go about it? Where should he or she begin in boosting revenues from the grape?

Wine Merchandising
One savvy wine merchant who has some answers is Vincent Harvard, a wine expert and operating partner of Mercy Wine Bar in Dallas. From the selection of the vintages and appellations to the wine marketing plan, Harvard successfully has been selling wine by the glass and the flight at Mercy Wine Bar for almost five years now. And with his wine sales representing 75 percent of the bottom line and food claiming the other fourth — in reverse order to the typical venue where wine is sold — this native of the South of France not only has realized phenomenal wine sales at his wine bar and fine dining restaurant, but he has done so in a Texas locale where beer or whiskey long have been the traditional route to alcohol beverage sales success. Although every venue and clientele is different, presenting its own unique set of challenges, Harvard says the most important aspect of the wine equation is understanding your guests. “We have different guests, and they have different demands,” Harvard says. “People who come in from out of town may know their wines, but locals can be intimidated about wine. We take time with the guests and find out what they are looking for. Do they like a red or a white? Do their tastes in wine run to fruity, dry or full-bodied? We ask a maximum of questions. We do not want to sell a guest a $50 glass of wine if they are not ready.” Since Harvard himself cannot attend to the needs of every single guest himself, the wine shepherding of patrons is the responsibility of his waitstaff — the proper training of which he says represents another crucial component in any viable wine marketing plan. “At Mercy, 99 percent of the training of the staff is to taste every wine on the wine list,” Harvard says. With 150 different wines from  12 countries and the United States, and with new wines and vintages added on a regular basis, the training process requires about a month to complete.

By the Flight and By the Glass
All of the wine sales at Harvard’s bar and restaurant specializing in European-style cuisine are by the glass or the flight, Harvard says. And the rationale for doing this is patron-related rather than profit driven, he says. “When you take the time to talk to guests about wine and educate them, you cannot hesitate to offer them a sample of what you are suggesting before pouring them a full glass,” Harvard says. “It does not cost the company a lot of money to understand what they like.” Such sampling, he says, is impossible with a wine-by-the-bottle sales strategy. The wine marketing at Mercy is geared to helping every guest find the wine that pleases his or her palate or adds to the overall dining experience itself. A typical wine flight at Mercy might offer a guest three different Pinot Noirs from the American West Coast — A to Z from the Williamette Valley of Oregen, Artesa from Northern California and Foley from the Santa Rita Hills of Southern California. Each wine in the wine flight is a 3-ounce pour, which is half the 6-ounce size of his offerings by the glass and is also half the price of a glass of wine, which can vary from $8 to $50 per glass. For venues that have a food component, Harvard says food and wine pairings are quite important to wine marketing, and he adds that he spends a lot of time selecting vintages that are appropriate with entrees and specials on the dinner menu. “You want to create a balance, a marriage between food and wine,” Harvard says. “For example, today we're serving mussels cooked in a white wine and butter sauce. So, one of the wines I might suggest to accompany this dish is Sancerre, a white wine from the Loir Valley France.” Since Mercy is a wine bar that offers wine, beer and Champagne only and no hard spirits, Harvard says it makes good economic sense for the house to carry the 150 or so vintages and the 20 different varieties of wine that can be found in the wine cellar. Yet Harvard says more is not necessarily better for a venue that also sells spirits. “Wine and spirits are different concepts,” Harvard says. “If you offered 150 wines by the glass at an establishment that also served liquor, your customers are going to be divided between drinking hard spirits and wine, and the wine may sell badly. There is not going to be enough wine sales for the proper rotation.”

Attention to Detail
Harvard says achieving healthy wine sales involves paying careful attention at every level, from the buying to the education of the guests, and even to the glassware. “We like to work with small distributors,” Harvard says, to offer guests wines that are not found in the typical wine shop. “If it is more of a rare wine, you can put a higher markup on the wine.” Unlike at some of the finer restaurants that carry pricey wines, however, every customer is served in crystal glasses at Mercy. “That makes a huge difference,” Harvard says, both in the taste of the wine that is poured and in the perceptions of the guests. “Everybody deserves the same quality of service. There is no VIP at Mercy. Everyone is treated the same.”