How we Started to Sell More Exclusive Wines
People may think I’m a little “off the wall” for sharing this with you, but I’m so proud of my little idea that I just had to, even if everyone else who has a little bistro of their own (like my friend Jane, where I work part-time) starts to the same thing.
We have an alcohol license for our premises. After all, what’s the point in bringing that special someone for an intimate dinner for two when you can’t show off with a decent bottle of wine to go with it? Now, like many other people in our profession, we have our own house wines both red and white, and for the most part this goes down well with our customers because they’re not always out to spend a vast amount of money on a bottle of wine.
Not too long ago, we had a group of people in and they were having a special celebration. I was asked for the most expensive and most prestigious bottle of red I had. This didn’t cause me too much concern because we used to refrigerate the more expensive whites behind the bar in a lockable cabinet, and we stored the best reds in the basement.
Unbeknown to me, on this particular evening I was faced with a connoisseur and he really knew his stuff! I had to stand a fairly long lecture on how a wine like the one I served should be treated like a “delicate bird” (his words, not mine) and the temperature wasn’t quite right and neither was the way it was being stored.
So, being the lady that I am, I asked how we could rectify this problem. “Easy” was the answer “get a wine cooler”, and he recommended a model that would fit with the décor in here.
Later that evening I did some research and when I popped the recommended wine cooler into my search engine I was faced with a machine that was unlike any of the “chiller” cabinets we had. It was silver with a stainless steel trim which complimented the cabinet really nicely. What I liked best was the way the bottles inside were seductively illuminated so you could tell something special was sitting inside.
I immediately called Jane and asked her if we could buy one, which she did.
Now here’s the good part. We have many regulars at our bistro and the first night this wine cooler proudly stood behind the bar, I was asked all sorts of questions about the types of wine that were in there. How much were they? What type was it? Where did they come from?
I quickly realized that because I was at last showing off a wine cooler that worked as professionally as it looked, we could sell far more of the expensive wines I had steered away from before simply because they were now stored correctly. They were at the right temperature, and the overall system with this chiller helps wines mature properly so it doesn’t matter if that $200 bottle didn’t sell right away. In fact, the longer it was there, the better it would eventually taste.
I’m so glad we made this purchase and if you’re reading this and remember giving a lowly bistro owner a good old lecture about how to keep wines stored correctly, I thank you. For all you other bistro owners out there take a look at how you’re chilling your wines now and how you could get more sales if you do what we did!
As always, we found the wine cooler at Amazon, but I don’t think it’s around anymore. I think it’s been succeeded by this 32 bottle wine cooler as it looks just alike.
I have to admit though, that we’re still using a fridge for our white wines (at the highest possible temperature, since fridges are usually too cold!) and a dual zone wine cooler might have been a better alternative. So if you have a restaurant or are a wine enthusiasts, it may be clever to read my reviews on the dual zone 21 bottle Newair Wine Cooler and the Koolatron 28 bottle wine cooler.
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