Wine Flights: Welcome Aboard!

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If it seems like moving your wine inventory is a tricky business, you are not alone – but there’s good news: offering wine flights is not only a great way of addressing much of what’s challenging in balancing the contents of your wine cellar, but many patrons love the idea in and of itself. Offering flights of wine is an obvious draw for customers who are interested in wine-tasting – or for those who simply want to learn more. One might even assume, therefore, that the popularity of wine-tasting is how flights first got their start. Actually, however, the concept was invented in the first place with the aim of using faster-moving menu items (in this case, servings of alcohol) with slower-moving items: several strange dessert items that no one seemed interested in ordering – until an inventive restaurant worker suddenly got the idea to get patrons interested in those misfit desserts by selling them with a glass of wine. Read more

5 Sexy Drinks to Add to Your Restaurant’s Valentine’s Day Menus

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Are you tired of offering the same tired Valentine’s Day champagne cocktails year after year? Here are 5 mixed drink ideas with sexy themes that you can use to mix up your digital wine and spirits menus this year, courtesy of talented mixologists from all over the US. Cheers to your restaurant’s success on Valentine’s Day! Read more

Myths Debunked: 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use iPad Menus

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10 reasons you shouldn’t use iPad menus in your restaurant

The myths debunked…

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Responding to Comments on Yelp? The Reviews are Mixed

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In the age of the smart phone, we’ve come to expect to be able to get a message out to anyone at any time – and perhaps even get an immediate response. Some would even say this principle of instant communication has begun to apply to reviews on Yelp.com; if a customer can post a review before he or she even pays the bill, some would even go as far as to argue that the owner (or another member of the bar or restaurant staff) could, in theory, just as easily read and reply to that review within the hour. If the situation is really that dire for business owners, of course, then running a restaurant just got a lot more difficult – unless owners and managers are willing to hire someone whose sole responsibility is to handle such matters – and, so, of course there are companies that offer exactly that service. Read more

These wines might be at your expensive wine dinner

Hosting Wine Dinners in Your Restaurant

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Do your customers come in and order the second least expensive item on your wine menu again and again? It might mean that they just like your second least expensive wine offering, or it might mean that they don’t feel confident in their wine ordering abilities to upgrade their order. Of course, a digital wine menu can help to educate and inspire your customers’ ordering habits, but here’s something you may not have thought of: hosting a wine dinner. Hosting a wine dinner at your restaurant can be a great boost for your restaurant business during the slow season, and if you set it up right, you can get not only build new regular customers, you can also get those regulars ordering expensive wines with their meals. Here is the step-by-step guide to hosting your restaurant’s wine dinner. Read more

Discover the Next Mexican Beer Star for Your Restaurant

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Mexicans have been fermenting grains to make beer since at least the time of the Aztecs, and since Europeans first ventured to the New World, Mexican beer brewing has only expanded. Today, Mexico’s beer market is dominated by the “Big Two” corporations that supply over 90% of the beer in Mexico, so if you’re considering adding Mexican beer to your restaurant menu (or just adding more variety), you’ll need to know what beers they sell.

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Restaurants Harvesting the Benefits of Rooftop Farming

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The farm-to-table movement has gained great popularity in the restaurant industry in recent years. An increasing number of patrons today are willing and eager to pay a premium for ingredients that they know to be incredibly fresh. They are also willing to pay more for ingredients that have traveled a short distance from local farmland, thus resulting in meals that have been prepared in a manner that is more environmentally responsible. But what if that farmland were as nearby as the restaurant’s roof or back yard? Forget mere rooftop gardening; restaurants today are planting what they’ve come to call rooftop farms, and these “farms” can yield, on a small scale, organic produce used in a whole variety of creative ways throughout the menu. Read more

Locally Foraged Ingredients: “Farm-to-Table” Gives Way to “Wilderness-to-Table”

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Long before the luxuries of farming, grocery stores, and restaurants, our ancestors hunted and gathered food in order to survive. Over the years, modern-day shoppers and restaurant patrons have come to feel a disconnect between their dining habits and the distant, often unknown sources of their mass-produced food; thus, the concern for ethical and sustainable eating has spread rapidly. Consumer demand for organic and humanely raised food has increased, along with an interest in consuming ingredients that are both locally produced and in season. For the past several years, the farm-to-table movement has begun to evolve a step farther, giving rise to the “wilderness-to-table” movement, with restaurant patrons seeking out venues that serve what has come to be described as “locally foraged and hunted” food – and even cocktails containing ingredients that are locally foraged.

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Wine pairing with chocolates

Will Your Servers Make These Wine Pairing Mistakes Tonight?

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It’s a Friday night and your restaurant is packed. You made sure your servers clearly understood each of the specials, and that they are upselling things like specials. You’ve trained them to walk diners through each detail and ingredient of your menu, and you even know that they can discuss how each dish is prepared. You’ve done a good job hiring servers who are kind and attentive to your customers’ every need, but, we’re sorry to tell you, unless you’ve trained your servers about good wine pairing, they are destroying your return business and not maximizing your profit. Here are three common wine pairing mistakes that your servers are making right now.

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This bartender could be your Cicerone

Why a Cicerone Will Increase Your Profits Now

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Your bar rocks. You’ve spent all the time and money to get it perfect, it’s exactly the bar you’ve always wanted to hang out in, and your friends love it… even the beer menu is legendary. So, why is it that your customers gaze at your menu of 763 beers, glaze over like deers in the headlights and then order a Budweiser? Yes, I know, you think they are uncultured and cheapskate Philistines, but maybe the problem lies with your bar. If you employed a Cicerone, they’d have bought that Abita beer at $9 a bottle.

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