Do’s and Don’ts Of A Good By-the-Glass Wine List

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What makes a good wine-by-the-glass list?

Thankfully,  quality wine-by-the-glass lists are becoming easier to find while dining out. It’s the age of adventurous diners and drinkers, so customers are willing to try something new. And a glass pour of wine is a great way for customers to try something they’ve never had before.

But what actually makes a good glass pour list? Read more

Sparkling Wine Leads Overall Wine Growth

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Sparkling wine continues its growth in both U.S. and U.K. markets.

The overall wine category has grown in the U.S. market for 22-straight years. And its future continues to look bright as many publications and industry experts note that millennials are drinking more expensive wine, and more often, than previous generations.

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Drinks After Dinner: The Wonders of a Digestif

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A meal doesn’t have to end once the plates are cleared. After-dinner drinks are a great opportunity for satisfied customers to extend their night-out with a digestif. It’s also a great opportunity for a server to increase their check-average and for a restaurant to increase sales. Digestifs and bitters can end the meal on a comforting note. Literally. And like many old-world staples, digestifs are pouring back into mainstream culture.

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Restaurant Technology is An Eco-Friendly Option

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Eco-friendly has been the mindset (or marketing) of a growing number of hip and trendy restaurants for years now.  The “green” mantra is often repeated on menus across the U.S. in the form of buzz-word phrases like “locally-sourced,”  “organic,” and “post-consumer.” Your server might have told you that your table was made from “reclaimed wood” from something else that used to be wooden, or that the light fixtures were made from repurposed subway parts. Though the green movement has its haute annoyances, eco-conscious business is certainly a good thing. And new technology is making it easier for restaurants to adapt to a more green way of doing things, both in the back-of-house and in front of guests.

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How Yelp Affects Restaurant Reputations

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Yelp is a polarizing third-party platform for many small business owners. The Internet has become the go-to medium for most consumer research. If you’re a business owner, it’s increasingly likely that a potential customer’s first introduction to your business will be in a list of Google search results, and your businesses’ Yelp page is bound to be at the top.

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Uncorkd Why Managers Quit

How To Keep Stellar Restaurant Staff

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The restaurant industry is an insane environment to work in. In a full service restaurant, you have multiple “departments” that are crucially interdependent on one another. Restaurants function as a service assembly line; on that partially occurs in full view of guests. Communication is paramount in this situation. But often, workers are rushed, or don’t share the same first language. This complicated relay is a task restaurants perform hundreds of times on a busy Friday night. There are spaghetti-thin margins-of-error for a restaurant operating during service.

It takes a great staff to perform at a high level night in and night out. Great staff will keep the stress and chaos tucked behind smiles, out of guests’ view. But in an industry that has one of the highest rates of staff turnover, how do you keep a stellar restaurant staff motivated and clocked in?  Read more

Why Restaurant Analytics Are Important

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Food and restaurant tech has surged over the past few years, with consumers becoming the no. 1 adapters to apps like delivery databases Grubhub or Seamless. Now, big chain store behemoths, Starbucks and McDonald’s are creating their own services, launching apps that customers can use to pre-order and pay for items before entering the store.

But for restaurants looking to utilize technology to help bolster business and increase customer loyalty, the focus is on analytics and understanding customer behavior over just simplifying procedure. Read more

How Bars Can Better Track Inventory

For The Weekend: Inspiring Fall Cocktail Ingredients

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 The google calendar page has flipped, and we’ve stumbled, sunburnt and sandy, into the start of fall. It’s time to pick the Mojito mint from your muddler sticks, and dump out the last drops of your sangria. Now, you can start stirring in your favorite fall cocktail flavors. If you want to make your at-home bar more exciting and versatile, then here are some tips on how to use new liqueurs and ingredients that will turn classic cocktails into impressive feats of cocktail wizardry.

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Millennials Wine

Growth In Lagers Shows American Pilsners Are Getting Crafty

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When it comes to beer, America runs on lagers. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Just check out this ranking of the top 20 beers in the U.S.

What is surprising, is that lagers have become one of the fastest growing styles produced by craft brewers. Much of this growth has centered in the craft pilsner category. In January of 2015, craft pilsners grew 56% in a year to year comparison.  Read more

5 Reasons Restaurants Should Embrace Tech

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The use of new technology in restaurants is inevitable. Yesterday, NPR published a story about a fully-automated restaurant opening in San Francisco. The quick-service eatery, Eatsa, specializes in quinoa (why?) and tricking hungry patrons into thinking they accidentally stumbled into an Apple store instead of a restaurant.

This is certainly the far-end of the restaurant tech spectrum. It may be the height for some, or the nadir for others.  Uncorkd believes that restaurants should embrace technology for many different reasons.  Here’s 5 of them. Read more