Let’s imagine a seafood restaurant in a tropical beach city. It has a beautiful terrace overlooking the waves and the lighting at night is warm and dim. The place offers enchanting food and beverage experiences.
Let’s understand what the core identity of such a restaurant could be. Their mission is to make diners happy everyday as they experience local flavors in a relaxed and yet refined ambience. Their values could be warm hospitality and to praise the culture of the regional community through a fresh and sustainable cuisine offering. The emotions they might want to evoke are relaxation, joy, hope and even some romance.
Wine can enhance this core identity. We’d like to offer wines that make diners happy as they experience local flavors, so we should be aware of what those local flavors are. Wines should reinforce the restaurant values of freshness and sustainability. The wines should also evoke relaxation, joy and romance. In our imaginary restaurant, local flavors include spicy seafood with a bit of hotness such as in Mexican cuisine as well as citrusy notes from limes and oranges. We immediately think about whites and rosés. The value of sustainability brings us to New Zealand or Chile, as well as the Catalunya region in Spain; all of them well known for their sustainable practices in the vineyard. Relaxation, joy and romance can lead us to sparkling wines.
What are the common options across sparkling, sustainable, whites and rosés with the right structure for citrusy, hot and spicy seafood? We would choose New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs for acidity, freshness and great aromatics. Chilean Sauvignon Blancs from Valle De Casablanca too. Mexican rosés from Valle de Guadalupe should be included as well especially if they show a bit of extra minerality and of course, a selection of Cavas for sparkling.
The wine identity of our restaurant then becomes easy to visualize and to integrate into the overall story to tell when servicing customers. There won’t be any wine in the program that outlies the restaurant’s core identity. And I don’t refer only to the selling price. The selling prices can vary greatly within one wine style or region of origin depending on quality, vintage or brand. The storytelling can go like this: we offer great boutique Mexican rosé wines that will pair perfectly with our Mexican spicy red snapper and salad dishes. For our ceviches and raw appetizers, nothing better than New Zealand or Chile Sauvignon Blancs, with whom by the way we have great partnerships on promoting sustainable farming. If you are feeling festive, romantic or you just want to enjoy bubbles throughout dinner, a crispy and elegant Cava or a bold Mexican sparkling rosé can make the night.
This also makes it easier for service personnel
Too many times we see floor personnel struggling to communicate the wines in their program because it is hard to align the list with the personality of the restaurant. Of course, training is key but having them understand the wine list will be much easier if we train them with the wine identity perspective in mind. The restaurant in our example can offer as few or as many labels in their list as they are able to accommodate, and still the personnel should be able to understand them very well because all of them will revolve around the food style, the restaurant values and the emotions they evoke.
Aligning the by the glass and by the bottle lists
One more potential advantage of the wine identity idea is to align by the glass and by the bottle programs. We all know that there’s a perception that BTG options are of less quality. Narrowing down the wine program to specific categories that will perfectly align to the core identity will let us pick BTG glass labels within those categories as well. Upselling options will still be available through higher quality labels within the same category.
In summary, it is clear how our midsize beachfront restaurant can be more profitable with wine if they create a wine identity. The wine identity goes beyond merely a wine program. The wine identity embraces the restaurant’s personality and core values. By defining a wine identity, we can create a story to tell our customers to elevate their dining experience.
