Agressive wine programs include educating your staff
It may sound shallow, but sommeliers are also like everyone else: they like hearing about wines that are cool; that will make their wine programs look cool, and make the guests who order them look cool in front of their girlfriends, other friends, and colleagues. And to relate to anyone like that, youve got to be able to communicate as a longtime, concerned friend (even if youve just met the sommelier), rather than as a salesperson going through the same ol motions.
Help Us Educate
Finally, think about the last time someone came to you with a brochure or book that was truly informative and helpful to your business. We long suffering restaurateurs are no different. Unless they contain a good joke or two, sales sheets are so dreary; a shameful waste of paper. But something we can use to help educate our staff (no, not how-to-serve-wine, but about what makes the Sonoma Coast so special, why Carignane rules, or how the organic grape growing translates into deeper expression of grape and terroir in your wine), or give us great material for our next newsletter or wine promotion this, we can use.
Educational material, in any way, shape or form that reflects you, and shows you care about our need to improve service and get the word out: thats the ticket.
Right now, wineries are certainly not the restaurateurs enemy. We have a common enemy, which infers the need for wineries and restaurants to join together and support each other and each others wine programs, as opposed to getting as much as we can out of each other.
Randy Caparoso is a longtime (over thirty years), multi-award winning restaurateur, wine journalist, and a former wine producer himself. Notably, a Founding Partner of the Roys restaurant group. He is currently the Bottom Line Editor for Sommelier Journal, and writes an Organic Wine Match of the Day column for examiner.com.