Menu Matching: Wine and food are perfect partners

Related tags Wine Price Alcoholic beverage Director

By helping customers enjoy wine and food, pubs can also boost sales Talk to your supplier. Any supplier worth his salt will sit down and match wines...

By helping customers enjoy wine and food, pubs can also boost sales

  • Talk to your supplier. Any supplier worth his salt will sit down and match wines to your menu - and at the price points that will suit your offer.
  • Suggest wine and/or beers to match each dish on your printed menus or chalkboards. Again, many suppliers will have a menu or wine list service and will be able to help you.
  • Use tent cards at the tables in your pub. Wine is often the least promoted and visible category in the pub. Coupled with the fact that many women don't go to the bar, you must take the message out to the tables.
  • Ask your supplier to conduct a tasting session with you and your barstaff, showing them how the wines on your list match with the food. Once staff feel more confident about your offer they can sell it.
  • Look at your prices - if you're serving good pub grub, but then offering wine priced on a 60 to 70 per cent GP basis, perhaps your prices are too high for diners. Consider working on a cash margin per bottle. You make less per bottle but you improve the overall customer experience
  • Think about why your customers are visiting your pub and tailor promotions to suit them - 'a meal for two for £15 including wine' for a value dining night out or 'buy a bottle with four glasses and some nibbles for £10' for the girls after work. Work with your supplier for quality wines - they don't have to be the heavily marketed brand names to have a good quality experience.
  • Lastly, just try it. Because wine can feel like a really complicated category many licensees can kid themselves that their customers don't drink wine. They do! The off-trade tells us that and if your offer is right you will be able to sell wine. Your supplier should be able to help you get this right. If they can't, then try someone else.

Phil Garmston is wine development director for WaverleyTBS

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