Some restaurant chains are taking advantage of an abundance of high-quality, well-priced wines to pass along eye-popping values to their guests.
From half-off wine sales to wine lists showcasing wines priced for everyday purchasing, such deals recognize the frugal spending habits of many restaurant customers and are intended to fill seats in recession-thinned dining rooms.
“The $100-a-bottle wine drinker is a $60-a-bottle drinker now,” said Regan Jasper, director of hospitality and beverage for Fox Restaurant Concepts, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based multiconcept operator with 28 restaurants.
Promotions like the Summer Sampler at Fox's fast-casual Sauce Pizza & Wine concept, which bundles a pizza, a salad and two glasses of wine for $20, and the 50 Percent Off Wine Sale, which runs one day a week through September at North and several other Fox full-service restaurants, are based in large part on bargains that Jasper secures.
“I get calls at least once a week from wineries and distributors offering me name-recognized wines at $16 a bottle that would normally cost me $33 a bottle, just so they can get them out of their warehouse,” Jasper said.
Such a bottle at full cost, marked up a customary three times, would show on a wine list at about $100, Jasper said. “But I pass the savings on to the guest, so I’m selling it for about $60,” he said. And during the 50 Percent Off Wine Sale, it goes for $30, giving guests an even better buy while still netting the house a nice return, he noted.
The magic of the sale is that it makes Monday night “no different from Friday or Saturday in full season,” Jasper said. “We’re doing north of 200 covers.”
Also vouching for today’s value-conscious customers is Alpana Singh, M.S., master sommelier and wine buyer for the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises restaurants Petterino’s, Big Bowl and Reel Club in Chicago.
“I think the consumer sentiment is, ‘If I can get a nice bottle of wine for $15 in my grocery store, why should I spend $80?’ ” Singh said.
She credits retailers like Whole Foods, Costco and Trader Joe’s with acquainting the public with high-quality wines from hotbeds of value like Argentina, Spain and southern Italy.
“If you’re willing to let your palate travel and be a little adventurous, there are great wines to be had,” Singh said. “That’s my silver lining to the situation.”
Singh beckons to LEYE customers with attractive promotions such as the Unreel Wine and Dinner Deal on Sunday through Friday nights at Reel Club in Oak Brook, Ill. It offers endless pours of its 16 wines by the glass for $14.95.
“You can create as many pairings as you like,” said Singh, who notes that the promotion has boosted traffic while raising the restaurant’s wine cost by only half a percentage point.
In the view of Dallas-based wine consultant David Pennachetti, there are two main models for managing value in wine programs. One is to discount wines one or two days a week while holding prices the rest of the time. The other is to revamp the whole list with more affordable everyday pricing.
The latter “is the kind of program that I think will succeed long term in this financial crisis,” said Pennachetti. He stresses the importance of offering “good, better and best” pricing tiers, especially ample selections in the $25-$30 range.
At Fifth Group Restaurants, with five upscale restaurants in Atlanta, beverage director Vajra Stratigos began the year by seeding his by-the-glass selections with additional good choices in the $6-$9 range and reducing the choices priced in the teens.
“I wanted any guest to be able to tell at a glance that the list is very fairly priced,” said Stratigos.
Stratigos also boosted his value equation with a change in purchasing policy. He now changes his by-the-glass selections twice a year rather than quarterly, offering suppliers the opportunity to lock in their wines longer.
“We’ve driven our cost down that way and, in many instances, passed it on,” Stratigos said.
On one Saturday afternoon each month, 50 for 50 is the proposition at Next Vintage Wine Shop inside Charlie Palmer at Bloomingdale’s South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif., one of the upscale restaurants in the New York City-based Charlie Palmer Group. Shoppers taste 50 select bottles that they can buy at half price while enjoying gourmet cheese and advice from the restaurant’s sommeliers.
“A lot of restaurants offer half-off wine nights, which is great, but what makes this special is that it is 50 percent off retail prices,” said cellar master Michael Frumin.