Want to sell more desserts? Push red wine.
That’s what data collected by restaurant management platform Upserve has found.
By looking at more than 29,000 checks, excluding takeout and delivery, from some 3,200 restaurants that use its point-of-sale system, Providence, R.I.-based Upserve found that more than three-quarters of checks that included dessert also had alcohol orders, with the strongest correlation between dessert and red wine.
“Your server might be the best dang upseller on this side of the world, but when it comes to ordering dessert, it’s all about the alcohol,” Upserve said.
“Whether stopping in for a nightcap and dessert is the main thing, or dinner and drinks turned into chocolate cake, it’s clear that alcohol [and] dessert are a match made in heaven,” the firm added.
But wine specifically is the key, and bottles of red are your best bet, according to Upserve data, which found that customers who ordered bottles of wine increased their chance of ordering dessert by 15 percent. Furthermore, it found that red wine orders were 6 percent more likely to include dessert than white wine orders. In fact, 42 percent of checks that included red wine orders also included dessert. That’s compared to 9.4 percent of total checks in Upserve’s sample that included dessert.
Upserve recommended suggesting dessert sales when wine is ordered or delivered. For example: “Our brownie sundae actually goes great with that wine.”
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