ON-TRADE ROUND TABLE: Wining and dining

The Mentzendorff/drinks business panel felt that an understanding supplier, staff training and innovative list formats were crucial to selling wine in restaurants

“It comes down to listening,” stressed Christine Parkinson, group wine buyer for Hakkasan’s growing empire of restaurants. She was responding to a simple but crucial question: what makes a good wine supplier? A group of respected sommeliers and wine buyers had gathered in The Greenhouse – a Michelin-starred restaurant in Mayfair – to discuss this issue, among others, such as arranging wine lists, setting margins, keeping up with consumer trends and encouraging experimentation.

The general manager from Wiltons restaurant, James Grant, was quick to agree with Parkinson as the discussion began. “The supplier should understand who we are supplying – our customers’ palates. Good suppliers are those who’ve got to know their customers, what they like, when and what for. Today there is a lot of cold calling, people turning up with a card who suggest a tasting and we turn them away.”

Conor O’Leary, food and beverage manager for The Ritz hotel likewise stressed the importance of suppliers listening and taking time to understand their clients’ customers. “It is more useful if they ask to see a list and suggest where they can help,” he added, pointing out – as a warning to those who don’t – that “people fail to realise how easy it is to change suppliers.”

For Benoît Allauzen, head sommelier at The Greenhouse, a good supplier is also flexible to a restaurant’s needs when it comes to order sizes. “Sometimes I want to order small amounts, but suppliers want up to 10 cases minimum… it doesn’t make sense. I also hate different pricing depending on quantity. I need to know the price per bottle and that’s it.”

At this point Parkinson interjected with something that particularly frustrates her. “I can’t bear to have the wrong vintages or alcohol levels – it’s a real bugbear for me with suppliers. I can’t see why they can’t tell us in advance when vintages are going to change. Liberty are excellent and send a letter three weeks before explaining the vintage change and all you need to know, as well as the new price. Usually the first I know is when the wine turns up.”

Alan Montague-Dennis, prestige business director for Mentzendorff, and the only supplier present for the discussion, listened attentively to the concerns before noting that the wine supplier’s core role is “to make sure everything runs smoothly.” Allauzen agreed, adding that the supplier-sommelier relationship should be “two way”. And for O’Leary, “there has to be some humanity behind the salesman.”

Staff training, Grant mentioned “is essential,” and Parkinson added that “If we do invite someone to train staff then we like it to be the producer – the supplier in my view should be invisible.” Allauzen nodded and said, “People remember stories and pass them on,” and overall, training and subsequent testing for staff is crucial, not just for selling, but also for retaining good employees.

The challenge for restaurants
At this point, the discussion changed direction to the demands on those running restaurants, and away from those supplying. Parkinson in particular stressed the need for innovation when it comes to displaying and selling wine in the on-trade. “Last late summer we tore up our traditional format – which was by region – and set out wines by theme, for instance, blends, biodynamic wines, and purity of fruit. There are about 18 different themes and the language used and names are in keeping with the restaurant.”

An increasing challenge for restaurants in Parkinson’s view is more knowledgeable consumers coupled with the growing accessibility of obscure wines online. “Supermarkets are not so much the threat,” she said, “and it is not enough just to list wines that aren’t in supermarkets. People can find wine in other places, they are just two clicks of a mouse away from looking at a great wine website. You can ignore this or see it as a threat or an opportunity. We should be asking ourselves what can we do to keep up and add value.”

Hakkasan’s response has been the new and original format to its wine list, and already this has “significantly changed the sales mix and encouraged customers to talk more,” according to Parkinson. She cites a section containing mature wines headed “age and grace”. Here, among others, there are aged Semillons and Verdellos from Australia. “There is an interest in these and although we had them before, they didn’t sell,” she explains, illustrating how a novel format can promote experimentation.

“My fear,” she summed up, “is that if you gave diners Gordon Ramsay’s list instead of yours [referring to any fine dining establishment] then the customer probably wouldn’t notice, and I think that will hang us.”

O’Leary was quick to continue, endorsing the thought process. “It’s interesting what Christine is doing,” he said. “In the Ritz the variety of people buying wine has changed dramatically, but the list hasn’t. Maybe more should sell in the way people are buying, rather than the way they have always sold?”

Allauzen appeared interested, pointing out that “just having a lot of back vintages is boring, we need to add spice and I like the idea of listing by varietal and style, for instance Pinot Noir from New Zealand next to Pinot Noir from Oregon.”

Adding value
The conversation then turned to trading up. O’Leary pointed out that “the customer comes into a restaurant knowing within £10 what he will spend on a wine.” In other words, persuading him to part with more is difficult, and probably ill advised. On the other hand, “One can ensure that if he spends, let’s say £50 a bottle, that wine will be so good he will have a second.”

But is a sommelier strictly necessary? “Yes, they’ve added value,” Parkinson quickly said.

“It’s all about being able to enhance the experience,” agrees Grant. And hence, when later discussing margins on wine in restaurants Parkinson pointed out that “the issue shouldn’t be about mark-up, not it cost four times as much as it cost in the shop, but was it worth it?”

And a greater concern for restaurants appears to be the overall levels of wine consumption in restaurants. There is a “big issue” according to Parkinson: “the government and public’s attitude to drinking. There’s far worse to come,” she warned, “and heaven forbid we’ll have to put units on everything we serve.

“People are already shying away from high alcohol wines and we have always stated alcohol levels on lists. M&S I think are a good barometer of British tastes and they have announced that they are trying to list wines of less than 14%. It is naïve for us to think we can ignore this.”

Allauzen then drew on a comparison with France, “where consumption has dropped a lot with stricter drink driving laws. This has increased the consumption of premium fruit juices and the top restaurants offer 33cl bottles of fruit juices; it is a very good concept.”

This opened up the idea of whether London really does have a magnetic appeal due to its fine dining scene. All agreed that the capital’s attraction extended beyond food to its culture and financial centre while O’Leary drew attention to the fact “there are still a lot of bad places which should close and hopefully be replaced by good ones.” As for the emergence of a more informal eating experience, this was not seen as a threat by the group, and, in fact, Parkinson saw this development as positive, because “it is creating customers for us.”

“The likes of Arbutus, Tom’s Kitchen and so on are opening because people are eating out more often and don’t want to sit in a place like The Ritz every night, but they still want a good steak and good wine by the glass,” said O’Leary.

Fresh ideas

Arbutus in particular attracted a lot of comment. “That restaurant has done the cleverest thing,” began Parkinson. “It uses the 250ml pichet, so you can try three different wines for the amount of a single bottle – it’s genius and brilliantly executed.”

In fact, Parkinson wondered whether “maybe we are seeing the beginning of a period of innovation” when it comes to the way wine is served and presented in British restaurants, citing recent and dramatic alterations to Lindsay House’s list as a further example.

Certainly with the increasing accessibility via the web of little-known wines from around the world, and the rising quality of packaged food sold through supermarkets, restaurants must come up with novel ways to entice customers from the comfort of their home, and ensure they return. The on-trade has a difficult job ahead of it and will need all the help it can get – suppliers must be supportive. After all, the wine trade has a vested interest in the survival of fine dining, not only to move volumes, but also to develop the reputation for today’s more obscure wine producing regions – top-end restaurants are trend setting. As Parkinson points out, “Prices are rocketing for fine wine. Restaurants like ours will need to help develop the next classics.” Sadly we didn’t have time for projecting what these might be.

© db March 2007