Yes. It’s so cool to see operators like that. A rare breed. @Robert_Dentice recently mentioned the late Colin Alevras of The Tasting Room. He and his wife really did it all and did it well and with full composure. Amazing.
As you note, size matters. I think he struggled with all that when he expanded to a location that was about 4x the size of the original.
Colin truly loved it all. I would see him shopping for produce in the mornings at the Union Square Green Market. Go by the resto in the afternoon and he would be taking meat deliveries, tasting wine with reps, all while doing prep work before service. Then cook all night. Then do it all over again day after day.
As someone that has cooked nearly my whole life, one of my favorite things in repping is when I worked with chef-owners and could hang out in the kitchen with them.
For sure David - There is tremendous value in being seen in shops, restaurants and BTG programs. It’s just not efficient going to sell wine bar by wine bar for a single producer. Not sure how to crack that.
As for the cost of shipping DTC. Sure, it’s annoying as a consumer, but $29 flat isn’t bad. I personally much rather order wine and get it delivered to my door, than schlep it home from a Gallo-steeped supermarket.
Since BYO is part of this discussion of Bay Area restaurants, contributions to this page are welcomed! I live a couple hours outside of SF, but my two adult children are there. Always appreciative of recommendations.
And how many in the legal 7 years have the disposable income to be buying wine at restaurants, or really anywhere other than perhaps the grocery store.
This graph would only be useful next to a similar graph from the late 00s when Millennials were the same age as Gen Z now. There’s no doubt there’s been a substantial shift away from alcoholic beverages, but 85% decrease is misleading.
At least in medicine, there’s a huge generational change in medicine of how hard gen z and younger millennial medical students and residents are willing to work (obviously not all, but in general) even from when I went through medical training with the older
millennial generation. I’ve found it generally applicable to other professions as well. Partially it’s because of the job market, as opposed to the tighter job market in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, but I don’t think that’s the only reason.
I have a colleague who offers free in-State DTC shipping on ANY quantity (argh – should we really go that low? pretty much kills any profit at 6 bottles or less I am assuming-- I need to circle back with him to see if the longer term benefits are there)
I do agree that a lot of Gen Y isn’t going to kill themselves with 100+ hour weeks, and I don’t blame them for that. There will still be outliers that grind.
I don’t know what you see in your workplace, I see roughly the amount of ignorance/neglect that I’d expect in mine. Though I will say the overt lack of care from the ones that really don’t care is surprising - I mean, come on, fake it a little bit…
I feel like myself and other trainees might not like taking call or working ina busy service but we still did it. I’ve seen residents just go awol and abandon services without telling anyone and am surprised when med students even show up now.
I don’t have the experience directly to opine but a friend and a board member who owns a few pizza restaurants shared the challenges Michael is discussing.
“I don’t feel up to working today” cited as an example of the reasons he gets for not coming into work.
