From the J Hutte wine glass thread:
1 Like
Thanks for that link!
Looks like a nice machine.
Yeah those glass polishing machines look awesome. I first saw one when I toured the kitchen at Cyrus. I know Robert Young estate winery has one but Iâm not sure if many wineries do. If I ever get to redo this house I want a Hobart glass washer and one on these glass polishers
I think there can only be one average. The range is another matter.
From the department of nit picking. 
As you say, each place is different. I think they all go through a lot more behind the scenes than many people realize.
Taken from this article: ââŚsommeliers will generally arrive at their restaurants around 3PM. Theyâll typically spend an hour accepting deliveries, putting wines away, restocking cellars, preparing wines for the evening, and updating wines that are out of stock. Preparation is key for a successful evening.â
I would add to that, tasting new wines with sales reps and training staff on the selected wines, (re)ordering, updating the wine list.
Aside from the administrative duties of running the list (ordering, inventory, tastings with agents/suppliers, etc) and somm duties, fewer and fewer restaurants have full-time, wine director/somm-only jobs.
Most are sommanager types who are also responsible for helping manage staff, closing the place down, end-of-day reporting & reconciliation, etc. Itâs a lot of time spent at the restaurant - very few people in the business work 8-hour days.
3 Likes
Regarding your thoughts on mark ups, I personally agree with you completely. Though a downtown rent may force the restaurant over that 2.5x threshold. But with the $500 and up, I feel taking more than a 2x really works against the restaurant. It slows inventory turnover and creates negative feelings in customers which is never good.
Regarding your comments on wine being retrieved and opened, you are 100% wrong.
Many somms are at the restaurant 4 hours before service. (EDIT as 30 minutes before shift is a bit crazy. I arrived at noon on Wednesday to Friday, and closed the restaurant. I also racked up a slew of parking tickets for Wednesdays as once in the door at noon, I rarely had any time to get out and renew the meter. On Saturday I arrived at 3:30 for a 5:00 service, and once a month we did a wine education for an hour on Saturday post lunch service. Mondays I was almost routinely at one trade event or another. I also hadnât included interactions with reps looking to bring producer X by with them to meet me and taste whether at the restaurant or somewhere else.)
Inventory does not restock itself, it does not reorder itself, it does not receive itself nor write a check to the distributor at whichever point they arrive during delivery hours (that the somm has to be there for) and it does not update the wine list when it sells out. Nor does it count itself at the end of the month. It doesnât reorganize itself as new wines are brought in to creat space and keep the cellar orderly.
Itâs a misconception that tasting and keeping current with everything available in the market is âfunâ. Industry tastings are work and usually on Monday, typically the sommeliers day off. Tasting with reps through the week is work, and very time consuming.
In most restaurants with a good list, the glasses are polished after every use, and rechecked before shift the next day. With 50-100 glasses depending upon the size of the restaurant this eats plenty of servers time.
Staff education is both costly and time consuming. Whether itâs monthly trainings, pre-shift talks and quizzes, or one on one training this takes a lot of time and energy. And the research done for this is often done by the somm off the clock.
Then thereâs breakage and returns. âIâm sorry that the 2019 Goodfellow Temperance Hill that the guy on Wine Berserkers loved is too reductive for you, let me suggest another option instead.â And if theyâre lucky the somm can sell it btg on the fly on a busy Friday and keep something close to the bottle margin (that of course takes time actually selling a non-menu listed wine). Plus keeping and returning flawed bottles, if possible, is also time consuming.
Last, thereâs the reality that for a percentage of diners seeing the list, finding their wine, and bringing it to them is what happens, but for many diners (at least in Portland) helping them find a selection that is a wine theyâll enjoy, goes with their food, and hits their pricepoint is a part of the job not really included in the âorder it and retreive it mentalityâ. And many of those diners really appreciate when a somm or server can help them understand a new region, a new producer, or whatever it is that they are not familiar with-like how important good glassware is.
And I really didnât cover somm stress over how to have and afford good glassware in an environment that is nearly universally not set up to prevent glassware from breaking.
In December at the Heathman, we would turn nearly $100,000 of inventory(2002 dollars). At an average of $28/bottle, glass pours less and high end more, thatâs more than 3500 bottles received, added to inventory, stocked, served, recycled.
No one in their right mind would argue that the evolution in raw ingredients of food at the restaurant is much more time consuming than what is done with wine. Least of all me, since I now do most of the evolution of the grapes to wine part. But itâs really a misrepresentation to state that wine is retrieved and served end of story.
10 Likes
Just fyi-Those are for washing bar glasses not polishing stems.
2 Likes
You need to scroll down the page. I wouldnât be surprised if one manufacturer made all these .
While we are in the ânitsâ department, there can be many averages. When all of the are taken together and averaged it is often called the Grand Mean.
Since weâre deep into thread drift, it would be cool if restaurants did this, even without being forced to by a customer declining a bottle.
Itâs Saturday night, the BTG offerings are the typical modest ones, bottles arenât moving off the wine list, tell the servers âwe are pulling a few bottles of these good mid-priced whites and reds out of the cellar and offering them to customers by the glass tonight, tell them about the wines and the special opportunity to get them by the glass.â
It would depend on the restaurant whether that would be worthwhile and what kinds of bottles to open, but I would think thatâs really cool, and it would seem special to some of the customers.
âBy the way, the sommelier has pulled a few bottles from the cellar and decanted them to serve to customers who want to order by the glass or by the half bottle tonight but have access to some more premium and distinctive wines than our normal by the glass offerings. The wines are __ and __ and they would be $__ and $__ by the glass. Iâve tried both of them, and they are really superb and a fun chance to have these or mix and match them without having to commit to a whole bottle of one.â
I could see that working both at a foodie/wine geek type restaurant but also at a mainstream chain steakhouse or Italian restaurant.
1 Like
To finish, this kind of number is often preceeded by theGreek letter mu in script form.
Andy Fortgang used to do this at Le Pigeon, and it was a great perk to dining there (at least for me). But size of the restaurant really makes a didference, as does whether the owner can support seeing a mid-level margin on the wines. I also wish more restaurants would do this, and in Portland it does happen a bit (though I wish the offerings were a bit less natty by natureâŚ).
Itâs a little harder now, IMO, as so many wines wholesale price simply outpace what is reasonable by the glass. 5 years ago the Lassaigne Les Vins de Montguex was $30 wholesale in Oregon. If you poured that for $18/glass on a Friday as a verbal, itâs doable for an excellent glass of Champagne, gets you your margin, and you stop opening bottles when you think the last one wonât sell out, so waste is minimal. It works. Same with 2016 Boudignon Anjou Blanc, $18 wholesale and you pour a couple of bottles at $12/glass($60 for 5 glasses) margin hits the downtown mark up and youâre good as long as you donât wind up with leftovers. Plus, you introduce customers to a great electric white wine.
2021 Anjou Blanc is $30 wholesale and takers for Loire white at $18 are there but quite a bit smaller population.
Lassaigne Les Vins de Montguex is $44/wholesale and at $25/glass more of a challenge to sell, and also probably where the customer expectations really move up as well. This is a lot less likely to be successful now.
That said, I kind of feel that this is where wine pairings with set menus evolved up out of this concept. And regardless of my view of the challenges, I still wish more restaurants would do this.
4 Likes
That has nothing to do with glass polishing machines.
Why are glass polishing machines such a good thingâŚand grape picking machines such an instrument of the Satanic One?
2 Likes
I went to a new restaurant in DC last night. Outpost of a popular LA restaurant and with a very nice âall Italianâ wine list. The prices were impressive. Looking at the BTG list where a $35 Pinot Grigio was quite prominent. There were 5 red wines BTG - $21, $26, $31, $33, $42 (the one Nebbiolo).
Given that we were splitting with friends who were civil servants, I thought perhaps I would look for value. Abruzzo, perhaps? They had 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007 of Pepe Montepulciano dâAbruzzo - all $900. So 4x wholesale? All are recent library releases, btw, so no one cellared these wines or collected them. The rest of the list was similarly priced. Tip and DC tax on top of all those 4-5x bottles.
At the end - this felt somewhat sad to me. The food was excellent, btw. The space was spectacular. I donât want to feel, however, that Iâm being taken advantage of - and thatâs how it felt.
If thatâs the direction, then it is no surprise to me (a hardened wino with the willingness to spend money on restaurant wine) to hear that US red wine sales are tanking.
Good luck if this is your model. You are going to need it.
13 Likes
True. But, it was a response to a prevous statements about averagesâŚ
I mean, you went to an expense account restaurant in an expense account town and were surprised at the expense account pricing? Why wouldnât you go to one of Peter Pastanâs restaurants which have exceptional and well priced lists and are local gems?
1 Like
Mu is the theoretical population mean. Grand mean is not a word that anyone I know uses, but pooled mean would be recognizable.
Ainât that the truth. Weâve reduced our mark-ups everywhere to try to combat this. The other thing is that WBers really only want things they already recognize (and are probably allocated) at a low margin. Really, the only thing to do as a restauranteur is to realize the people posting here are not the clients that keep your doors open.
For the record, I stand by my wine list and use a decelerating exponential for pricing.
1 Like