Tag Archives: restaurant sales

Winebits 511: Frey Vineyards, customer service, restaurant sales

Frey WineyardsThis week’s wine news: U.S. organic wine may have suffered a serious setback when Frey Vineyards burned, plus customers want top-notch service and more bad news for restaurants

• Organic wine: Frey Vineyards, destroyed in last week’s wine country wildfires, was one of the leading organic producers in the country, one of only two or three with national distribution. Its destruction deals another setback to organic wine, which has never been as popular as other organic food products. It accounts for less than five percent of U.S. wine sales; that compares to the 13 percent market share for organic fruits and vegetables. I’ve written a lot about why organic wine does so badly in the marketplace, but the best explanation is so simple I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of it. Says Tyler Rodrigue, an organic viticulture consultant in northern California. “Consumers assume that wine, by its very nature, is pure and natural to begin with. Ask most consumers, and they don’t equate a vineyard with a factory farm the same way they do for other products. Vineyards are beautiful, and don’t look like a picture of a factory farm.”

• It’s all about customer service: The Wine Curmudgeon is the son and grandson of retailers, so this study from a company that tracks on-line reviews called Trustpilot isn’t surprising. We want better service when we shop on-line, even more than cheap prices. Which is what I heard when the subject came up at the dinner table, which was more often than not. Says the report: “ ‘Price’ only shows up around in 4-5% of 1-star reviews and in 10% of 5-star reviews, significantly behind the top five most common words.” Why does this matter to wine retailers? What’s more confusing than buying wine? What other category requires service to find something to buy that is enjoyable? In other words, fake discounts and shelf talkers blaring 92 points aren’t enough. We want a person to answer our questions knowledgeably and intelligently.

• Restaurant sales continue to slump: How bad has the restaurant sales slump become? So bad that the people who parse the numbers are desperatley looking for silver linings. Throw out the hurricane states from this summer’s sales figures, and the decline in sales from month to month are less than two percent. Not much of a silver lining, is it? Or, as the chart with the story shows, same store sales have declined for 11 of the past 12 months. We’ve written about this on the blog many times, since poor restaurant sales numbers usually mean higher restaurant wine prices, as operators increase wine prices to make up for losing money elsewhere. No doubt this will continue to happen.

Winebits 456: Expensive wine, rose, restaurants

Expensive wineThis week’s wine news: A top critic gives up expensive wine, while rose gets mainstream seal of approval and restaurant slump continues

• No more: Andrew Jeffords, the long-time English wine critic, has declared most of the world’s great wine too expensive for him to taste: “The best wine is now unaffordable.” His point, much like the one I made at the same time, is that economic forces that have nothing to do with wine have priced the best labels out of the reach of all but the very rich. Plus, he says, his income has declined in comparison to the cost increases, making the wine even less affordable. It’s a fascinating analysis, and not just because one of the world’s most respected critics has called out the wine business – something his colleagues at the high end rarely do. He says wine prices are now as silly as sports salaries, using English football transfer fees as an example. I’ve emailed Jeffords, asking him to do a podcast so we can talk about this, and will keep you posted.

• Thank you, USA Today: The final seal of approval for rose has been given. USA Today, the U.S. national newspaper, has said that it’s not only OK to drink rose, but to drink expensive rose: “Once sneered at as too sweet, heavy and unsophisticated, the rise of rosé is now a decade old and still surging.” I mention this because once a trend gets noticed by USA Today, it has been a trend so long that even USA Today, which doesn’t pay much attention to wine, has to notice. In this case, the story mentions celebrity rose makers, rose on social media, expensive rose, and the Hamptons, What more do we need to know to get permission to drink it?

• Restaurants suffering: We’ve talked a lot here about how restaurant wine prices are helping tp boost sagging restaurant profits, and this from Nations Restaurant News is part of that: The number of people eating out has declined for six of the first eight months this year, while the average check has increased. In other words, fewer people are paying more for dinner, and that may include all that overpriced wine. This doesn’t seem like a good way to run a business, and one analyst agreed, saying the impact of that process is underwhelming.