The Ten-Minute Manager�s Guide to ... Wine-Service Training

By Derek Gale, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 5/15/2007

WITH consumers increasingly interested in and knowledgeable about wine, operators have an opportunity to both please and educate guests. Seizing that potential begins with effective wine-service training.

Whether at an upscale fast-casual restaurant or high-end steakhouse, staff members need to be comfortable in their knowledge of an operation’s wine list to make ordering wine equally comfortable for guests. With comprehensive training programs in place, any concept that offers wine should see sales increase.

"Restaurateurs sometimes forget that wine sales are a fantastic thing for check averages," says Belinda Chang, corporate director of wine and spirits for Wheeling, Ill.-based Cenitare Restaurants. "People who drink wine spend more than people who drink cocktails. It’s a great revenue booster and a great way for servers to make more money."

No Secrets

Philippe The Original, a family-style restaurant in Los Angeles where the specialty French dip sandwich served on a paper plate sells for $5.15 to $6.25 depending on the meat, features an extensive wine-by-the-glass list, with 25 options ranging from $5 to $15 for a 6-ounce pour.

"We’re just kind of having fun with it," says partner and General Manager Richard Binder. "People appreciate being able to get a lamb sandwich and a glass of our wine for $14 a glass. People know they will pay $25 or $30 a glass for [our brands] somewhere else."

Asked how he trains the shop’s counter staff to be knowledgeable about wine, he says, "If you’re looking for training secrets, you’re not going to find them here. We just try to keep it simple."

That has meant offering seminars, at which staffers get to taste the wines, about every four months. And the few times each year when he brings in a new wine, he simply briefs everyone on its characteristics. Binder says the restaurant’s managers get involved and try to help the counter staff with the wine.

Even so, he notes that at any given time, someone on the service staff may not even know the differences between whites and reds. "Sometimes English is limited when we have [substitute servers]," he says. Fortunately, the restaurant has a menu board where wines are listed by number; customers simply order by number and the corresponding pricing is in point-of-sale machines.

Binder notes that with a selection of 25 wines by the glass, Philippe’s likely borders on carrying too many. "Eighteen to 20 would probably be better," he says. One thing Philippe’s cannot do, he adds, is offer two wines from the same vintner "because staff gets them confused."

Wine and Dine

Wine-Service Training Some say fine dining is incomplete without fine wine, and the philosophy at Heathrow, Fla.-based Ruth’s Chris Steak House is that wine can enhance the dining experience. That’s why at every Ruth’s Chris location, there is at least one employee with a healthy amount of wine knowledge.

The chain has put some 200 workers through a certified sommelier program in the last 21⁄2 years and now is looking to put all service staff and bartenders through a Certified Specialists of Wine program.

"It’s important to have the knowledge and ability to converse with guests," says Ruth’s Chris Sommelier Kevin Boyer. "Guests want to be led and feel comfortable."

Another big part of the steakhouse chain’s training program is listing at least four food-and-wine pairings a week in all restaurants. In addition to letting servers find pairings that they like and can recommend to guests, this allows staff to get comfortable with various wines—including high-end ones—and put descriptions into their own words, Boyer says.

The chain also uses role-playing at staff meetings to build comfort levels with wine terminology and with handling different types of guest interactions.

Boyer notes that all information in the company’s wine-service training is simply a tool and that depending on how it’s used, may or may not be valuable to diners. For that reason, part of the training is to educate servers on what is good information to use with guests and what doesn’t work.

"We’re also training our next level of customer," Boyer says. "Our employees are going to be our guests—if not already, then sometime soon. That’s a big motivator."

Pop Quiz

For Quince at the Homestead, a new contemporary American restaurant in Evanston, Ill., wine-service training comes down to two things: taste and basics.

"In terms of knowledge, tasting is simply mandatory," Wine Director Joe Ziomek says. "You can’t learn how wine tastes or how wine works with food, how wines are unique, without tasting them and talking about it."

And as for basics, Ziomek says, the most important part of understanding wine is understanding how it is made. "We started from scratch with our staff," he says. "We had a good experience having a meeting where we went over the details, the different decisions made during the process and how nature’s effects change how wine tastes."

Ziomek says he’s lucky to have a focused group at Quince, but even so, he occasionally finds that employees have too much fun with wine training. "If we feel that they’re losing focus, the assistant manager and I have put together pop quizzes," he says. "It’s not like they’re getting graded, but it quickly puts waiters in their place if they are not internalizing this knowledge. If you get 50% and we say, ‘Hey, these are questions you really need to know the answers to,’ it’s a quick wake-up call."

Equal Opportunity

Wine-Service Training Belinda Chang, corporate director of wine and spirits for Wheeling, Ill.-based Cenitare Restaurants—which operates Osteria di Tramonto and Tramonto’s Steak & Seafood in the Westin Chicago North Shore hotel in Wheeling—has worked with wine lists and servers in restaurants with check averages ranging from $20 to $250. She says her approach to wine training is the same no matter the wine’s price point.

"A lot of other wine educators miss the boat by being too wine-list specific," says Chang. "I feel the correct approach is to give all servers at all levels the tools to understand what makes wines taste like certain things."

She begins with a lesson on how wine is made (including an explanation of how vintners’ techniques affect taste) and then gives servers a baseline wine vocabulary.

Chang does tastings with servers too. "When working with younger servers, I think it’s very much about smelling," she says. "And giving them a great understanding of wine vocabulary—what does it mean for a guest to say, ‘I love sauvignon blanc’ versus ‘I love chardonnay’?"

At Cenitare, all front-of-house personnel attend one hour of wine training per week. "I’m a teaching machine," Chang says. "We do a lot of wine education. I’m pretty pleased with the number of wine geeks we’ve been able to generate."

Hot Tips

Ken Collura, sommelier at Andina Restaurant in Portland, Ore., tries to make wine education entertaining, especially for those who are new to it. "I always add humor and travel snippets—information about the wine’s region," he says. At the same time, he stresses the basics. "I don’t think it’s important to get fancy, he says, "unless you’re working in a three-star-Michelin restaurant."

Collura focuses on ensuring that staffers attend to simple things such as showing the label correctly to the host and properly opening and pouring (he usually pours in a clockwise direction for tables of five or more and pours women first for tables of four or fewer). "If you want to serve wine properly, these are mandatory," Collura says.

Collura’s other demand is that everyone working the floor know the traits of every wine on the by-the-glass list. He holds once-monthly classes at which he pours five or six by-the-glass wines and has the group taste and discuss each.