The National Restaurant Association (NRA) starts on Saturday in Chicago; the largest food service trade association in the world —supporting over 500,000 restaurant businesses.
We’ve sent our Managing Director (Dick Berresford), Sales Director (David Boxall) and Operations Director (Tom Berresford) to the show this year with our team at Bermar America to unveil the new branded range of products for the first time in America. If you’re a customer and you’re visiting the show, we’d love to hear your experiences with Le Verre de Vin. If you’re interested in really releasing the profits in your wine list but haven’t quite figured out how yet, come over to stand 3976.
We’re taking a quick look at some of our amazing customers over in the US that use Le Verre de Vin to offer an unbeatable wine by the glass service.
Award winning restaurants such as the Elbow Room in Fresno, California, and Albany’s Yono’s Restaurant have invested in top tier wine preservation systems, Le Verre de Vin, designed to remove the right amount of air from the bottle for still wines, or add in the precise amount of CO2 into Champagnes and sparkling wines to keep them fresh for up to 21 days, reseal, and store at the correct temperature, pour after pour.
“You are paying thirty dollars a glass. It better be served and preserved properly,” says Michael Shirinian, owner of the Elbow Room, which boasts names like Peter Michael, Caymus, and Kistler as a by the glass selection. He notes that it is exciting for guests to find a place that offers such a premium selection, but that this means that the stakes are now very high to leave that customer satisfied. And it’s not just about getting fewer complaints, he points out – a silent customer does not equal a happy one – but about fostering an atmosphere where customers are comfortable opening the discussion. Worse, for him, than customer dissatisfaction is a guest who is not certain whether the fault was in the wine itself or on their own taste buds. Dissatisfaction is far simpler to rectify than doubt.
With the Elbow Room’s preservation system, servers can extinguish any lingering doubt and cut right to the chase. With very little room for human error, servers can be confident that what they are offering tastes how it was intended from the first pour to the last.
“If you want to really consider yourself precise,” Shirinian explains, “you want the system that is taking the right amount of air out so that the wine is preserved at its peak. Having used three types of dispense systems over the years, I finally found Le Verre de Vin. It works better than anything I have ever used before.”
Multi-award winning restaurant owner and sommelier Dominick Purnomo agrees. He channels the late musical icon, Prince, when it comes to taking responsibility for customer satisfaction. “I’d rather give people what they need rather than just what they want,” he quotes.
For Purnomo, this means staying abreast with the latest wine preservation technology. He purchased his preservation system when his restaurant, Yono’s, moved locations, ten years ago, so it has been with him since opening day. “I knew that if I was going to offer a world class selection of wines by the glass, I had to have a system to protect my investment,” he says. This also sends a very clear message to potential customers: When it comes to quality, this place is ahead of the game.
Precision and quality are crucial elements, but a certain conspicuous attitude also plays a role. At the Elbow Room, visibility is key to moving and promoting wine as well as customer education. Shirinian has found that the presence of the preservation system itself, in full view at the bar, becomes a conversation starter between customer and server. When the wine is ordered, the bartender produces the bottle and removes the resealable still wine or Champagne stopper. The wine is poured, the stopper put back on, then inserted into the preservation system, which activates automatically, resealing the bottle to the controlled level.
“A green light comes on and that means it is perfectly sealed,” Shirinian explains. “The guests will see that and they will start asking, ‘wow, what is that?’ It is a conversation piece that the customers have embraced.”
Today’s guests now expect a strong by the glass list, whether it is still wine, Champagne or sparkling wines. Customers can no longer be expected to drink anything less than the very best. The wine preservation systems that we develop here at Bermar International meet these high expectations.
So, if you want to learn more come and see us on stand 3976 at NRA in Chicago. We’ll have our full range of products with us along with a friendly team primed and ready to answer any questions you may have.
