What liquor distributors do you use?
- Rivers and Rittergut (wine bar) use 5-9 distributors: Southern-Glazers, Breakthrough Beverage, Tenzing, Wirtz, Heritage Wines, Maverick, Rootstock, Lakeshore Beverage, and Windy City.
- Rivers uses only 1-2 wine distributors regularly but Rittergut (wine bar) uses 7 or so to get variety and also more access to craft beers.
Who chooses your wines?
- Wines used to be chosen in blind tastings but now manager or bar manager select. Blind tasting became too time intensive.
Do wholesalers add value to your business?
- Wholesalers save time but my dad is skeptical of the motives behind their recommendations at times, particularly with South American and European wines. I pressed him on why those regions in particular and he says he's more confident of his knowledge of the quality of American wine regions.
Other fun info:
- Rivers and Rittergut (wine bar) just started working with Bevinco, a wine and liquor inventory service provider. Reps from the company come either daily or once a week to weigh wine/liquor bottles and check inventory. This has helped reduce and prevent theft in their business.
Amazing that your dad is in the business! Working in bars his summer, I saw a definite trend towards and simultaneous skepticism of analytics companies like Bevinco. Do you know what made your father decide to go with a third party inventory system?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how robust their selection process was but I think the decision to bring in an inventory service provider had to do with continued theft.
DeletePlease thank Papa Cerf for his time! I find it interesting the trade-off he's bringing up of time vs quality/trust: blind tastes seem fair but are too time-consuming, and wholesalers might save time but may not provide trusted recommendations.
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