"Can I try the Pinot Noir?"
"Can I taste the Cookies & Cream?"
There are few food and beverage items which customers can sample before selecting them from a menu, but frozen yogurt and wine undoubtedly fall into this category. In recent years, self-service yogurt shops have exploded in popularity. Despite living doors down from a Pinkberry, I spent far too much money at self-serve, pay-by-weight frozen yogurt at shops as a basic 20-something in New York because I preferred the the ability to taste every flavor and the experience of shoveling my own sprinkles.
Thinking about "next big things" in wine, I wonder how a self-service wine bar might fare (pun intended). Machines could have settings by the ounce for tastings, a glass, a double glass, a carafe or a bottle, or the bar could charge by weight like self-serve yogurt shops (this is how they get you!). Customers could fill a glass, carafe or bottle, or opt into a tasting first - paying upfront for their self-designed (or a recommended) flight and pressing a "Tasting" button on the wine tap that releases a small, tasting portion.
I'm sure there would be regulatory issues (cough, Tierney, Natalie, Seaver)... but with Millenials' familiarity with self-serve technologies, the timing seems right. Self-service is convenient and fun, eliminates wait time, gives the customer control, alleviates the stress and pressure on bartending staff when there are 3 bartenders and 30 people at the bar waiting for a drink (as well as reducing overhead and staff costs generally), and allows for easier inventory management.
Similar to the pop-up Moet experience in Aspen that Professor Rapp mentioned, one place to start could even be pop-up, self-serve experiences owned and operated as marketing experiments by wineries like Gallo with multiple brands in their portfolios.
Interesting idea - I also like the concept of giving millennials the opportunity to try expensive wines in small amounts. (The retailer would have to hook the wine up to a tap, so it wouldn't go bad after opening.) Even though this model eliminates the romance around uncorking bottles, my suspicion is many people would nevertheless be eager to sample a $200 bottle of wine for, say, $15. The retailer takes a mark-up, and perhaps the tasters end up bottle-purchasers later in life.
ReplyDeleteI've been to a few self-serve wine bars--there are actually a bunch opening across the country! They're a pretty interesting concept because they offer the possibility of a tasting room type experience or a typical wine bar experience. I even came across a self-serve wine bar in Bordeaux that offers 1oz tastings of the Chateau Lafite Rothschild. Definitely worth a try if you are ever there!
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