Ordering + Beverage List Building
Ethos Essentials
Environmentally & Socially Sustainable
Breadth & Depth of Selection
Superior Quality
CH Experience
Clean & Precise Service
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Unpretentious
At Times, Fun
Ever Learning
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How product gets to Common House:
After Prohibition, the government put in a ‘safeguard’ that made it difficult to easily buy alcohol. The US has what we call the Three Tiered System.
The first tier is only allowed to sell to the second tier.
The second tier is only allowed to buy from the first tier and sell to the third tier.
And the third tier (us: restaurants & retailers) is only allowed to buy from the second tier and sell to consumers.
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If you are not signed up, sign up now and create an account. Then bookmark the page.
In Virginia only, you will also need access to the ABC franchise page, to find the distributor of any wine that is listed with a distributor not on sevenfifty. Bookmark the page.
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Day-to-Day Wine Buying (5 areas)
Pre-planned:
Programming
Private Events
Wine Club
Wine list/restaurant:
BTG + Top Sellers
Fine Wine
Get into a rhythm
Use Inventory:
After you take inventory, place a large order based off of what the inventory indicates your needs are.
Small restaurants are on a weekly schedule, at CH, you need to think more monthly.
Schedule:
On the 2nd or 3rd of the month, place the orders you think you will need for that month. Consider the 5 areas: programs, wine club, events, BTG, & fine wines.
Around the 15th, reassess. Top up anything you need and consider events that were booked last minute.
BEO Meeting:
Literally use the BEO meeting to fill in your bev orders for the next two weeks with event needs and programming. You will save so much time.
Create and use a spreadsheet with upcoming orders.
Events:
Nurture a working relationship with the Director of Events at your house and regularly review the event selections. Help the event team streamline this for you.
Go over the selections quarterly.
A poor event beverage selection process can cause inventory chaos.
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Imagine you bring $1,000 each week to your home. But you spend $1,000 each week on going out to eat.
You might not have enough left over for essential bills.Likewise, if monthly sales were $15,000 in wine, and you spent $15,000 in wine, you could really disrupt business finances. Some consequences could be bounced paychecks, unpaid vendors, etc.
You want to manage cash flow in such a way that the accounting department is never worried about the beverage program. We get budgets, but our budgets change with sales. A good rule of thumb is:
Spend one third of the previous week’s sales.
So, if you sold $5K in wine last week, you should feel comfortable spending $1.67K in wine this week. This will keep wine COGS at 30ish%.
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It is important to say YES to allocations when possible.
Allocations are ways for us to distinguish our wine offerings, and make our wine lists noteworthy and award worthy. When a wine list gets press, we then get a bunch of free advertising, more members join, and our business and jobs are successful. Plus, we get to try many of the greatest wines on the planet. (yay!)
Exceptions:
Some allocations we pass on, with purpose. But most allocations we want!
If you do not know if we should accept our allocation, please forward it to Erin (OpCo Bev Director) and she’ll give her two cents.
Supply chain graphic
The Rep Relationship
Treat the rep relationship with great care.
Over your career, you may work with the same rep for decades, longer than many other relationships last.
Working with Reps
Wine reps depend on a certain amount of volume from each account. If you ‘portfolio surf,’ (or buy a little bit from many reps) you will spread around the $$, while also having a wine list that is a moving target with no regularity.
Instead of buying from everyone who tastes with you, or swings by to taste, carefully consider the contents of their portfolio, and select about 4-5 distributors that will be your main bread and butter. Give most of your business to this core group. If you spread the love between too many distributors, you will not reach a sales volume to be critically important to any particular distributor, and you will not get help from any of them when you need it.
It is best to funnel your budget to the reps who really work the hardest for you to bring you the best wines for your program, who show up for tastings, and who ‘get’ what you are doing.
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Honor Appointments
If they cold-call, try to accommodate, but be honest and upfront if you cannot taste
ALWAYS USE email so there is a record of what was ordered - no phone calls or verbal orders. Always have a paper trail both of you can reference to minimize mistakes.
Be clear about your boundaries and how you operate, so they know what to expect. Ex: “I may not always respond to emails but I always read the pdf portfolios when you send me.”
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Take any longer than 20 minutes to taste; you have things to do and so do they.
Not buy anything if you have taken up tons of their time and energy. If you don’t like the wines or don’t intend to buy, be upfront and make it quick so they can make a sale elsewhere. Ex: “ I don’t have a budget this week, but let’s taste through real quick for the future.”
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Order by the case unless it is super expensive or you’re on a really tight budget. Think in 6s if you need to, but no less.
Picking tons of mixed cases is annoying at the warehouse, increases chances of mistakes/breakage, and you miss the case deal and end up with higher COGS.
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Only buy the selections in the bag. Consider the entire portfolio and purchase according to all the options available to you.
If you only buy the samples in the bag, you will end up with the same wine list as everyone else in town.
Don’t over-imbibe -- it’s unprofessional and you may lose respect of your team and of the rep.
Don’t create emergencies with your unpreparedness.
Try NOT to get in orders after cutoff. Instead, just plan ahead.
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Offer a spit cup to everyone
Offer a tasting glass to everyone
If it’s hot out, offer everyone water
Get your notebook out and seem interested
If other buyers are with you (at a winemaker luncheon, for example) don’t ever talk about how much you like a particular wine. By the end of the lunch, another buyer could send an email and buy it all out from under you.