Wine & Spirits - April 2013 - (Page 8)
fined & filtered
On-Premise Trends
off the iPad
By Joshua Greene
Just as information technologists see the demise of the newspaper as inevitable, purveyors of
digital wine list applications share a similar sense that the future is on their side.
Jennifer Martucci is on her second tech company, having woken up one morning in a hotel
room with an idea. “I thought it would be great to roll over and push a button and have the
coffee come,” she says. Frustrated by what she saw as an inefficient process, she developed the
technology for an in-room tablet to streamline the ordering process.
At a friend’s restaurant, a conversation about
ordering gave her a parallel idea. Her friend’s
consultant told her he had a client who
wanted to put his wine list on a Kindle. The
client turned out to be Tony May of SD26,
and Martucci convinced May to shift the
idea toward a tablet with a “more of a robust,
interactive guest experience.” She set out to
develop a system that allowed restaurateurs
to customize and control navigation and user
interface. Today, her company, Incentient,
claims clients in 17 countries with a current
focus in Las Vegas, where her tablet allows
restaurants to offer their list in up to 150
languages.
Josh Hermsmeyer, who built a name in the
wine industry as PinotBlogger, chronicling
the development of his Sonoma County
vineyard online, has also rolled out a digital
wine list platform. Hermsmeyer says the idea
for Labrador Omnimedia and its Tastevin
wine list came up while he was in Hawaii,
on vacation with John Jordan, of Jordan
Vineyards (now on the Labrador Omnimedia
board). They were talking about the early
digital wine list at The French Laundry,
wondering how a tablet wine list might be
strengthened if suppliers could add labels
“While I was writing this
application for hotels, I got
talking to a friend at his
restaurant about how guests
should be able to order from
the table. So I started to mock
something up for that, same
as room service.”
—Jennifer Martucci,
Incentient
8
WINE & SPIRITS
APRIL 2013
and stories to it.
He built a team to design software and
services for tablet wine lists. In addition
to the efficiencies and sales strategies the
software offers, he believes the very newness
of the technology helps restaurants move
more wine. “If you are on the fence about
whether or not to order wine and someone
drops an iPad in your lap,” he says, “you’re
probably going to look at it. Guests almost
always play with it. Once they are engaged,
they may order wine.”
The market is packed with contenders,
from Uncorkd to Uptown Networks, accu
bar, vinipad and eSommelier. They all offer
varied search and inventory management
capabilities, all hoping, as Josh Saunders
of Uncorkd points out, to convince res
taurateurs that they will see increased sales
by moving to digital lists. “It’s for people who
otherwise wouldn’t order wine, because they
are less intimidated, getting a chance to use
technology to browse the menu,” he says.
Not all sommeliers are excited by the
technology, but while the debate continues
over the relative merits of digital and ink
andpaper lists, the proliferation of iPad
lists and other digital platforms is effecting
one major change. By aggregating data
from many client accounts, purveyors of
this technology may soon be in a position
to study wine trends onpremise, a segment
that Nielsen and other market analysts have
yet to break. Asked point blank if he had
plans to move into this space, Hermsmeyer
at Labrador Omnimedia said it was part of
the business plan. “We have the ability to
aggregate and anonymize the data from our
clients, to sell or to share. We believe we will
be the Nielsen for onpremise. That was our
driving idea from the beginning. We’re not
only interested in what gets sold in, but what
gets sold out.” Hermsmeyer hopes to answer
questions such as: What sells on Valentine’s
Day? Or: What impact does a wine’s position
on a list have on sales? “Because we have this
rich descriptive data, we can look at how
unoaked chardonnays are doing, because
they are described that way. Otherwise,
that would all have to be entered by hand,”
Hermsmeyer notes.
For now, the random distribution and
limited range of these firms’ clients limits the
statistical relevance of the data, but as these
companies strengthen their positions in the
market, one will likely emerge as a major
information source. To better understand
where things are today, and what may be
possible in the future, we asked people
working in the digital space to run some data
on restaurant wine sales, and offer the results
on page 63.
We present these data points as an
example of what may be possible in the
future, as technology makes the restaurant
wine market more transparent. And to
balance our own coverage of trends at the
highest level of dining culture, we’ll continue
to report on these developments; we hope
to incorporate this new data into our
restaurant poll reporting as it becomes more
representative and available. n
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - April 2013
Wine & Spirits - April 2013
Editor’s Note
Happenings
Contents
Fined & Filtered The Digital List
Cognac: The New Wave
The Funky Bits: Alice Feiring on terroir expression in Comté
Pouilly-Fuissé Premier Cru
Pinot Noir’s Nerve Center
Where Tuscany Meets Liguria
Insider Chianti
Where to Eat & Drink in New York
24th Annual Restaurant Poll
Introduction
US Pinot Noir
Austria
Portugul Reds
White Burgundy
Loire
Tuscan Reds
US New Releases
Imported New Releases
Extreme Values
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