Why consumers are everything

Understanding guests is the key to successful restaurateuring in these god-awful times

If you want to sell more wine, do not pass Go, go straight to the only guideposts that matter: Consumers. Or guests, as we call them in the trade.

How do guests most likely to order wine think? What exactly do they want? The following is a summary of my observations accumulated after nearly five decades working in the wine industry as both a restaurateur and an industry insider:

Consumers drive the entire wine industry

It’s starts with this fundamental concept: Consumer behavior shapes everything having to do with the wine industry—what grapes are planted, what styles are made, what gets written about in wine media, what sells most in the market. You might have heard that the grape growing and wine production industries are in the middle of a horrendous downturn at the moment. It’s because of consumers. When they start drinking less wine, the entire industry trembles, and rolls over. It’s that simple.

Although much of the industry believes they “control” what average customers buy and consume, the reality is the opposite. The industry always follows consumers. Growers, producers, restaurants, retailers, media and marketing all adapt to what the consumer specifically demands. In other words, markets follow consumer tastes, not the opinions of professionals or experts in the trade or industry.

Consumers are not stupid

Consumers are not uninformed, nor are they easily manipulated. Many of them, of course, end up buying mediocre wines, but that’s because this is what most of the industry still shoves down their throats within the price brackets they want to shop. The problem is not consumer intelligence but what the industry chooses to sell. When you think of it, no wonder many consumers are rebelling, and responding by drinking less wine. We’re not satisfying them. We’re mostly insulting their intelligence.

Ergo, if you wish to sell higher quality wine to your guests⏤thereby raising the quality of their experience in your restaurant⏤do not sell them crap. It’s your restaurant, so you can control what they drink by not putting crap on your wine list. Focus strictly on choices that maximize your cuisine, your restaurant’s theme or philosophy, and your guests’ overall experience. Serve wines worthy of your guests’ demanding tastes.

People drink what they like—not what experts say they should

Consumers, God bless ‘em, simply do not think about what “experts” say, especially when they are sitting down in a restaurant trying to have a good time. Personal taste trumps professional authority every time. Yes, they are cognizant of trends (they’re not that unaware) and might lean towards the latest wines because they might doubt their own taste. But in the end, on a sensory level, the vast majority of guests end up following their own preferences. They order what they know they like.

The trick to working with that basic behavioral pattern? Identify those sensory preferences, and all the trends floating in the air, and select wines that meet those needs while also having a higher percentage chance of complementing your cuisine and meeting your restaurant’s objectives. It’s a matter of making what they like one and the same as what you want to sell them. Do not be a passive participant in this nightly process. Play a proactive part of what your customers want while taking your restaurant to a higher level in terms of business and wowing guests.

Consumers want variety—even when contradictory

No one has ever been able to put consumers in one box. That’s the paradox of wine demand that’s been with us forever. They want wines that are sweet and fruity, or dry and austere; light and easy, or big and bombastic; super-cheap or ridiculously expensive; big names or unknown names; rare, natural or artisanal wines and predictable, popular ubiquitous wines. They want it all.

While consumers will always opt for a wide spectrum of choices, the trick, again, is to offer the full range your guests are comfortable with while avoiding anything, in any category, that does not promote good taste at all. It’s your restaurant, for Pete’s sake. If you were the chef, would you deliberately prepare a lousy dish? Why would you serve a lousy or so-so wine, even if “popular”? The best strategy, as always, is implemented at the selection level. Give the guests what they want, but do it by making good choices for your wine list that fulfill an optimal quality level. Wines that knock it out of the park and make you look good. You have to draw the line for your guests, not expect them to do that for themselves while sitting in the dining room, trying to decipher your wine list.

Good restaurants do not serve boring or crappy wines, no matter what the type, no matter what you read in a magazine or what your distributor friends might say. Give them the diversity they want, but do not put sub-standard wines, not even one, on your list—period.

Consumer tastes evolve… quickly!

If you’re in it for the long haul, this is something you should never forget: What you successfully sell today won’t be as successful five or ten years from now. Even a year or two makes a difference. You have to keep up with consumers’ long established record of changing their tastes over time. It never ends. My perspective, granted, is very broad, going back to the 1970s when I first began as a full-time sommelier. During that, to cite a few examples, I’ve watched consumers evolve from...

• Jug wines → varietal wines

• Fruity White Zinfandel → bone dry rosés

• A few dominant grape preferences → diverse global varieties

• Conventional farming → organic, sustainable and now regenerative wines

• Varietal wines → wines “of place,” or terroir

Point being, consumer preferences for brands and wine types never remain static. Tastes change a lot more quickly than you think. If you don’t think so, it’s because you’re not paying attention⏤which probably isn’t doing your restaurant any good.

Generational differences matter

Be wily about generations. Baby boomers, who have sustained most of the premium wine and fine dining industries for decades, are now coming up on 80 years old. They’re dying, not drinking as much, not getting out to eat nearly as often, even though they still wield most of the market’s disposable income. Just recently, Millennials (today, 30 to 46 years old) have become the largest wine consuming cohort, which you’re probably noticing as we speak.

Make no mistake, though, while still the least significant generation insofar as wine consumption and restaurant expenditure, Generation Z (13-28) will become more and more important in the coming years, even if they represent just 5% or 10% of current sales. You do not want to miss on that 5% to 10% of sales. Not in this industry, where losses of just 1% or 2% can mean the difference between sustaining business or going out of business.

Bottom line: Pay attention to even your smallest customer base. Don’t ignore, more specifically speaking, the youngest generations’ preference for wines that prioritize their distinct personal values such as community, authenticity, “natural” or low intervention attributes. These are just as important as the big name brands and standard varietals preferred by your oldest guests. And besides, these exact same preferences are shaping how commercial wine is being produced and marketed as we speak. The youngest cohorts’ tastes will not become any less important over time.

Circling back to the golden mean (consumers!)

Understand your guests. Consumers will remain autonomous, diverse, as predictable as they are unpredictable, and they will always set the trends we are all forced to follow. Rather than passive recipients of industry messaging, they are the real force that determines what wines sell, what wines don’t. While they may not look like the ones holding all the power, while sitting in their dining room chairs waiting to be regaled and amused, inside they carry brains that are invariably more perceptive than you suspect.

Caveat venditor (let the seller beware).

Even though many of your guests appear to be happy with predictable or even mediocre wines, chances are they are only that way because that’s what you’re pushing on them. If your wine list, like your food menu, eschews originality and sticks to status quo, you’re not giving them much choice, are you? If you wish to elevate your restaurant apart from others, you have to put in more work than the others.

This we also know, after all these years: Consumers are always a lot more sophisticated than you think when it comes to what they choose, and are quite capable of embracing new, exciting, innovative concepts. If you are working in a restaurant with highly competitive cuisine prepared by uber-talented chefs, you should already know that. Guests don’t flock to restaurants offering the same dreary fare as every other restaurant on your block, in your city, your state, the country. This goes for wine as much as it does for food.

If anything, the overall wine market always follows consumer preferences, not the other way around. Ignore those long established patterns at your peril!