How can you train your staff to recommend wine pairings?

No matter what any restaurant or club F&B director or sommelier has tried, a very tiny percentage have managed to keep their staff on top of their wine game. Sales of wine are suffering and costing establishment huge lost revenue. New wines are coming in all the time, staff churn is happening faster than ever, and the sommelier does not have time to train and keep running around repeating the same thing over and over again on the floor. So the vicious circle continues. Restaurants that supplement their programs with instant automated wine knowledge distribution with on demand pairing recommendations technology their staff can use on their own mobile at the table or in the staff room or on the bus to work, have the edge. Problem solved.

The only way your staff can be trained to sell pairings that enhance a dining experience is to have someone with that knowledge to train them, using your wine list and menu. If you don't have such a person, hire a somm for a day. It will pay for itself in the first month.

Obviously churn is an issue but I think you need to bake it into your operating plan to have the team regularly (at least weekly) taste wines. Tasting (with education) is the only way to build knowledge. Employees will typically fall into two groups that you need to identify and play to: 1) Those that have an interest in wine and want to learn, and 2) Those that care less about wine but see wine as a route to better tips A bottle, or two, of wine can add 50%-200+% to the bill and being able to help a customer pick out a wine they will like also increases repeat business and word of mouth marketing, both are near priceless. Net result: increased spend per head and restaurant experience. I call that a Win-Win scenario!

Communication is Key - 1st speak with the Chef's. then FOH management 2nd only if approved by BOH 1st. -thanks Roger also for the insight.

The most important aspect of wine education is experience. If you allow your staff to have an experience with the wines you’re asking them to sell, they will be able to speak intimately about what their experience was. It’s that simple. Giving servers the chance to learn what the typical markers for different varietals and regions are is vastly more impactful than giving them tech sheets to memorize and study.

Once you have figured out the wines that go with dishes on you menu, each server gets a copy of the info to use. Most important is the why of the pairing is recommended so the customer understands. And do regular preservice tastings with those pairings. Selling what you know is easy, selling an unknown is a disaster.

Most large wine suppliers will also gladly do basic training with your team on the wines, varieties, regions, terroir etc and give the confidence from an industry expert in the wines you have and dishes on your menu they would compliment. You don’t have to crate all training yourself you just have to facilitate training from areas already willing and able to compliment your business needs

Virtually every response in the other sections have some variation of staff training on wine / food pairing. All well and good, but that assumes the GM or BM or chef or bartender actually knows enough and is a good teacher and motivator. That's where the problem is. If you had that person on staff there would be no problem in the first place. If there's a problem, that person is not on staff! So hire someone who knows for a down and dirty training session. One day and it's done.