Grapes and Growth: Keys to a great wine program

Description

Grapes and Growth: Keys to a Great Wine Program

A great restaurant wine program doesn’t happen by accident—it’s built with intention.

Grapes and Growth is designed for restaurant owners, managers, and beverage leaders who want to move beyond a “decent” wine list and create a program that truly works—for the business, the staff, and the guest. This course breaks down the essential building blocks of a successful wine program and shows you how to align them into a cohesive, profitable system.

We start with a fundamental question: who are you really serving? Understanding the gap between your current customers and your ideal customers is the foundation for every decision that follows—from selection to pricing to communication. From there, we challenge common assumptions about guest behavior and explore how much responsibility falls on you—not the customer—to guide the experience.

You’ll learn how to use real numbers to evaluate performance, move past guesswork, and make smarter decisions about your wine list. We take a close look at pricing strategy—what works, what doesn’t, and how to structure a list that balances value, perception, and profitability. Along the way, we address one of the most overlooked drivers of success: staff training. You’ll walk away with practical frameworks for running quick, effective trainings that actually stick—and understand when outside voices (like sales reps) help or hurt that process.

We also dig into the realities of buying and selling wine in today’s market. Should you lean into popular categories—or avoid them? What’s the risk of relying too heavily on your “best sellers”? And what happens at the end of a wine’s lifecycle on your list? These are the decisions that quietly shape the success—or failure—of a program over time.

This course isn’t theoretical. It’s built for the realities of running a restaurant: limited time, limited resources, and constant pressure to perform. The goal is simple—give you the tools to create a wine program that is intentional, trainable, and profitable, while still delivering a better guest experience.

What You’ll Learn

• How to define and align with your ideal customer
• Why guiding the guest experience is your responsibility
• How to use sales data to make smarter wine decisions
• Practical pricing strategies that balance value and profit
• How to run fast, effective staff trainings that actually work
• The role (and limits) of distributor involvement
• How to navigate popular wines without losing your identity
• Avoiding the “best seller” trap
• Building a smart end-of-inventory strategy

The Outcome

You’ll walk away with a clearer vision of what your wine program should be—and a practical roadmap to get there. Not just a better list, but a better system behind it.