Wine Enthusiast Magazine
SubscribeWhen the Wine List Lies, What Does Restaurant PF Chang Do?
by Jim Gordon
What should a restaurant do when its wine list is wrong? It takes work to keep a wine list completely up to date. The more wines on the list, the more work it is. But when a restaurant runs out of a listed wine, or when a new vintage arrives to replace the listed one, the restaurant needs to handle it promptly. It’s not that difficult, really.
Even a list bound in leather can be updated in a few minutes with a quick edit in Word and a swift printout from the HP whatever in the manager’s office. Knowing how easy it is to keep a list up to date makes it all the more frustrating for a customer when a restaurant blows something this simple.
This happened to me recently at a PF Chang’s China Bistro in Monterey, California. Despite what you may have seen on South Park, this contemporary chain of upscale Chinese restaurants has a surprising combination of good to excellent food, affordable prices and a kind of sophisticated city ambience (which is a welcome thing in the suburbs where you usually see them).
The wine list had good choices for Chinese food, including a bunch of aromatic whites. I thought I’d retest the theory that slightly sweet, aromatic wines pair well with spicy food. Having just sampled the Chateau Ste. Michelle Eroica Riesling at Wine Enthusiast’s cool Toast of the Town tasting in San Francisco (next stop Atlanta, April 17), I ordered it.
We also ordered our food. The first dishes came quickly but we had no wine to drink. The waiter came back soon to say that wine was out. So I looked at the list again and saw a Pinot Gris that I figured would be rather light and fruity and not totally dry. I ordered that. The waiter went away to get it. Meanwhile our food arrived and we still had no wine to drink.
The waiter came back and said she was sorry, but they didn’t have a full bottle of the Pinot Gris. We could have glasses poured out of a bottle at the bar. I was hungry, thirsty and quickly getting irritated. There were four of us, and we needed a whole bottle, at least.
So I looked at the wine list again, found a Dry Creek Chenin Blanc from California and ordered that. The waiter was very nice and apologetic about their lack of the previous two widely available wines made in large quantities, but I wasn’t in the mood for confessions. Luckily, they had the Dry Creek in stock, and at least one full bottle of it.
She came back quickly with this, my third choice, so at last we had something in our glasses. Right behind her was the manager. He apologized, explained that they were re-doing the wine program, and told us the Chenin Blanc was on the house.
Phew. That defused the whole situation. It even made us feel a little, well, special. We boomers love that.
The manager grasped how lame it was that the list was out of date on two wines. He took the initiative to make it right. It cost the restaurant what? About $8 for the wholesale price of the wine? But it paid off. We drank the wine, had a good time under fabulous lighting and went away happy.
It doesn’t always happen that way, unfortunately. I suspect that horror stories about lying wine lists are more common than the success stories.
Filed under: Restaurants and Food, Sommeliers
8 Comments
8 Responses to “When the Wine List Lies, What Does Restaurant PF Chang Do?”
Please Wait
April 4th, 2008 at 11:28:56 AM
Great customer service to handle a bad situation. Cooks can ’86′ dishes, wonder why the waitstaff didn’t have an updated wine list in back, with black marks across the sold out bottles.
Kathleen Lisson
April 4th, 2008 at 1:11:59 PM
I am a Marketing Director at a Fine Dining Restaurant and it is very apparent you have no idea of the relationship between restaurants and wine distributors. Wine distributors deliver the wrong vintage and run out of supply every day. In order for a restaurant to keep up with this ongoing change, we would have to change the wine list five times a day after each distributor made its delivery. It is unrealistic to expect a restaurant to do a daily inventory check, re-format a 17 page document on the computer, print it, then un-bind, un-stuff and re-stuff over 20 menus every day. This is an issue that needs to be taken up with the wine distributors and their horrible warehouse inventory management.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:26:18 PM
Yes Jim, we have all had that frustrating experience sometime. Kind of takes the pleasure out of the dining experience right on the spot.But for this occasion my question is, how did the Chenin Blanc match up with your menu items?
April 4th, 2008 at 4:02:42 PM
As Director for the Beverage Programs of (then) 32 restaurants, it was always my policy to get the unit managers to update their lists at least once a week. Being out of stock on one wine is usually acceptable to the restaurant guest but if their second choice gets them a “sorry…” then that usually prompts a “Well, what DO you have?!” from the disgruntled customer.
April 4th, 2008 at 4:17:07 PM
I wish I had a dime for everytime the wine buyer at a restaurant told me they would love to list my wines but they had been told they were unavailable. Sometimes it’s a nice way of saying no. Othertimes it a discovery of the real priorities of your distributor. Usually it’s just a function of a distributor trying to manage hundreds of SKU’s combined with a restaurant with no storage space trying to keep their inventory in check. I just want to know why it is always the most interesting wine that is never in stock.
April 5th, 2008 at 1:53:53 PM
Jim,
The restaurants I return to are precisely the ones that provide good and accommodating service.
This is why I usually select, order and taste the wine before finalizing my food order. It ensures the wine is available, the bottle is up to par, I know what it tastes like and can tweak the food pairing.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:19:15 AM
The most annoying part about Jim’s experience, which has happened to me on occasion as well, is having the food come out but no wine to drink with it, especially one that you ordered specifically to pair with the appetizers. I don’t mind if a wine is not available, but if that is the case, restaurants and their wait staff need to be aware that some people are not just ordering the wine to catch a buzz and enjoy themselves at dinner (although that is certianly a part of it!), but becuase it is something that is being paired with a certain course of the meal.
Easiest way to avoid this problem is for the server to let the table know up front if they are planning to order wine that the list is not up to date. Most good waiters and restaurants tend to do this, which avoids the frustration of waiting for your wine to be served, especially when the food is already on the table.
April 19th, 2009 at 11:22:14 AM
Note to Jena (#2):
It is not the guest’s problem whether or not your job is difficult. This is a service industry where much of the profil is made from the sale of wine. Restaurants need to behave accordingly.
People who work in restaurants need to stop whining – and figure it out.