Shiny thing make it better?

by Chris Losh

The other night I was out with some frighteningly enthusiastic young guys whose business is putting wine lists onto iPads. They're tied in with an American firm who have already done 90 restaurants in the States (making them the biggest operator in this pretty niche field), and they've done work here for the likes of the Turnberry Hotel and the Gordon Ramsay group of restaurants.
Over dinner at Maze, we got to play with a couple of the group's wine lists, and I left with decidedly mixed feelings.
There are definite advantages: since the stock control is real-time, wines can automatically 'remove themselves' from the list once the last bottle has been ordered, saving that embarrassing 'I'm sorry sir, we're out of that one' five minutes after ordering.
Not having to reprint the wine list every day before service is a big advantage, too – and has obvious green credentials, as well, if that's important to you.
Plus the customer can search for wine however he fancies: by grape varietal, by country. The list can be ordered to fit whatever the customer finds easiest, which is great.
So why the mixed feelings?
Because for such an exciting technology with so much potential, the lists that I was looking at were, frankly, bloody boring: little more than lists of wine presented on a screen.
There’s nothing inherently better about reading a wine name on a tablet than reading it on a sheet of paper. And while it's reasonably easy to use (even for a muppet like me) it's still (obviously) less intuitive than a bound menu where you can flick backwards and forwards instantly. I found myself using the 'back' button a lot...
What does make the iPad menu better is the creative opportunities that it offers: information about the region or the producers, label shots, food matches, tasting notes. If you've got vision and imagination, the possibilities are genuinely exciting.
All of these aforementioned features would make for a wine list that was stimulating, informative and exciting, without being eight feet thick. Customers can access as much or as little information as they want without it interrupting the 'flow' of their choice. It's the kind of thing that could, potentially, engage your customers and get them to spend more. And spend differently, too.
So why weren’t these things on evidence at Maze? Probably because to implement them would involve such a vast amount of work. Can you imagine the effort required to pull together 600 tasting notes, label shots and producer profiles; information about Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Barossa; maps of the Medoc; food matches from the chef/sommelier? It’s probably a full-time job for somebody for a couple of months. But who? I certainly don’t know any sommeliers who have that kind of time to burn. Or that kind of skill-set. This, after all, is not sommelier-ing – it's publishing.
Yet without this kind of effort the iPad wine menu remains distinctly underwhelming.
Tellingly, at Maze, they haven't dispensed with paper menus yet – presumably because some customers feel a lot more comfortable with that format. So they still have the 'printing the menu out every day before service' stress that the tablet was meant to remove.
Certainly you need to be pretty sure that your clientele are going to like using an iPad menu. If they're not totally au fait with the workings of a touch-screen format they could easily get frustrated with the system very quickly.
But if you have a youngish customer base that is happier to engage with 12cm of screen than 180cm of sommelier, it could (provided you have Wi-Fi) be a useful tool.
So, shiny thing make it better? Perhaps. But just remember that it's only going to be as good as the amount of effort you put into it – and to do this properly is a big, big commitment. Better not to do it at all than do it in a half-hearted fashion, because then it will look like a gimmick. And in an era when authenticity is all, that's the last thing you want.
For more information on putting your menu on iPad, contact Napa Solutions.