Moving promotions beyond price

Promotions are a great way to attract new customers as well as creating interest for existing ones. They provide variation for staff and can help to increase the sales of slow-moving products or sell off bin ends.

They can be based on individual brands or a theme such as country of origin, style of wine, grape variety or season. Promotions range from simple ideas such as a wine of the month, to more extravagant and elaborate one-off specials.

Some promotions involve an element of competition with prizes for customers. These may take the form of a quiz or a game, or may simply involve a prize draw or lucky dip. If you wish to offer more extravagant prizes, it is often more advantageous to organise promotions through suppliers or work with a business partner.

More elaborate promotions could involve loyalty schemes using cards to collect points. These may require a significant budget as well as considerable time to plan and implement.

Bear in mind that it is not always a good idea to offer discount prices as part of your promotion. In fact, discounting can devalue your promotion and the product. It is better to generate interest in a product without reducing its price.

The current concerns over happy hours and irresponsible pricing mean offers where you give away large quantities of wine for free, say when customers buy two glasses, are not ideal.

Offering a wine of the month is an excellent way of introducing new or seasonal brands or of delisting old lines. It is also helpful for staff who do not enjoy drinking wine themselves and are not confident recommending wines to customers.

One of the easiest ways to promote wine is by pairing it with food. I like to see a menu that recommends a particular wine to accompany each dish. Food and wine matching is quite a hot topic at the moment, yet it is not as complicated as some may fear.

Offering staff incentives

Once you have invested in training your staff to serve wine correctly, it is a good idea to offer incentives that will encourage staff not only to use their newly-acquired skills, but to remain loyal and motivated.

Most members of staff prefer cash incentives, although it is usually more cost-effective to offer gifts, especially ones that have been donated by suppliers.

Wine-related incentives could be offered to staff for:

l achieving sales targets

l excellent service

l attaining wine qualifications

Target-based incentives should be realistic and achievable without being too easy. Sales targets may be set on a monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annual basis.

Excellence in service can be measured and rewarded with a 'mystery customer programme. Each mystery customer should be given a checklist that includes all the relevant points to be monitored such as whether the glass was clean or if the customer was offered any advice on which wine to order. Any member of staff who serves a mystery customer correctly and achieves a predetermined score should be rewarded accordingly.

The 10 golden rules of matching food and wine

1 When serving more than one wine at a meal, start with a light wine and work your way through the meal to the fuller-bodied wines, ending with a sweet wine. The exception is when serving foie gras as a starter, because the best match for this dish is the deliciously sweet Sauternes.

2 Match like for like, for example spicy food with spicy wine, subtly flavoured dishes with delicate light wines, sweet wines with desserts. Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris are an excellent match for spicy Thai dishes, while mature Pinot Noir, with its earthy aroma, partners beautifully with mushroom soup.

3 Conversely, sometimes it is preferable to make use of contrasts, for example, hot, spicy foods can work well with light, delicate wines with a degree of sweetness, such as Riesling Auslese.

4 Balance the flavour intensity and match the wine to the most dominant flavour in the dish, which may be part of a sauce. Pair light- bodied wines with lighter flavours, for example Muscadet and seafood. Fuller-bodied wines work well with hearty, richer dishes, for instance Australian Shiraz with lamb stew.

5 Consider how the dish is prepared. Delicately flavoured foods, poached or steamed, are best paired with delicate wines, whereas roasted dishes are often more suited to full-bodied, heavier wines.

6 Regional food and wine partner well as they have developed together over time and so have a natural affinity. Muscadet and mussels, Sancerre and goat's cheese, Chianti Classico and spaghetti are well-known examples.

7 Balance the sweetness, but importantly never serve a wine that is drier than the food or you will end up with a flat, dull-tasting wine.

8 Remember that food can transform the flavour of a wine. A light, dry white can become fuller-bodied and sweeter on the palate when paired with acidic ingredients such as lemon or vinegar.

9 It is untrue to say that only red wine should be paired with red meat and only white wine with fish. In fact, a delicate light red or rose is superb with tuna steak.

10 Dispel the myth that all red wines complement all cheeses it is just that, a myth. Full-flavoured, tannic wines such as Cabernet, Zinfandel and Shiraz complement salty, hard cheeses such as Cheddar. Pungent, intensely flavoured blue cheeses are better accompanied by a sweet wine, for example, port and Stilton. Goat's cheese is excellent with dry white wines, particularly Sancerre. Soft cheeses such as Camembert and Brie should be served with a full-flavoured Chardonnay or a soft, ripe Merlot.