By Marilen Fontanilla

“Can we offer you something to drink?”

For most food and beverage outlets, savvy servers distract customers from looking at the menu with this line. By offering up a bevy of special drinks that they have to push, servers find that most customers will either go with the push or more discreetly say “Later,” affording them the chance to peruse the beverage list at leisure. It is at this point that a well-crafted beverage menu can best highlight the outlet’s liquid offerings.

F&B World goes behind the bar to let our readers take a peek at the other side of food and beverage operations — see how beverage menu offerings interplay with inventory management and cost considerations.

Pouring over the menu

The sensible rule of thumb for any outlet’s drink list is, if you have it on hand in your bar, offer it to your customers in your beverage menu. How do you decide what drinks to offer? How much variety should you have for each kind? For a restaurant, this is already quite a task – imagine the question multiplied four times in a hotel with a multitude of outlets. Marc Cerqueda,  Food and Beverage Director for  Hotel Intercontinental Manila, gives us a close view of this rather painstaking process.
” Ordinarily, offering one beverage menu would be acceptable for one food outlet. However, for a hotel this is not the case. At our hotel, it is the F&B Director together with the particular Outlet Manager who decides what beverages will best suit each outlet. In bigger hotels, which have either an Assistant F&B Director or even a Beverage Manager (those with at least 6 F&B outlets), this would be the key person directly involved with this task.”
In the case of Hotel Intercontinental, this means considering the outlet’s theme and target market to see what drinks will best fit that crowd. In Prince Albert Rotisserie’s case, this includes a substantial wine list that is heavy on the French influence (Champagnes are a given) to represent the major French regions from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace, Cote du Rhone and Southwest France, aside from cognacs, and aperitifs.

Gambrinus, Intercon’s newest outlet – a lobby lounge that also doubles as the hotel bar – on the other hand, offers drinks from cocktails and beers, which are stress-busters, Cerqueda notes. Wines are mostly from the New World regions of the United States, Australia and South America. The Jeepney Coffee Shop will offer beverages from juices, coffee, tea and a limited selection of wines by the glass, although as Cerqueda adds, coffee, juice and tea sales are technically counted as part of the food sales, and not beverage sales since these are food purchases. The only beverage menu with no constraints on it would be the room service menu, staying true to the aforementioned rule of offering everything in the bar from coffee, tea, and especially wines. “We intentionally offer wines, including Champagnes, since we have discovered that guests may be in a celebratory mood. Even the most expensive wines are included, since you do not lose anything by mentioning it. It is part of the hotel inventory.” The only exclusion in room service would be mixed drinks – sorry folks, cocktails are not served in the hotel room. That is the purpose of the mini bar, since guests can serve themselves.

For room service menus, simplicity is key in the beverage offerings – nothing too complicated.

Even menu design has some different schools of thought – or in this case, hotels of thought, as Cerqueda gamely explains the new menu designs for room service used by various hotels. There is what he calls the “School of Mandarin”, which recently came out with a menu in magazine format, complete with glossy paper, bright colors and photos. The advantage to this is that it appeals to guests who do not want to be surprised when placing an order from the room – it removes that element of uncertainty while playing on the impulse buying need inherent in guests. There is also the “School of Simplicity”, as embodied by hotels such as the Peninsula, Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton, with their elegant feel and predominant black and white colors. These menus embody the standards of the hotel in their design and content. Intercon, on the other hand, has recently introduced a new brand standard, with their room service menu and drink list included in the directory services compendium. Combining a little of both menu styles, the menu can be changed as needed to meet the demands of the guests.

A new introduction to room service beverage menus in Intercon was born out of Cerqueda’s innate passion for wines. Each room has a separate wine list complete with wine descriptions for those not so familiar with them. Cerqueda’s canny move has resulted in more wine sales for guest rooms than in the Prince Albert outlet. Whether opting for a picturesque menu or a simpler style, beverage descriptions are quite important in any form, as seen in this case.

The price is right

Deciding on the selling price for beverage items is another task that falls under the purview of the F&B Director. Again, it is the specific outlet which influences the price factor. In hotels, the highest mark-up would be for room service menu items. Next to that, Gambrinus for Intercon has a high mark-up, slightly below that of room service. According the Cerqueda, one of the deciding factors here is the low cost percentage the outlet presents for the hotel, giving the hotel one of its main sources for beverage revenue. Even with the happy hour “buy one take one” promo, the final effect with guests staying longer and ordering more results in a win-win situation for everyone concerned.

Going, going, gone!

The variety of beverage items and how to sell it to guests can be quite a daunting task to tackle. Prince Albert has a wine list of 50 French wines – a number that Cerqueda jokes is actually quite small compared to other hotels. However, his concern is moving the beverage inventory on a regular basis, and not getting stuck with an excess of stagnant bottles. Hence, he has each outlet use different selling techniques to push their stock. Gambrinus and Jeepney Coffee Shop can sell wines by the glass, but Prince Albert only sells by the bottle – to prevent too many opened bottles as a result. This forestalls a decrease in quality for the wines if they are not sold or consumed within the appropriate time.
He also advises against special monthly drink offers. Although this approach generates interest and sales for that particular drink, it works against the other beverage offerings. “All the drinks should be the drink of the month – not just one.” Even the term “house wines” is something Cerqueda prefers not to use, as this can connote a wine of lesser quality. “We sell wine by saying these are the wines we offer by the glass.”

For those in the process of creating a beverage menu, Cerqueda points out the importance of finding the right balance between alcoholic and non-alcoholic offerings, while staying within the confines of the restaurant’s theme. It also helps to have a signature drink that can be the anchor for the beverage menu and a selling point for the outlet.

Drink to the future

The past two years have been marked by a tremendous increase of local interest in wines. Cerqueda notes that it is a timely combination of widespread general appreciation and the appearance of more wine suppliers with more affordable prices. A recent trend he noted has been the increase in sales of vodka, which he attributes to the South Beach Diet/Atkins craze, both of which allow only vodka as part of the diet.
For the future, he sees more healthy choices being availed of by consumers, particularly the organic trend now sweeping Europe.

The secret to selling more beverages is in knowing what beverages to offer your guests, selling it to your guests at the right price in a well-crafted beverage list that reflects your establishment. Sante!