Chapter 16 Don’t Sell The Wine – Sell The Bubbles In The Glass
Hotels Statler makes the first concentrated study in hotel history of effectiveness of words on people. Words that sell the better rooms. Words that sell more wines and food. Selling the view – not the room number. The important “Rule of You” in Hotels and Restaurants. The value of your name. IT IS BACK in the nineties and a group of men saunter to a bar. Joe, the bartender, with his handle-bar mustache, gives the boys a smile and opens his conversation with the familiar, “What’ll you gents have?” They call for a round of drinks, and Joe places his best brand of whiskey on the bar and lines up the glasses in front of them. Now, the technique of serving people at the bar falls into two classifications, with one group of bartenders letting guests pour their own drinks and the other pouring the drinks themselves. Which is the better principle? Which is the more profitable to the bar? A study of these questions for Mr. Frank A. McKowne, progressive president of Hotels Statler, along with a survey on how to brighten up the language used by all other hotel employees, brought out some interesting sidelights in human behaviorism. Let Them Pour Their Own The average bottle of spirits contains about twenty-two drinks of the size that the bartender pours. He can “rim” the glass, and he is expected to do so. If he permits you to pour your own drink, however, and most drinkers like to do this, it is difficult for you to rim the glass as the bartender does. In fact, it would be very impolite to do so; it would appear quite “Scotch” to yo ur friends. Therefore you pour the drink to within about a quarter of an inch of the top of the glass. This is the widest part of the glass. This quarter of an inch saving on twenty-two drinks, at 40c per drink amounts to a total savings per bottle of anywhere from 75c to $1.25! That means the hotel can get an approximate average of $1.00 more per bottle if it is gracious enough to permit the guests to pour their own drinks. Try this technique in your own home, or watch it in practice at some bar. Of course, in certain districts where guests would not hesitate to put three fingers around the top of the glass and pour a drink to their finger tops, this psychology won’t work profitably!
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