For the Retail Beverage Shop Analysis, I decided to go to Grand Wine and Liquor. It is located at 30-05 31st Street Astoria, NY 11102. On Monday-Saturday they are opened from 9AM to 10PM and on Sundays they are opened from 12PM to 8PM. The retail shop is family-owned for over 85 years since 1993. They have a slogan Life is Grand… drink it up. It was the first time I ever visited this beverage shop. The place from the outside looked big so I think inside the store would be a lot wider then it was. The employee that helped me answered all the questions I had for this report and other questions I had. The store was very well organized they had banners up on the sealing, so we knew where the wines were from. Also, they had posters up of the map of every country wine was located. They have wines that start at as low as $8.99 and range to $1300. If you have their mobile app you can even place orders on your phone and they deliver the wine to your house.
Questions
- What temperature do you store your wine in? Do you have certain storage area for different wines? Temperature control. temperature control is 50-55. Some of their wines they store at a little lower then room temperature. But the ones that need to have a temperature control they leave in the fridge.
- How would you recommend wine to a person who barely know about wine? The employee told me he would first ask what they will be using the wine for. If it’s with food what they will be eating, or if they wanted something sweet, or dry.
- Are your clients looking for hard to find wine? Are you looking for rare wines? High Profile? He mentioned that they do have hard to find wines that other retail store doesn’t have. That they do have some clients that look for hard to find wines.
- What happens if you get a case of wine that goes bad? How do you handle that? He mentioned that if the case of wine goes bad they usually send it back to the vendor.
- Do you study wine? Do you have certification? The employee actually didn’t study wine. He learned about wine while working that this retail shop. No the employee doesn’t have a certification for wine. He has been working their for 3 years and learned about wine while helping clients out.
- What’s the most difficult challenge you have working here? When a customer asks for a wine that they tried at another place and doesn’t even know the name of the wine or what brand it is. Or if they try to describe the taste of the wine but they aren’t even sure if the taste is the same or not.
- Do you guys do wine tasting for a specific wine for clients if they wanted to try the wine out before buying the wine? They do not do random wine tasting but they usually have a schedules wine tasting on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
“Shelf Talker”
Red from Spain,
Sparkling wine not from France,
Red wine from a region you did not know made wine
These are the pictures of how the store looked inside and the banners on the sealing.
The store employees did not have any wine knowledge before they started to work at the store. I just wonder, does the store offered any wine class or training for the employees?
They should come to City Tech!
You asked a variety of important questions.