Retail Wine Shop Assingment

One Response to Retail Wine Shop Assingment

1. scelius12 says:

   April 6, 2012 at 1:53 am

   The wine retailer that I decided to visit was Scotto’s Wine Cellar located at 318 Court Street, Brooklyn NY 11231. I decided to go to Scotto’s because it’s closer to me and to school. Mainly, because I wouldn’t have to pay too much in travel expenses was my main motivation. Scotto’s Wine Cellar has been doing business since 1934. They open their doors pre-prohibition only to be closed by the prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, sale and possession of alcoholic beverages. Because of this they were forced to close. When they reopened in February of 1934 at their current location they sold wine from a jug they had in the store. When licensing changed they were able sell spirits and wine.

   The layout of Scotto’s was not friendly at all. It was cramped and not even space to move. I found myself saving excuse me and I’m sorry more than I can count. At every turn were wine and hardly any room to walk. They layout is much too clustered with wines, wine barrel as decoration and of course the customers. It’s really hard to navigate the isle to find the wine you’re looking for, because how poorly the organization is thought out. There is no clear pattern to how to the wines are organized it looked to me like they were put wines were there was an empty space. There were several sections dedicated to the same wine regions and style of wine yet they were in various corners of the store. There was no ease in navigating this wine shop. There were handwritten signs stated the regions but those signs like the wine appeared in many places which makes finding anything by specified region really hard.

   There were a lot of the regions highlighted at the wine shop. Many of the regions we discussed in class were highlighted. Regions such as France, Italy, Spain, and some we will discuss like Australia and South Africa, California. I found it interesting that they also sold found in a typical liquor store and they also sell sake not your typical liquor store fanfare. All I know of the sake is the hand written sign above a bookshelf like case that many wines were located, I knew it was in the vicinity but I didn’t know exactly where.

   Scotto’s Wine Cellar was very sparse when it came to promotional literature or listing of extra benefits. When asked I was simply referred to the website and another employee told me that did free delivery, wine tasting, food and wine pairings. I went to the website and found that they did something called a wine dinner but nothing else was mention about what it actually was. When the employee told me of the food and wine pairing, I just had to test his knowledge. When I asked what they would pair with a bottle of Mionetto Presecco, he told me that it would be nice with a summer or fruit salad, sorbet. I don’t totally agree or disagree with this pairing because of Prosecco fruity flavoring I would readily go with sorbet or sweet fruit that would add too much sweetness. Instead and the Mionetto USA website agrees with me, the pairing calls for prosciutto or mild cheese or better yet by itself. Which I tend to agree with; its freshness wants to stand alone and not under the overpowering sweetness of some desserts.

   The customer service I must say was borderline deplorable. I wasn’t greeted by the two people at the counter, one of which looked like the owner. After 5 minutes of being there then I was asked if I needed help finding anything. I felt like they really didn’t wasn’t to be bothered with my request for more information. I told the girl at the front counter that I was doing a school project and if she had any promotional literature without breaking her gaze with the man next to her she said no there’s information on the website.
   My recommendation for Scotto’s Wine Cellar is too expand and expand quickly. There small and crap space hinders them from doing more business. I didn’t want to say there more than a minute too look around. But I did to closely examine their location.
   Scotto Wine Cellar has tremendous potential but is inhibited by space, poor organization and inattentive customer service. Normally I would say that I wouldn’t go back but except for some well priced Prosecco.

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