The Mobile Somm

Front Row Seat 

By now, wine professionals and consumers outside of the wine industry have hopefully had a chance to see the year’s hottest documentary, SOMM. It’s not hard to get excited about the film as it gives the layperson visibility into our world and what its like to be a sommelier. Ian, Brian, DLynn and Dustin are like the new John, Paul, George and Ringo of wine. Musical artist, Pink tweeted out to her 17 million followers that she loved the movie and cried at the end. The tweet was retweeted 276 times in the first 24 hours adding to the spotlight on our industry.

There’s something else to be equally geeked out about at this moment in history besides the film—mobile technology. The advancements in hardware and software are putting more tools into the palm of our hand, and that’s a great opportunity for sommeliers.

In 1965 a little known technology company called Intel had a CEO named Gordon Moore who came up with Moore’s Law which states computer chips would “double in speed and reduce in size by half every two years.” Over the past forty years Moore’s Law has held true as technology continues to get smaller and faster to the point that your smart phone now has more computing power than your first desktop computer. Streaming video was barely possible on a home computer ten years ago, but now most phones and tablets can easily display smooth HD video with high quality sound.

When SOMM was released on iTunes it was one of the top New and Noteworthy movies and throughout the summer it has maintained a top 3 position in Documentaries. I was on a flight and saw someone across the aisle watching on his iPad. Without mobile technology would SOMM reach as many people as fast as it did? Pink was on tour in Australia when she watched the film, which means she probably downloaded it and saw it on her iPad. 17 million people wouldn’t have known about it if it weren’t for mobile distribution.

Consumer adoption of all things mobile continues to grow at a staggering rate. According to the Pew Research Center there are over 120 million smart phone owners in the U.S. (roughly one-third of the U.S. population) over the age of 13. Tablets are catching up with 60 million owners in the U.S. And now there’s a new addition to mobile tech—wearables. As if ADD wasn’t a big enough problem, Google Glass and Apple’s rumored iWatch will offer even more ways for your guests to connect with each other and you online. Other areas of technology to watch: connected television, connected automobiles and mobile wallets. We’ve finally become the Jetsons minus the flying cars.

In recent years it has been commonplace to be in a restaurant and see someone sitting there creating food porn, texting with friends or surfing around Facebook. If the point is to engage and serve guests, and guests’ attention are on their mobile devices, it would stand to reason sommeliers could and should be part of the guest experience in person as well as online through mobile experience. By doing so it’ll build the sommelier’s visibility and it’ll ultimately lead to a healthy business.

According to Business Insider, in the U.S. 1 out of 10 transactions at Starbucks are made on smartphones. 1 out of 10 might not sound like much but try to do the math in your head of how many transactions that is, and you’ll start to see why mobile technology is so important to a healthy business. In the Food and Beverage industry, Starbucks is on the leading edge of digital marketing and mobile commerce, which has led to a 9% increase in U.S. sales and a whopping 25% increase in profit in 2013.

Pay to Play

Unfortunately (or fortunately) Facebook controls a massive amount of mobile eyeballs. After going public with their initial stock offering in April 2012, the share price sunk like leftover yeast in a barrel due to a lack of clear monetization model. Their response? Focus on mobile growth and increase sponsored posts. It worked. Just recently, Facebook’s share prices surged ahead 30% in a single day after the company reported over 100 million mobile users and an increase of mobile ad spending. Zuckerberg is a genius again. Restaurants and brands will continue to see a pay-to-play model from the sites that have the eyeballs such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. If you want to appear in their news feeds, you have to pay to be seen now and forever, amen. 

On the other hand, it doesn’t cost anything to connect and engage with guests on the same sites, other than an investment of time. A common term used in social media is, “Humanize the brand” but I’d take that a step further and suggest restaurant employees “humilitize the brand” (‘humilitize’ isn’t a word, I checked but it should be).

Social media is amazingly powerful when it comes to demonstrating humility. In the prior article earlier this year, Somms, You Are a Brand we took a look at how sommeliers can use social media to build their online reputation. Responding to guests with @ replies on Twitter or commenting on Facebook posts is free, and a better use of time than paying to be seen in the news feed. It’ll take longer but it’s an extension of what a sommelier is supposed to be. With great power comes great responsibility, and as a somm’s brand grows online, it’ll will be even more important to lead by example.

The Mobile Toolbox

Mobile technology as it relates to restaurants can be broken down into a few key customer experiences:

• Searching for a place to dine — mobile tools used include Yelp, OpenTable, Google Maps/ZAGAT, Instagram, Forkly, TripAdvisor.
• Sharing photos of food and drink during the meal — some mobile tools used are Instagram/Facebook, Forkly, Twitter.
• After the meal reviews and word of mouth — Yelp, Google/ZAGAT, Facebook, Twitter are some of the top mobile tools.

From a sommelier viewpoint the 3 customer experiences can be distilled down to Before, During and After the guest experience. All 3 are interactions where a sommelier can be part of the mobile conversation.

During the searching experience, restaurant guests will stumble across all sorts of bread crumbs left by previous diners. There’s no reason your videos or a photos shouldn’t pop up during the discovery. Now that Instagram allows 15-second videos I would hope every somm resorts to a daily video greeting tagged to their restaurant’s location. “Here’s what we’re opening tonight,” or “here’s our chef braising tonight’s special....the Barolo on our menu will go great.” It’s the next best thing to being table side.

When patrons share photos of the food or wine on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter there’s no reason the resident somm shouldn’t comment on the photo with a, “Glad you liked it!” or, “thank you for coming in” during the meal as it’s happening. It takes dedication but it pays off. Furthermore, it’s free and circumvents the need for paying to show up in news feeds.

Of course there’s always the negative experience from time to time. Sometimes patrons will blast you online for the smallest thing. Nip negative reviews in the bud by tuning into the restaurant’s Twitter handle, Yelp reviews or Facebook page every night. Word of mouth is a positive thing. It’s your job to be visible in the online conversation.

Over the summer I worked a few nights on the floor at Farmhouse Inn with Allyson Gorsuch. Allyson selected some wines for the pairing menu prepared by Chef Litke. This is one example of how mobile technology was used to tell the story of the pairings through images posted to Insatram, Facebook, Twitter and Google+:

Anyone who looks up Farmhouse on those sites can see the photo attached to that location. In other photos action shots from the kitchen with the chef plating food might be posted. If there was a specific wine we wanted to promote either by the glass or as a feature simply posting a photo of the label opened up a conversation about the wine:

Providing digital-savvy guests with a friendly dining experience opens a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. What do they want to do during the visit? What do they need? How will mobile technology enhance their enjoyment while connecting them with the sommelier? Why do their photos of food look like a mystery substance in low lighting? Is it meat or is it cake? Maybe it’s meatcake? These are the problems to solve that will give guests new reasons to come in and dine.

Some chefs and servers are willing to take photos of the dish back in the kitchen right after they plate it because there’s better lighting. I’ve seen guests ask to have their phone brought back to the kitchen to make sure the food looks good in the photo. Food and drink app, Forkly is rolling out a restaurant dashboard that’ll allow the restaurant owner to pre-populate photos of dishes into the app so patrons can use the default photo.

Starbucks is adding wireless charging mats in their café’s that allows customers to set their phone on it and charge the battery while paying for their four dollar latte. Does it make their coffee taste better? I’m not sure anything could do that, but it does make the customer experience more geek friendly. It’s telling the mobile customer, “Hey, I get it.”

The Door is Open

Thanks to the movie, SOMM the kimono is open and now average ordinary everyday wine drinkers have a front row seat for what goes into our jobs. Now is the time to seize the opportunity to come forward from behind the walls of your workplace into the mobile space where those same wine drinkers are.

We’re at the beginning of our new digital future. The social web and mobile technology aren’t going anywhere. They’re only going to be come more entrenched in every aspect of our daily lives. Doing a little bit of “mobile stuff” each day is all it takes to get started. Much like planting a vineyard, you won’t see “fruit” for a while, but nurturing your mobile presence like vines will eventually pay off.