Disappearing Wine Lists From Restaurant Websites
On the NY Times booze blog, The Pour, Eric Asimov discusses the disappearance of wine lists on restaurant websites. Some restaurants have found that competitors were checking their sites to review their wine list and adjusting their own prices accordingly. We love browsing restaurant wine lists online as we never have enough time to do so at a restaurant. And as a general rule, we believe that a restaurant should be as transparent as possible on their website and provide customers with the information they want. But restaurants who see their wine list as key a differentiator from their competitors may be less inclined to share.
“…Some restaurants have consciously removed their wine lists from public domain. I used to fantasize occasionally by scanning the list at Veritas on East 20th Street, one of the country’s top wine-oriented restaurants. But when I sought it out recently, I couldn’t find it.
“We did pull it down,’’ Tim Kopec, the wine director, told me. “We felt that a lot of our competition was stealing information. If another restaurant is going to sell all the first-growth Bordeaux of 1982, it’s easy for them to check out our pricing and sell it for $25 less. It makes us look bad. We want to protect what we’re doing.’’
Wine Lists As Armchair Reading (The Pour, NY Times)
