It seems that if you offer wine with breakfast, some people will drink it.
That’s what Robert Maynard found out at Famous Toastery, the breakfast, brunch and lunch chain he founded in a suburb of Charlotte, N.C., in 2005.
Last month he introduced a wine list complete with breakfast and lunch items that would go with each glass — the Fetzer Sundial Chardonnay with the turkey-egg white omelet or Cobb salad, the Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon for the corned beef hash or chili cheeseburger — at his three corporate locations, all in Charlotte.
“The first reaction is almost, ‘Really, are you kidding me?’ But then they try it and realize that it actually goes really well,” said Maynard, the company’s CEO, who says about 20 percent of his customers at the three restaurants with wine pairings have tried them.
“They like the idea that it’s a possibility, and that it can be paired with something, and that someone took the time to pair the whole menu,” he said.
Other pairings include the Fetzer Eagle Peak Merlot with the Southwestern omelet, and the Fetzer Riesling with a Buffalo chicken and blue cheese wrap.
The idea did, in fact, start as a joke: Maynard said he wondered aloud to a sommelier what wine would go with Famous Toastery’s avocado omelet. “The sommelier said, ‘Oh, I think this wine would,’” Maynard said (it’s currently paired with a Fetzer Valley Oaks Pinot Grigio). So he decided to find pairings for the whole menu.
The eight wines by the glass are listed from lightest and sweetest to heaviest and driest, with brief tasting notes — for example, it says the Fetzer Eagle Peak Merlot tastes of black cherries and plums, caramel and toffee with spicy tannins — and two or three menu items that would go well with it. The wines are priced at between $6 and $9 per glass.
“It has done much better than I expected, to be honest,” he said.
Most of the wine sales happen during weekend brunch, as alternatives to Bloody Marys and Mimosas, which Famous Toastery also offers, along with sangria and Irish Coffee, but Maynard said he’s seeing a fair number of orders during the week, particularly after 11 a.m.
“That person who used to come and get whatever they would get for a 12:30 meeting, now, they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll get a glass of wine,’ because if they were going to a steakhouse they’d get a glass of wine anyway. At a burger place they’d get a beer,” he said. “We give them that extra option.”
Although the average customer won’t be ordering wine at 8 a.m., Famous Toastery locations happen to be near various Charlotte hospitals, and for medical professionals working graveyard shifts, an early morning happy hour is a welcome treat, Maynard said. “You’d be surprised how much wine is on the table at 7:30, 8 in the morning,” he said.
Apart from the three Famous Toastery locations in Charlotte, there are an additional six franchised locations in North Carolina and South Carolina, which don’t offer the wine pairings yet.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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