The Wine Program Playbook

The Wine Program Playbook — A Complete System for Training Restaurant Staff to Sell Wine with Confidence

Wine is usually the highest-margin category on your menu — and the one your staff get the least training on. This isn't a book of wine trivia. It's a complete, installable system for turning your wine list into something every server can talk about with real confidence, built by someone who has spent 40+ years running restaurant floors and holds a professional wine credential (WSET Level 2, Italian Wine Ambassador).

What's inside:

• A fill-in wine cheat sheet keyed to your actual list — not generic wine facts nobody on your floor needs
• A 4-question tasting framework staff can use on any wine in five minutes
• Upsell scripts and responses to the 10 most common guest questions and objections
• A full service protocol checklist and troubleshooting guide for flawed bottles and service mishaps
• A one-week manager's rollout plan to train your whole staff from day one to day seven

Plus a companion Excel workbook with live, fillable trackers — a staff certification tracker that automatically flags who's fully trained, a rollout checklist with status tracking, and a quarterly update system so the whole thing stays current. Not just PDF pages to read — a system you actually run.

Every part of this comes from real restaurant floors, not theory: the same training approach used to bring new hires up to speed on their very first shift, now built so you can run it in your own restaurant without me standing next to you.