Cremebrew L'Otel Café, named originally as Cremebrew Le Café says it has recently modified its facilities by adding stylishly served Wine by Glass and Draft Beer on Tap to its existing cafe menu. Although it is not clear how the wine will be served ‘stylishly’ but ‘Wine by Glass has been added by importing from Santa Barbara, California, a six bottle ‘Winekeeper’ temperature-controlled system. Four white wines and two red wines will be served, at least initially, according to the director, Bobby Medirata who adds, ‘the idea is to turn the café into a hotel style cafe, outside a hotel.’
‘Because we can keep the wine in perfect temperature and de-oxidized using ‘Winekeeper’, we can keep opened bottles fresh for longer periods until finished, and a cafe is certainly a great place to chill out over a glass of white wine, not just coffee’, he says. ‘The food menu is set well to go with beer and wine like Mexican rolls of tacos and tortillas, and cheesy chips.’
‘The problem with most cafes serving beer and wine is their environment is still very canteen (like). Wine and beer need elegant places, and Cremebrew is just the place designed for it, as India's first luxury café,’ says the company release.
A telephonic chat with Mr. Medirata this morning clarified that the wine service has not yet been started but the plans are there to start soon. Understandably, the all-important bar-license is awaited and he is expecting to start the service by early next month. One hopes they don’t fall in the shoes of Nature’s Basket in Defence colony which made an announcement of adding wines to its grocery store list last year with big fanfare but took a full year to get the license after saying ‘we will start next week’ for around 50 times.
After lukewarm success by Barista, Nirula’s also had announced adding wine and beer at a few of its classy stores; Defence Colony store which has been renovated recently, has already started the service. It would be curious to see how successful the concept it becomes when it becomes operational at Le Café. A regular Cappuccino cup is listed at Rs.150 in the Menu. One has to wait and see how much a glass of wine will cost and of what quality the wines served would be. One has to bear in mind that many newer stand alone restaurants are burdened with the 160% customs duties (unless they have foreign clients like Olive and Diva) which the existing and established 5-star hotels are able to avoid.
Cremebrew L'Otel Café opened in April this year as Cremebrew Le Café as a Casual Luxury café in association with product partners Caffe Bristot, Italy and IBC, USA. This is the first store and the company plans to expand pan India through the Franchise route.
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