I
strongly recommend every Mumbaiker or anyone visiting Mumbai to choose
this hotel for a glass or a bottle of wine at the most respectable prices.
I would also highly recommend Sauvignon Blanc 2007 Saint Clair from New
Zealand, at Rs. 2800 a bottle. Don't forget that Mumbai has the painful
200% excise duty too, and this hotel pays an additional customs duty
of 160% as well!
When Vishal Kadakia of Wine Park told me last Saturday that the Sauvignon
Blanc I tasted at J W Marriott with the owners of Saint Clair was selling
at Rs. 2800 at this newly opened hotel, I made quick mental calculations.
The gross profit margin would be around 40%- definitely less than 50%.
I decided to rush to the hotel and check out the prices for myself. And
I am glad I did!
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| Andrew De Brito, Director F & B of Hotel Four Seasons |
The hotel has had a soft opening earlier in the week. The Italian Restaurant
Prato had just opened and the Indian Restaurant San:Qi was to open the
next day. There was a private party being hosted by the Swiss General
manager Armando Kraenzlin who is also the Regional Vice President. That
would also mean that Andrew De Brito, Director of Food & Beverage
would also be busy with the fiesta. But I had to check out the
price list.
Fortunately, the very first man I ran into was Andrew who was shuttling
between welcoming guests to the Prato and the San:Qi which is practically
outside the main hotel and has a separate entrance, without entering
the lobby. Andrew is a Malaysian of Indian origin who worked in the Maldives
property of Four Seasons before coming here over a year ago.
Soft-spoken and unassuming, the young F & B Director is very proud
of the wine prices at the hotel. Make no mistakes about the quality of
the restaurants and the hotel. Let me first predict that this will soon
be a page 3 destination. In fact, I wasn't surprised when Rajeev Samant,
owner of Sula walked by as I was doing the 'audit' of the wine list.
Prato is a fine dining restaurant where a dish can cost as much as Rs.1300
and the Primi Piatti can be as expensive as Rs.1100. The chef's menu
seems to be the only reasonable choice at Rs.3500 and the surprise menu
at Rs.4200 does look mysterious. Therefore, it is a pleasant surprise
that you can find Bruno Paillard Champagne for Rs. 5000 a bottle. Even
a Merlot, Chateau de Francs which retails for Rs. 1540 has been priced
at Rs.2500 with a mark up of a high 60%!
The wine list is rather limited right now, but as Andrew explains it,
50 labels are to be added in a day or so. The hotel already has a wine-by-the-glass
policy with wines as low as Rs. 380 for a 150 mL glass of Italian Pinot
Grigio (don't forget to curse the Excise department for the 200% excise
duty while sipping), a Chianti at Rs.500. I would recommend a glass of
Chateau Meyney Cru Bourgeois at Rs. 800 to any red wine lover-especially
the Bordeaux kind.
Just as in Shangri-la at Delhi, the prices for each glass have been
priced exactly a fifth of the bottle. The Rs. 5000 Champagne can be had
for Rs.990 a glass. Though it does not beat the fantastic price of Rs.
450 a glass of VCP at Shangri-la but the extra duties of 360% that the
hotel pays, make you commend the hotel.
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| Provintech machine for by-the-glass wine service |
The wine-by-the-glass which incidentally the Indian Wine Academy has
been recommending to the hotels for the last 4 years as a bare necessity
to encourage new drinkers to try out different wines, has been made possible
by a 12-bottle French dispenser Provintech from France. The Paris-made
product is not as sleek and sophisticated looking as the Italian equivalent
but is adequate in keeping the wine fresh and easily dispensable and
might even be cheaper. In any case this is the standard machine being
deployed by various Four Seasons properties, Andrew tells me.
What are the challenges he has faced so far in the wine programme? "The
biggest problem has been the storage at the distributors' end",
says he. You cannot imagine the pathetic conditions of storage where
32 or even 34 ° C are more the rule than the exception with most
distributors. One of the perennial problems apart from high taxes, this
one factor alone in which the total chain including the distributors
and the consumers, is weak. They still believe that storing the bottles
horizontally in a corner of the house or the warehouse with an ambient
temperature of 35° C is good enough.
Armando Kraenzlin who joins us for a while in the meantime, has been
in the hotel industry for 20 years and has also come here from the Maldives
property. 'Whenever we go out to restaurants here, we found people drinking
beer. So we decided to keep the wine prices extremely low so a guest
can automatically order a bottle of wine with the meals,' he said when
I asked him how they could afford to keep the profit margins so low when
the other hotels could not afford to keep them less than 500%.
Is it a marketing gimmick? A lolly for the hotel opening? A loss leader?
An example of leadership by action? We shall find out as the hotel starts
chirping very soon. Till then, enjoy the reasonable priced wines and
support them as they are paying full customs duties too. Who knows, they
might pass on the benefits to you when the duties are waived based on
their foreign exchange earnings?
At an average gross profit margin of less than 50%, the hotel deserves
kudos and an 'Oscar' for this category. Are other 5-stars in Mumbai listening?
Subhash
Arora |