MARIANI’S
Virtual
Gourmet
❖❖❖ IN THIS ISSUE EATING AROUND BARI, ITALY By John Mariani NEW YORK CORNER TANDOORI TASTE OF INDIA By John Mariani GOING AFTER HARRY LIME Chapter One By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR Vintage Wine Estates Goes Digital By John Mariani ❖❖❖ On this week's episode of my WVOX
Radio Show "Almost Golden," on Wed. January
4 at 11AM EST,I will be
interviewing Bill Malone on the Great
Female Country Singers. Go to: WVOX.com.
The episode will also be archived at: almostgolden.
Emmy Lou Harris ❖❖❖ EATING AROUND BARI,
ITALY By John Mariani
With
more than 400 miles of coastline on the Adriatic,
Italy’s province of Puglia quite naturally bases
its gastronomy
on the bounty of the sea, and Bari, as one of its
principal seaside cities (Brindisi and Taranto are
the others), is exemplary for the abundance of
seafood it brings in, sells and cooks. Indeed, as
the locals proudly insist, “If Paris had the sea,
it would be Bari.”
❖❖❖ NEW YORK CORNER
TANDOORI TASTE OF INDIA
223 Westchester Avenue
Port Chester, NY 914 937-2727 By John Mariani Dosa
Back
in the 1970s Asian restaurants—Chinese, Thai and
Indian—proliferated into American suburbs,
supplanting outdated and often unattractive
eateries all serving the same pseudo-ethnic menus.
Many of these new places were in strip shopping
centers, and by the 1980s nearly every city and
town in New York’s Westchester County had its
admirable efforts, not least Indian.
Closed
Tuesdays. Sunday luncheon buffet, noon-2:30 p.m. ❖❖❖ GOING AFTER HARRY
LIME Beginning the third in
the Katie Cavuto-David Greco crime series, which
has them searching for the inspiration for Graham
Greene's The Third Man.
CHAPTER ONE “After
all,” said Greene, “the money’s good. I always
do it for the money.”
*
*
*
“David? Katie.”
Katie hadn’t expected her friend to know
so much about dead British authors but said, “I
knew you’d be familiar with such details,
David.” © John Mariani, 2017 ❖❖❖ NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
Wineries Of The Future Had Better Go Digital, Says The Chief Growth And Experience Officer Of Vintage Wine Estates
The American
wine industry tries to maintain a genteel
image of friendly competition rather than a
cutthroat style. Yet
like every industry, it is about market
shares, supply and demand and getting the
message out. Keeping ahead of one’s
competitors means keeping up with
the newest technologies, even with an
agricultural product like wine.
I interviewed Kogan earlier
this month. What exactly does your title
“Chief Growth & Experience Officer”
mean? The Chief Growth &
Experience Officer pursues growth across sales
channels and within the organization with a
specific focus on creating frictionless
customer experiences. For example, identifying
new growth channels like eGrocery and third
party wholesale eCommerce that support channel
agnostic customer journeys that connect brand
loyalty. The deployment of customer facing
systems drive revenue and growth and at the
same time achieve organizational digital
fluency.
So in short, it is being a great
marketer who can predict major consumer
shifts, provide solutions around those shifts,
and can drive agreement
and
implementation of solutions with a unwavering
focus on the improvement of customer
experience for all.
For eCommerce and
digital brands around 25 unique brands.
The similarities
between the fashion and beauty brands that I
have worked are that they are all as genuine,
aspirational and trying to solve real consumer
problems. For Donna Karan, “How can I make her
feel like the titan in the boardroom?”; or for
Urban Decay, “How can I help them express
their real selves?”; or
Elizabeth Arden, “How can I make you feel
ageless?” Working at Hill & Knowlton and
Razorfish I was lucky enough to be part of the
teams that not only communicated the solutions
but defined and solved the problem. For Schwab
it was, “How do we enable safe and secure
retail trading online?” Before Schwab, we all
had to call our broker by phone to place a
trade. For The Southern Poverty Law Center,
“How do we use the internet to teach
tolerance?” and for Boo.com, “How
do we enable access to fashion streetwear from
anywhere using the internet?” My expertise is
my mindset. I am brand and channel agnostic
and focus wholeheartedly on solving the
customer problem. At VWE my focus is solving
the problem of “how I feel excited and
delighted by wine choice.” In 2004, you co-founded and
launched digital native company Cameron
Hughes Wine, which had never really been
done before. Can you explain what it was and
did? Cameron Hughes Wine was
founded because we wanted to solve a problem
of how to make incredible wine more
accessible, and
the idea came when we had a terrible bottle of
wine that cost $20. It was humiliating to the
extent that , wow, we spent $20 on wine that
is garbage,
and eye opening to the extent that
apparently we were not the first or the last
to feel totally ripped off by the wine we
bought. And so, CHW was born with the idea
that amazing wine can be bought at a fair
value ,and that if ever you feel like our
wines rip you off you did not have to live in
a zone of frustration: you have direct access
because you bought directly from us, and this
was the revelation unique the wine industry –
accessibility and transparency. You officially joined
the team of Vintage Wine Estates with their
acquisition of Cameron Hughes in 2017,
serving as their Chief Digital Officer and
Chief Marketing Officer. What were your
responsibilities in that position? My primary role was to
oversee the entire DTC portfolio which
included Estate tasting rooms, wine clubs, and
eCommerce, lifestyle eCommerce, third party
marketplaces like QVC and HSN, Cameron Hughes
Wine, Vinesse, The Sommelier Co. and any
provide insight/support on growth
opportunities connecting wine directly to
customers. In my role we grew the DTC business
from $30M to $100M, accounting for a third of
VWE revenue, which has been helped really
diversify the business. What were your
innovations? I know this will sound
very simple but it is the absolute truth –
customer first strategy. All decisions made,
be it CapEx to software investments, and done
through the lens of how do we excite and
delight our customers. The concept of the
customer above the retailer, the wholesaler,
the distributor was truly a foreign concept,
much having to do with the majority of product
delivery on a 3-tiered path. The sale begins
and ends with a handful of buyers, not the
hundreds of thousands of individuals who
consume the wine. Coming from DTC where
revenue is dependent on every single customer,
experience really changes perspective and
culture. Has the wine industry
generally dragged its feet with new digital
technologies? Absolutely yes when it comes
to digital consumer technology. Digital
technology related to wine production is state
of the art, it is the software that enables
relationships, connection, purchase and
consumption that have lagged for many reasons. How
does VWE work insofar as dealing with so
many of the strong personalities in the wine
world?
I would say that VWE
is the mediator among the strong personalities
in the wine world. We have acquired companies
from larger-than-life personalities who have
joined hands with us and have gone toe to toe
with fierce competitors who want us on the
bottom shelf but somehow find room for us at
the top. I would say nothing phases our team,
and it really always comes down to a basic
truth – we all really love the wine business
and attuned to its complexity and beauty. It appears everyone
is working towards sustainability. Had VWE an overall program to
combat climate change? We have certified all
our California Estate wineries and vineyards
through the California Certified Winegrowers
Alliance, with one vineyard (Laetitia Estate
Vineyards) certified through Sustainability in
Practice (SIP). Certified Sustainable
vineyards and wineries produce high quality
grapes and wine, adhering to sustainable
winegrowing and winemaking practices that are
environmentally sound, socially equitable and
economically viable. Are there plans to
acquire more estates in 2023 and 2024? We are always looking! Are there still a
number of innovations you are seeking to put
into place? Definitely. Much of it
is software related and
designed to enable the best customer
experiences and interactions either in the
tasting room, online, within our organization
and to our trade. How do you personally
keep up with the technology? I try to read as many
briefs and reports as possible on the ever
evolving definition of digital transformation,
but mostly, I watch and learn from other
industries and how they implement certain
technologies to guide my understanding and
reveal the potential opportunities for our
business. What’s your best
guess as to wine sales to American consumers
in the next five years? ❖❖❖ THINGS WE TEND TO DOUBT: According to the NY Times' prediction as "flavor of the year": "Embrace the brine. Fresh, bracing marine flavors have spawned a craze for coastal cocktails garnished with crab claws and oysters. Dan Levy, the actor and host of `The Big Brunch,' is making Clamato cool." ❖❖❖ Any of John Mariani's books below may be ordered from amazon.com. The Hound in Heaven (21st Century Lion Books) is a novella, and for anyone who loves dogs, Christmas, romance, inspiration, even the supernatural, I hope you'll find this to be a treasured favorite. The story concerns how, after a New England teacher, his wife and their two daughters adopt a stray puppy found in their barn in northern Maine, their lives seem full of promise. But when tragedy strikes, their wonderful dog Lazarus and the spirit of Christmas are the only things that may bring his master back from the edge of despair. WATCH THE VIDEO! “What a huge surprise turn this story took! I was completely stunned! I truly enjoyed this book and its message.” – Actress Ali MacGraw “He had me at Page One. The amount of heart, human insight, soul searching, and deft literary strength that John Mariani pours into this airtight novella is vertigo-inducing. Perhaps ‘wow’ would be the best comment.” – James Dalessandro, author of Bohemian Heart and 1906. “John Mariani’s Hound in Heaven starts with a well-painted portrayal of an American family, along with the requisite dog. A surprise event flips the action of the novel and captures us for a voyage leading to a hopeful and heart-warming message. A page turning, one sitting read, it’s the perfect antidote for the winter and promotion of holiday celebration.” – Ann Pearlman, author of The Christmas Cookie Club and A Gift for my Sister. “John Mariani’s concise, achingly beautiful novella pulls a literary rabbit out of a hat – a mash-up of the cosmic and the intimate, the tragic and the heart-warming – a Christmas tale for all ages, and all faiths. Read it to your children, read it to yourself… but read it. Early and often. Highly recommended.” – Jay Bonansinga, New York Times bestselling author of Pinkerton’s War, The Sinking of The Eastland, and The Walking Dead: The Road To Woodbury. “Amazing things happen when you open your heart to an animal. The Hound in Heaven delivers a powerful story of healing that is forged in the spiritual relationship between a man and his best friend. The book brings a message of hope that can enrich our images of family, love, and loss.” – Dr. Barbara Royal, author of The Royal Treatment. ❖❖❖
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Publisher: John Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher
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