How a Single Word Increased a Bar’s Sales by +50%

About a month ago, I and a buddy of mine from office went on a vacation to the hilly state of Assam. My friend was a native of the state and was aware of a new bar that had opened a few weeks ago in Guwahati – the busiest city.

So, to kill time; we decided to visit this new establishment. We grabbed a seat and started to skim through the menu. It was a short list, there were only about 10 items on it. I went for a whiskey on the rocks, while my friend wanted to try the regular Gin & Tonic. We placed our orders and what followed next caught my attention and left me pondering to this date.

Bars sales have a standard rate for Gin and Tonic, which in that bar was INR 1,200. We placed the order, the response of the bartender was no less than genius. He said,

“A very good choice, which brand of Gin would you prefer?”

There it was, the one word that made it a whole new ball game. If he would have asked “which Gin to use”, the answer would have been like it was a thousand times before, “generic one”. But, by giving us a preference, he presented an open-ended question that had many answers. Our inquisitive nature found us wondering about the different brands. I glanced at my friend and he was browsing the bar looking for the brand of Gin he would like to go with his tonic.

The bartender interrupted our thought and recommended some of the finest brands available with him. He introduced several brands like Beefeater, The Botanist, Hendrick’s, and Bombay Sapphire; they were all good brands but the manner in which he named the expensive brands was remarkable. He started with the most expensive one, but without ever mentioning the price. He emphasized on the taste, after-taste, the complexity of the liquor, the manufacturing process, and how it stands apart from others.

After he suggested the different brands, we chose two that caught our fancy and settled on Bombay Sapphire. According to him, this Gin was one of the most popular British Gins; it set us back by INR 2,500 bucks and was the main contributor to bars sales. I ended up switching my beer and going for the gin and tonic. A bottled beer would have cost me nothing more than a few hundred rupees, but I ended up spending the same amount as my friend which set us back by quite a few thousand bucks!

This simple yet ingenious line by the bartender earned his bar more money than he would have got from us. He appreciated our choice and also recommended few more options to us by checking his POS restaurant bar software. Thus, a Single Word Increased a Bars Sales by +50%.