Comments on: The Grape Files For Chapter 11

By: Decatur Metro

Decatur Metro — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:23:23 +0000

The AJC follows up...

By: FM Fats

FM Fats — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:26:34 +0000

Hey, we had a great time watching the election returns at Tastings!

By: Kelly

Kelly — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:31:24 +0000

Hello neighbors,

This is Kelly, one of the owners of Tastings and I would like respond to the prior poster’s comment about Tastings and take this opportunity to communicate some information about Tastings on behalf of Deb and myself.

We offer a wide variety of choices for all palates and pocketbooks. We have 7 wines for under $10 per glass, 12 wines for under $12 per glass, and 11 wines for under $15 per glass. Our house wines range from $7-$9 per glass. Every Friday, we feature 1/2 price draught beer, $5 Kettle One martinis and $5 Bombay Sapphire martinis.

Monday through Friday we offer lunch specials such as a sandwich or a pizza, a salad and a soft drink for $8. Our usual menu items range from $9 for small plates to $14 for filet mignon.

We acknowledge that we have some expensive wines on the tastings machines, however, the technology that we employ allows the wine to stay fresh for 27 days which provides us the ability to offer wines by the glass that are very rarely offered by the glass in other restaurants. As a result, our customers have the opportunity to taste or enjoy a glass of an expensive, highly rated wine as opposed to purchasing a bottle (as would be the case in a restaurant) and not knowing how they will like it. In addition, our pour prices and retail prices are extremely competitive with other retail establishments in the vicinity of our location.

Tastings enjoys being a part of the Decatur community and we have supported many community organizations and charities since opening 6 months ago.

I hope that you will come in and see these things for yourselves. We’d love to meet those of you who we have not yet met, and love to see those of you who we have already met!

By: Howard

Howard — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:24:10 +0000

Good to hear that you didn’t mean that the way it read.

By: SalMonela

SalMonela — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:49:40 +0000

Others may correct me, but I think the worst case scenario would be that the surviving franchises might have to change names (if the company name was considered an ‘asset’ that could be sold in a liquidation scenario), and any bulk purchase contracts that were negotiated through the franchisor would be void. This might be an issue with The Grape locations because (and I don’t know this) their wholesale wine prices may have been negotiated based on their collective volume. Otherwise, it’s just the loss of corporate level and pooled advertising budget (if any).

From a customer perspective, it could mean a less consistent product between different locations. This would depend on how tightly the franchsor controls the image today, but from my limited experiences at The Grape, you can expect a pretty similar experience regardless of which one you visit. Without franchisor oversight, one of them could start pouring 2 Buck Chuck, or co-locate with a ChuckE Cheese if they wanted to.