Brad Johnson (BinWise)
My name is Brad and I work on the marketing team here at BlueCart and BinWise.
If you can share a little bit about Geranium, what you guys do as a brand, and how you got started, that would be great.
Jackie Doucette (Geranium)
Cool! So we're Geranium in Copenhagen, Denmark. We have two co-owners–Rasmus and Søren–and they've been friends for the better part of 25 years. They decided to open up a restaurant together.
Initially, they opened up a restaurant in the King's Garden, which is in the center of the city. Then we moved to where we are now, where we’ve been for about 12 years.
Our wine program has grown exponentially over the past 10 to 12 years. We started working with smaller, natural-style and biodynamic producers. Then it's grown into this behemoth of a wine program where we have a little bit of everything–all sorts of producers and all sorts of styles of wine.
With that, the wine cellar has grown exponentially as well. We have the main cellar and then we have a basement cellar. Our biggest concern was how to keep track of all of it, and that's where BinWise came in.
Brad
That’s a really good intro, thank you. So when did Geranium start using BinWise and what was the catalyst for that?
Jackie
We were up and running with the program in January 2022, and it took us a good three months to get it in usable shape. We have the upstairs cellar, which is where we keep all of our references. Then we have a basement cellar, and we decided to start moving wines into the basement cellar back in November 2021.
My colleague and I said, “Hey, I don't want to do this by hand because this is going to be a disaster. It's going to be a disaster either way, but if we can minimize the manual labor, that would be great.” We decided to look into BinWise because we were having two separate locations for storage in the same building, but we can access one and we can't access the other with ease.
Brad
November 2021, okay, sounds good. It's coming up on about a year.
Jackie
Yeah.
Brad
Awesome. How much time have you saved as a team since using BinWise when you're doing inventory?
Jackie
So much, like an unbelievable amount! I remember the first time we did inventory, we were like, “Wow, it only took us a week!” Our cellar, it's made to hold, I reckon, probably about 7,000 bottles neatly. Messily, we fit about 10,000. We have about 4,450 unique bins.
When we traditionally did inventory, we didn't have a big team, so typically it was me, my colleague Mikael, or my colleague Andrea, doing it by ourselves for 15 hours a day over the span of two weeks. And then when we added the basement into it, it took us a month. When we used the BinWise inventory for the first time, the upstairs was done in three days with two of us scanning, and the basement was done in about three days.
Brad
Okay, and those three days–were those still 15 hours days, or were those eight-hour days?
Jackie
It was like eight or nine hours.
Brad
Okay, awesome.
Jackie
BinWise saves us a ton of time, honestly. We knew it was already working, but we were really surprised at how much time it actually saved us.
Brad
That's awesome, very glad to hear that.
Jackie Doucette
Our time savings are seriously huge. And I remember Andrea said, “Hey, listen, we finished the wine cellar in two days!!” We've never done inventory that fast since I’ve been here.
Brad
That's great! We're glad to be of service in that way. What kind of cost savings have you guys seen as far as labor costs or anything else?
Jackie
It's easier for us to keep track of the actual costs. I think the biggest for us has been the sale price percent change in bottles we didn't really look at much before because it was only in an Excel spreadsheet. For one bottle of wine over the next year, we wouldn't realize how much it costs other than just looking at the original cost however many years ago. So we've been able to adjust our pricing on that point.
We've also been able to increase markup a bit more across the board, and we were losing a bit of money where we shouldn’t have. Now we have more of a standard markup for the majority of bottles.
The biggest help for us has been seeing the bottle costs over time. The main features we use in BinWise are the wine builder and then inventory management. Overall it’s been easier to make our prices a bit more reasonable.
Brad
Awesome, that totally makes sense. How has using BinWise helped Geranium reach its business goals? Has that freed up time with all the time that you would have been using on inventory? Has there been any other activity or any other tasks that you can now do because of that?
Jackie
Interesting question. Because we spent so much time making sure that the wines were entered correctly, and we had whites that were listed as reds and vice versa, we haven’t been able to fully assess that yet.
Of course, when you have humans in any system, you can expect a bit of error. Organizing all of our invoices is a bit easier now. It does take a little bit more time but before BinWise, we just didn't do that.
I think there's a misconception that restaurants are a lot more organized than they actually are. We just didn't do any of that previously. I just went to Susane (our accountant) and we just hoped that what we received was what we ordered, which is just not always the case.
Brad
Right.
Jackie
Being forced to look at our invoices has helped us a lot. I don't know if I can answer that question now. Come back to me in six months and I think I'll have a different answer.
Brad
Yeah, that's totally fair. It does take some time to get the program set up so that's totally understandable. Any favorite features in BinWise that you've used or that the team has really appreciated in the five months that you've been up and running?
Jackie
We really appreciate the wine list builder. We used an Excel spreadsheet before, which is difficult in its own right, but when you have the better part of 16,000 bottles, it's particularly tough.
It's hard to keep the inventory current. BinWise’s perpetual inventory feature is something that's been really useful. We've always had issues with selling a bottle of wine only to go back and realize we don’t have it.
Those kinds of issues have lessened a lot since we've had the wine list builder. That and the 86’d item feature is a big help for us. The fact that the wine list is online and can update on our website as we update it as well is fantastic, especially with guests reserving bottles ahead of time.
I like that it gives you the markup on the wine list as well. Those are huge for us. There's also the consigned wine sales. I like that we can have them separately without having to filter them 15,000 times in Excel. We’ve been really happy with BinWise!
Brad
Super glad to hear this. Do you have any other shoutouts you wanted to share? Any other thoughts?
Jackie
Not really. It's been working really well for us if I'm perfectly honest. We're pretty happy with it. It's been working really well.
Brad
Cool. Well, thank you, Jackie! That's wonderful to hear. I really appreciate your time.
Jackie
All right. Thanks. You too. Bye.
Love the sound of saving between 50 to 85% of your inventory counting time every month? Book a demo now or email BinWise at sales@BinWise.com to get started.