As Danny Meyer’s first restaurant and the flagship business that launched the Union Square Hospitality Group, Union Square Cafe has been one of the country’s most beloved restaurants for more than 30 years. The cafe serves seasonal cuisine inspired by the culinary culture of Italy, France, and Northern California.
Union Square Cafe has won five James Beard Awards and earned Zagat Survey’s #1 ranking as New York’s Most Popular Restaurant nine times.
Why They Started Looking For A System
Before they started using BinWise, the team managed their beverage program of more than 1,400 wine bottles manually, using only spreadsheets. The traditional method was extremely time-consuming and prone to mistakes, so the team started their search for an all-in-one beverage inventory management system that ultimately led them to BinWise.
According to Jason Wagner, the Wine Director of Union Square Cafe, BinWise has been a great help to his team. Not only does it streamline their inventory process completely, but it also allows them to take inventory faster without any errors. “BinWise saves us at least 8 hours every time we have to do inventory. That’s a whole workday!” Wagner shares with excitement.
On top of that, Jason appreciates how BinWise is extremely flexible in fitting their business’ needs and enables them to manage everything on a single platform, from tracking inventory to ordering. His favorite feature is the ability to track the cost of goods sold in real-time, which makes keeping track of variance and pour cost less of a pain, and makes it easier to run a profitable beverage program. The easy-to-use interface of BinWise also makes it faster and easier to train new employees on the platform.
As of today, BinWise has also been adopted by other Union Square Hospitality Group restaurants, such as Blue Smoke, Gramercy Tavern, Marta, The Modern, North End Grill, and Untitled at the Whitney. For more info on the types of businesses we serve, check out the hospitality definition.