When the bartender at Cava, a tapas bar in midtown Toronto, hands over the wine list, I am gripped by a momentary feeling of panic. I don't recognize a single label on the menu. That's because almost none of these wines—New Zealand sauvignon blanc, Oregon pinot noir—are available at my local liquor store.
Happily, I'm dining with Steven Campbell, owner of the Lifford Wine Agency. Campbell has been working in the hospitality business since the 1980s, when he ran the upscale Toronto restaurant Delisle. He bought Lifford in 1994, and now employs 30 people. With 350 international labels on its roster, Lifford is the largest distributor of specialty wines to Ontario's hospitality industry. From its storefront just down the road from Honest Ed's in Toronto, Lifford finds wine for some of the city's top restaurants—including Cava, the Four Seasons, the Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar and Barberian's Steak House—plus hotels and resorts across the province. It also sells wine by the caseload to private customers, and occasionally finds new labels for the LCBO.
Campbell is a talent scout, cool-hunter and tastemaker all in one—scouring the world's winemaking regions for up-and-coming vineyards, new trends and, of course, wines his customers will actually buy. "Wine is an unusual consumer product," says Campbell. "It's a living thing. It changes over time."
You'd think Campbell's days would be filled with nothing but wine shows and exclusive tastings, visits to foreign wineries and meals at posh restaurants. While his job does indeed carry the kind of perks the rest of us only dream about, Campbell spends a big chunk of his time managing nuts and bolts. Wine distribution is highly competitive—there are more than 500 licensed wine agents in Ontario alone. It's also highly complicated, ruled as it is by the bureaucratic behemoth that is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
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The LCBO's rules forbid wine agents from actually selling alcohol. Rather, they act as brokers—they find the suppliers and the buyers, but don't handle the transaction. "We facilitate the sale from the LCBO to the customer," says Campbell. "That's what makes us unique in small business." (To read how Campbell and other agents get wine from the vineyard to your favourite restaurant, see "Let's play monopoly.")
To stay ahead of the LCBO—and his rivals—Campbell needs more than a good palate and a nose for wine. His business is about building relationships with suppliers, educating customers and making sure his employees know what they're talking about—and that they stick around. It's also about beating the other guy to the best products and ensuring that he's got a steady supply for his clients. Those same principles apply to just about every small business.
Exclusivity is key
With restaurants accounting for the vast majority of Lifford's business, the agency pays particular attention to keeping them happy. Campbell knows that for restaurateurs, exclusivity in their wine list is a major concern. To put it baldly, if the diner can't see the wine at the liquor store, the diner can't see the markup.
The general rule of thumb, at least in the U.S., is that, for one glass of wine, a restaurant charges roughly the same as it paid for the entire bottle. In other words, if a glass costs $7, the restaurant probably paid $7 for the whole bottle. "That means you're never going to see a bottle of Mouton Cadet on a well-researched wine list," says Cava's owner, Chris McDonald, who says the markup in Canada is lower than in the U.S., thanks to our higher taxes. "Mouton Cadet isn't a great-value product, and everyone knows what it costs."
Part of the reason Lifford does so well with restaurants is that most of its products aren't available on LCBO shelves. "Restaurants need to make money on alcohol," Campbell says. "And if you don't know what the price of a bottle is, it won't bother you."
If you've got something good, don't let it go
If a diner comes back to your restaurant looking for the same wine he ordered last month, you'd better have more of it in stock. On the agency side, that means that if a restaurant has one of your labels on its wine list, you'd better have a line on where you can get more cases.
At Cava, McDonald recently bought two cases of Pierre Sparr Riesling Mambourg Grand Cru 2001 Alsatian (he says it's delicious) from the LCBO. "The LCBO will buy it once in a while, and then let it run out," he says. "You may not see it for another six months." That means McDonald has to substitute another label on his wine list and train his staff on how to sell it. Meanwhile, McDonald's Alsatian stemware—tulip-shaped glasses designed to enhance the wine's taste—takes up yet more precious shelf space. "I could buy a season's supply of the wine," he says, "but I don't have the storage for that, either."
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