Our courses
Wine Guild Education (‘WGEd’) are here to support Hospitality Employers: we appreciate the challenges you face. We know you are preoccupied trying to get your business back up and profitable, grappling with uncertain guidelines, concerned customers, changed priorities… and still you need to:
- Maintain standards
- Control costs
- Drive up operating margins
- Build customer loyalty
- Motivate staff at all levels
- Build a team which can multi-task
- Provide career development
We can help take some of this burden off you, so you can focus on the big picture – and stay flexible to meet the next round of challenges.
We know you need much more than staff training at this time: we have looked at how you may need to adapt your business model – simplifying your offer, cutting out layers of staffing, reducing staff and customer interactions… it is painful, but also a time of opportunity:
If you have a sommelier team, why not join us in creating a ‘Flying Sommelier’ concept?
We are looking for an industry partner: instead of simply letting go your highly skilled sommelier team, might you consider outsourcing them? Our ‘Flying Sommelier’ concept means you could still have the benefit of all the advice you are used to on wine buying and management, wine-list creation, food and wine pairing, staff preparation and training, possibly even a presence on the floor at key times – everything you still need, but at optimum cost efficiency.
WGEd qualify as external training providers, so by structuring your staff training programmes to meet the levy funded ‘apprenticeship’ pathways (at various levels) we can absorb the costs you might previously have had to pay for staff who provided in-house training, while other services can be put onto an ‘as needed’ consultancy basis. WGEd can offer this because we can use your sommeliers’ available time productively on a range of other opportunities. But if you find you need more support again as the business recovers, we can be flexible. You need not lose contact or credibility with key members of your team. Do contact us so we can explore the possibilities.
If you do not have a sommelier team, maybe you are wondering how to improve your margins through wine sales?
Allow our panel of expert ‘flying sommeliers’ to help you match your wine list to your food menu, introduce opportunities for up-selling and enhancing the customer experience, assist your wine buying and provide training to your staff to deliver. We’d love to discuss the range of possibilities – do contact us.
WGEd offers effective workplace training at little or no incremental cost:
WGEd set out, before Covid, to provide a training programme aimed at improving the standards of wine service in the Hospitality Industry, and our courses do that. We also made sure that our key courses would qualify for Levy funding (or 95% government grants) within the UK so that they can be offered at little or no cost to employers.
Our courses, designed specifically for the hospitality service industry to be delivered in the workplace, will make wine training effective much faster than traditionally assumed: it really need not take three years to be an effective wine waiter: we expect our trainees to show real progress within three months and to be showing leadership skills within six…. and it is not just wine – we expect them to demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviours, and to be willing, multi-tasking professionals. (WGEd has developed the wine course as a new pathway, but ‘Apprentices’ working with our training partner on a parallel levy funded programme are already, part way through their level 2 course, universally showing readiness to continue training as managers and supervisors at Level 3).
Are you an experienced sommelier looking for a change?
If you are an experienced sommelier looking to broaden your career portfolio, this could be your opportunity: WGEd is recruiting suitably qualified individuals to join our panel: this is not just about tutoring, but also using time productively to help our team prepare courses for professionals at higher levels, as well as develop advice and programmes for consumers who are not hospitality professionals, both here in the UK and internationally. There will be opportunities to build your reputation and explore additional pathways at a time of great change within the hospitality industry.
