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Matthew
Citriglia MS
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“I do not look at waiting tables as
a temporary job but a serious career choice. Let me retrain your
wait staff and management team and motivate them to achieve a higher
degree of professionalism”
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In our fast paced world, restaurants slap down food and consumers
buy wine by numbers.
The art and honor of service has been lost, and wine has become
a generic alcoholic
beverage. Matthew Citriglia created the WINEMENTOR, LTD to instill
a sense of honor to
the lost art of service and give consumers fundamental skills
to purchase wine based on
their tastes rather than a number system.
Develop a Professional Wait Staff
The restaurant industry is going through a renaissance period.
There are numerous cooking schools turning out talented chefs
everyday and the prosperity of the country is providing ample
funding for new restaurant ventures. What else could a talented
chef ask for than a well financed operation that spares no expense
on décor and atmosphere? Great food and great ambiance
is a sure winner – not!
Most restaurateurs do not treat service as a profession. Think
about it, most chefs either go to school or are trained by another
chef, in either case they are given a sense of purpose and understand
the importance of their roll in creating the identity of a restaurant.
Wait staff on the other hand are hired like cattle, run through
a period of shadowing, taught the basic mechanics of how the pos
system works, how to time food being fired in the kitchen, and
then given a food, drink, beer, liquor and wine menu to memorize
before being dumped on the floor. No vision, no philosophy, no
sense of purpose other than make the customer happy but don’t
upset the kitchen. If you have servers that have been with your
restaurant longer than a year saying “I’m only doing
this till I can find a real job!” you have a training problem.
Programs
Sales, Service & Wine
The Building Blocks of Professional Service & Wine Sales
This seminar was first developed in 1993 and is continually updated.
It is designed to elevate the standards of service by motivating
servers to achieve a higher degree of professionalism. This will
result in better server attitude, lower turnover, higher check
averages, happier customers and smoother operations for the restaurateur.
It was created using professional experience acquired while pursuing
the Court of Master Sommelier
Diploma, as well as, training on the floor of some of the country’s
top restaurants. This training program
is motivational, educational and brings honor back to art of service.
It is highly recommended that managers, chefs and owners attend
these seminars so they can adapt
and apply the philosophies of service set forth in the training.
The reinforcement of professional service
fundamentals everyday by the management team will instill good
habits in new servers and break bad habits of the veteran staff.
The training program is broken into five two-hour seminars, and
each seminar builds on the previous. Because of this, it is very
difficult for servers to attend a seminar in the series randomly.
Servers should attend the previous class to get the most out of
the existing seminar, limit distractions to the other students,
and keep the training session on time.
Consumer Wine Education Series
People don’t seem to have a problem walking into a music
store and selecting music from an
overwhelming number of choices, but when it comes to wine…
forget about it! Why is it that
consumers are not overwhelmed by a huge selection of music, yet
are quickly duped by a small
selection of wine? Because we begin to learn about music when
we are just kids, but are thrown
into a world of wine after we are adults. Without a proper foundation
wine can seem like a very
overwhelming subject filled with mystique, myths and “pomp
and circumstance.”
Wine isn’t that difficult to understand, but too many people
are looking for the short cut, the easy
answer. It is the short cut that complicates wine more than it
needs to be. With solid fundamental
wine knowledge, learning about wine becomes easy. Unfortunately,
there is no two hour seminar
that can teach a person about the world of wine. My seminars will
provide you a snapshot of the world of grapes; put you in touch
with your senses; and provide you an infectious passion of wine
curiosity. These courses create a foundation to build a lifetime
of wine knowledge upon.
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Who
Is the Winementor?
Matthew’s 22 years of experience in the wine industry includes
retail ownership, as well as restaurant and wholesale management.
His thirst for knowledge drove him to compete against some of
America’s best sommeliers at several sommelier competitions,
and in February 2002, Matthew become a member of prestigious Court
of Master Sommeliers. His passion for service and education led
to the creation of The Winementor, Ltd; focused on bringing honor
back to the art of service through a series of training seminars
geared toward motivating and educating wait staff.
Currently, Matt is the Statewide Fine Wine Sales Manager for a
local wholesaler, and is the Vice Chairman for the Court of Master
Sommeliers where he has helped create and implement a new exam
level titled “Certified Sommelier”. As well, Matt
is asked regularly to speak and lecture on a variety of beverage
topics; helps coordinate and administer the Court of Master Sommelier
exams; is a judge for the National Mondial Young Sommelier Competition;
mentors numerous students trying to pass the MS exam; and has
created a innovative online e-learning server training program.
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