Ongoing wine strategy, supply, training and management, without the full-time hire
Behind every good glass of wine is a ridiculous amount of unglamorous work.
Most hospitality operators have two options when it comes to wine: rely on a rep whose interest is selling product, or hire a full-time sommelier/wine director whose cost is difficult to justify across one to five locations. Carpa Vino is the third option. Your external wine department. The strategy, the supply, the training, and the ongoing management, fully accountable, fully operational, and never on your payroll.
A good wine program does not run on taste alone. It requires sourcing, logistics, supply planning, pricing, staff language, menu strategy, margin awareness, guest psychology, event planning and commercial discipline.
Wine expertise is expensive. Unmanaged wine is expensive too.
That is not one job. That is a small department.
Most businesses don’t hire the full marketing department. Wine should be no different.
Carpa Vino does for wine what agencies do for marketing and managed IT firms do for technology: it gives operators access to a full specialist function without building the whole department in-house. A wine rep sells the bottle. Carpa Vino installs a proven wine system.
What Fractional wine program management actually does
Most restaurants can buy wine. That is not the hard part. The hard part is turning wine into a working revenue system. Like AI, wine only creates value when it is implemented properly. Most operators already have access to wine. What they do not have is the system to make it perform.
A managed wine department handles what falls through the gap between a wine rep and a full-time hire: the pricing strategy, the supply continuity, the staff training, the margin tracking, and the ongoing program oversight that keeps it all running. Carpa Vino provides exactly that for restaurants, hotels, venues, and hospitality groups that need wine expertise without building an internal team to deliver it.
How the Program Scales
Carpa Vino is built around a proven system, not a single person’s availability. As the program grows, the system grows with it, same standards, same supply relationships, same outcomes. If you’re a venue group or a multi-location operator, let’s talk about what that looks like for your portfolio.
Carpa Vino does not just supply the bottle. We install the system around it from seed to glass through:
Wine Sourcing and Access
Wines are sourced from selected producers and estates, with a focus on wines that have a clear role in hospitality: house pours, by-the-glass features, premium upgrades, event wines, and seasonal placements. Because I work as a licensed agent and importer, the conversation is not only theoretical, we can help connect strategy to actual supply.
Wine Program Management
Program strategy, wine list architecture, house wine and by-the-glass strategy.
Wine Strategy & Marketing
Pricing and margin guidance, staff selling language, supply planning, marketing and guest-facing story and events.
Start with Good House Wine
The Good House Wine program is the easiest way to test the program before changing the whole wine program.
It allows an operator to add red & white house wine feature with: Exclusive wines, staff selling cues, menu language, table card copy, pricing guidance, guest-facing story and simple sales tracking.
No full list overhaul. No disruption to the current supplier structure. Good House Wine is a sample of what fractional wine program management feels like, without any risk.
Who This is For?
An external team for wine program management is for restaurants, hotels, venues, and hospitality groups that need wine to perform better but do not have the internal structure, budget, or volume to hire a full service wine department.
The Good House Wine program, by Trina Plamondon, is for anyone who knows that behind every good glass of wine is a ridiculous amount of unglamorous work.