The relevance of different types of PDO in restaurants’ wine lists : an explorative analysis on an Italian case study

Wine significantly contributes to restaurant profitability, but how a wine list is produced and provisioned is still a neglected topic in the scientific literature. In fact, while menu items and menu design have been explored in the food-service sector, there is still a lack of information about the role played by product elements in a wine list. The aim of this work is to explore the relationships between the items included in the wine list and their features (numerosity, variety, localness, typicality etc.) and the popularity of the restaurants. Using data from TripAdvisor, the study has been performed on the city of Bergamo to analyze the relevance of wine lists on restaurant ratings. Several models were specified to assess the impact of wine lists features on the restaurant’s ratings, and some significant results emerged in terms of product differentiation. Moreover, the numerosity of specific products, namely Chianti wines, can contribute to increase the popularity of restaurants. These results are helpful for restaurant managers and in general for the restauration-retail system because they provide a setting guide to the wine lists composer to appear better evaluated on reviews-based websites. At the same time, the wineries can adopt targeted strategies to increase their presence in the lists of the most popular restaurants, to increase the sales in Ho.Re.Ca. channel.