Woody Wu · Forward-Deployed AI · AI for Wine Shops
AI for Wine Shops
Your customers ask what to drink with dinner. Your best answer is somewhere on your own shelves.
Remote first · Canada and the United States
THE PROBLEM THIS SOLVES
A good wine shop sells advice, and advice does not scale: the customer online at ten at night, the regular who wants to know when the allocation lands, the four hundred product pages that still say only the name and the vintage.
Most of that can be answered from what you already have, your inventory and your notes, if the system is built by someone who knows what a good recommendation sounds like.
WHERE THE HOURS GO
Questions and pairings from your own inventory.
What to drink with the roast, a gift under sixty dollars, something like the Sancerre they bought last month. Answered from what is actually in stock, with real prices, never from a guess.
Product descriptions.
Technical sheets and your tasting notes turned into consistent pages for every bottle, in your voice, checked before they go live.
Allocations and waitlists.
Who asked for what, who gets offered it first, and the email drafted when it lands.
Aging stock.
The bottles that have not moved, flagged with a suggestion: a feature, a tasting, a staff pick, before they become a markdown.
Tastings and events.
Bookings, reminders and the follow-up offer drafted from the bottles poured.
Staff knowledge.
Your range, your producers and your notes, answerable by anyone on the floor on a busy Saturday.
WHAT I WOULD LEAVE TO PEOPLE
The recommendation that matters: the conversation with a regular, the judgment on a rare bottle's provenance, the decision about who gets the allocation. Anything that touches age verification or the rules on selling alcohol stays with a person, every time. The system drafts and routes; a person decides and sells.
HOW IT WORKS
1. The Service Audit.
One to two weeks inside the operation. A ranked decision document: which of these workflows is worth automating for you, what each costs you today in hours, and what to leave alone.
2. The deployment.
The winning workflow built on the systems you already run, with a person approving anything that reaches a guest and a full record of what the system did.
3. The Standard.
Every month, proof that it is still earning, in your numbers: hours reclaimed, errors avoided, revenue protected, and what my own measurement got wrong that month.
HOW IT IS MEASURED
In your numbers, not a vendor's. Before anything is built I measure the workflow as it runs today: how many hours, how many errors, how many enquiries that went unanswered. After it is live I measure it again the same way.
Every figure comes with the error rate of the tool that produced it. I do not quote a saving I have not measured in your building.
THE FEE
From $3,500 CAD: the Service Audit, fixed price, for a single property or venue. You own the document whether or not we go further.
The deployment is quoted after the audit, because the honest number depends on what the audit finds. If you proceed, the audit fee is credited toward it.
WHY ME
I hold the WSET and ISG Diplomas, worked in wine importing and consulting in Burgundy and Piedmont, and consulted on fine wine auctions. I built The House Somm, which recommends from a real list without inventing a bottle or a price. A shop's inventory is the same problem with more bottles.
You can see the work: The House Somm, a live AI sommelier that holds a real wine list without misquoting a price, and The Triage, a free tool that reads a task you describe and tells you whether it is worth automating.
WHAT I DO NOT DO
I do not sell software licences, take a cut from any vendor I recommend, or automate anything that needs a person. If you are in my own city, I will tell you so and point you toward someone good.
TO START
Tell me what is quietly costing you time. One sentence is enough, and I will tell you plainly if it is not worth automating.
DIRECT ANSWERS
How can a wine shop use AI?
To answer customer questions and suggest pairings from its own inventory with real prices, write consistent product pages, manage allocation waitlists, flag stock that is not moving, and run tasting events. The Service Audit finds which of these is worth building for your shop. From $3,500 CAD.
Can an AI sommelier recommend from my own inventory?
Yes, if it is built to answer only from what is in stock and to copy prices exactly. The House Somm does this for a restaurant's wine list today, and refuses to invent a bottle or a price.