Favourable Odds

Tucked away behind the harbour in Anstruther, Fife, is Peter Jukes's cottage restaurant, the Cellar. Some of the wines on his fine list are supplied by Oddbins, which makes things easy for Jukes - space is tight, so if there is a run on a particular wine he can pick up a case or two while he's out shopping in nearby St Andrews.

But hang on - Oddbins is a high-street wine merchant, and the on-trade doesn't traditionally buy from the high street, worrying that its customers might rumble the mark-ups and stomp home muttering that they could buy the wine for half the price at their local store. "Not so," says Oddbins' new corporate executive Robin Knapp. "I think restaurant customers are prepared to pay the mark-ups when they know what they are getting. Some of our customers are now even asking to have our name printed on their wine list."

Knapp produces an orange tent-card that was printed for the Devonshire Pub Company. In the top left-hand corner is the Oddbins logo. On the right is an endorsement by the Independent on Sunday that praises the "attractive fruit" of the wine advertised - Oddbins' own 1996 Les Palissages vin de pays de Vaucluse Blanc. "This customer wanted to move away from wine boxes, but felt nervous that it would not have the wine culture to back it up."

Praise from the national press is pretty much constant. Oddbins' wines are always being talked about by the wine critics; and its stores, all 231 of them, are repeatedly honoured in annual awards - so much so that after winning the International Wine Challenge Merchant of the Year five years in row (from 1988 to 1992), it was asked not to enter to give others a chance, though this didn't stop them from picking up National High Street Merchant in the interim.

As far as high-street competition for the on-trade goes, there's not much. Majestic does some, but it sells by the case, so it's not strictly consumer, and when Peter Dominic was around it tried, but failed. It was only when Oddbins started buying seriously into Australia in 1987 that the on-trade customers started coming. They liked what they were drinking at home and thought their customers would like to drink Aussie wines too.

Oddbins is now part of the Seagram machine, but its image as a maverick merchant introducing the consumer to the then little-known wines of Portugal and regional France, as it did back in its early days of trading in the early 1970s, is still with us. Its bin-ends, which gave the shops their name, and rough wooden floors provided a striking contrast to conventional brewery-owned chains.

In the high street pecking order, Oddbins sits alongside Unwins, falling behind Greenalls' 450 stores and a long way behind Thresher and Allied Domecq-owned Victoria Wines, with 2,000 or so each. But then it has individuality that would be hard to multiply at that level.

The on-trade side to Oddbins' business has been steadily growing over the past 10 years, and it now represents 10% of its business. As well as Knapp's appointment, corporate development manager Matthew Hudson joins a 13-strong sales team, not to mention the 231 sales-hungry Oddbins store managers, keen to drum up local business and establish rapport.

Rapport is a bit of an Oddbins buzz word, and the staff are extremely good at it. The shop staff chat amiably, steering customers around the irreverent selection. "A Thai fish coconut curry?" repeated a manager recently, "Um, I think the Tim Knappstein Riesling could go well with that, and we may have some of the older vintage, the 1994, still - for the same price - but you get more body and depth, which should cope well with the spicing."

This is a typical response and one that has earned Oddbins its stars, and, agrees Knapp, is the main draw for the on-trade. "Our staff - many of whom have had a background in the catering industry - do have a basic level of enthusiasm for the product and while our roaming corporate sales staff are responsible for the bigger accounts, it's the branch manager who will build relationships locally, and that's vital for us."

So who are their customers? "Our staff and our product range very much fit in to the happening restaurants and bars," says Knapp. "I often feel that our on-trade customers are people like us," adds the Levi's-wearing Hudson, "but then I'm often surprised. The common bond, though, is that they are all people with an enthusiasm for wine and they can see that in us."

Among the services Oddbins can offer are small drops and split cases. "And if you're tight for space in your premises," adds Hudson, "it makes sense to have a table there instead of a wine rack, then we'll be your wine rack. We also use our stores as miniature warehouses and delivery points, so obviously wherever there is an Oddbins, we have a catchment area."

Like the Cellar in Anstruther, this works particularly well in the more far-flung corners, says Hudson. Oddbins stores can be found from Inverness to Plymouth, and several more will open by the end of the year. London gets a big chunk of the action with 97 stores to date, but the South and West of England and Wales get 29, the Midlands and the East have 18, the North has 27 and Scotland has 38. And then there are the Oddbins Fine Wine Shops that stock "the little gems that we only get small parcels of, which are divided up jealously between the stores", of which there are seven.

But Oddbins works best with its exciting, characterful wines from regional France and remote corners. Chile, Australia and South Africa continue to excite, and it is these wines that have attracted the on-trade, putting them ahead of industry trends, which can lag behind the high street. "Retailers can act very quickly and put something on the shelf tomorrow," explains Hudson, "but with the restaurant trade, there is a bit of a delay. They don't change their lists so often and it can be weeks, even months, before they follow the trend in the high street."

What are the main growth areas? "There's been a massive surge in Chile," says Hudson, "but I think the biggest growth area is not any one region - it's the expansion of the imagination of restaurateurs and customers, and the value and quality to be found, at not necessarily huge prices, from all parts of the world."