Shop Talk

Christie’s sets one wine record, blows another

Christie’s auction in Geneva on Tuesday claims to have set a world record price for a bottle of red Burgundy. A  U.S. buyer bought the 750 ml bottle of 1945 Romainee-Conti for $123,889.  But the house failed to sell its showcase lot of the auction — 315 bottles representing every vintage from ’45 to ’07 produced by each of the first five growths of Bordeaux.

Meanwhile in New York on Saturday, the star lot – a complete vertical of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild spanning ’45-’07 sold to an Asian collector for $150,000.

Arbitrage in Bordeaux

New York’s branch of Christie’s is auctioning a collection of 64 bottles of Mouton-Rothschild on Saturday that spans the years 1945-2007.  It’s Geneva branch is auctioning a collection of 315 bottles spanning the same 62 vintages, but from all five first growths including Mouton-Rothschild on Tuesday.  (See story “Mystery collector to sell rare wines” [ID: nN10231397])

Saturday’s lot is selling for between $100,000 and $150,000, while Tuesday’s is estimated to sell for $696,000 to $929,000. And the price difference presents collectors with an arbitrage opportunity.

Assuming that the wines sell at the upper end of their estimates, buying Saturday’s lot for $150,000 would represent a $35,000 savings.  Granted, Tuesday’s lot has one more bottle of Mouton-Rothschild – the chateau produced two labels in 1978 and 1993 – and the Geneva lot has all four, while Saturday’s lot only has three.

And unlike Tuesday’s anonymous French collector,  Saturday’s is  California attorney Allen Grossman, who has been collecting for 40 years and waxes poetic about Mouton-Rothschild, saying of the top Bordeaux, “I have tasted them all many times. They are all wonderful wines, but I’m  just partial to the Mouton.”

$1=0.8608 CHF

Food Trucks: The Film

The fancy food truck revolution rocking the U.S. restaurant scene traces its roots beyond the 2008 launch of Kogi — the Korean-Mexican taco truck that took Los Angeles by storm and tweeted its way to international stardom — to a grittier, working-class movement.

In her bilingual documentary film “Masa Revolution”, veteran Los Angeles journalist Patricia Nazario maps the food truck industry back to the 1960s, when blue-collar entrepreneurs served plastic-wrapped sandwiches, doughnuts and coffee to factory and office workers across Southern California.

Those food truck operators pulled down around five times more money than the blue-collar workers they fed and guarded their lucrative routes like Fort Knox.

“It was a cutthroat business,” said Nazario. “Catering truck operators were very protective of their routes and would pull out knives or guns to ward off the competition.”

Her film also chronicles how recent immigrants, largely Mexican, steered clear of the rough-and-tumble business model favored by their predecessors. Instead, they parked their taco trucks, or loncheros, in Hispanic neighborhoods.

Some of those restaurants-on-wheels have been using the same spot for more than 20 years and have become part of the fabric of the communities they serve, she said.

“I’m as enthralled with the hair-raising tales of old-school route drivers as I am with how social media is driving the gourmet food truck revolution among hipsters across the country,” Nazario said.

Jimmy John’s franchise fires union workers after sick-day campaign

The owners of 10 Minnesota Jimmy John’s sandwich shops — where a rare unionization vote was narrowly rejected last year – have fired six union organizers.

The terminated workers are members of the Industrial Workers of the World, a formerly high-profile union better known as the Wobblies, and said they were fired after they put up 3,000 posters (shown here) around Minneapolis as part of a campaign to win paid sick days.

Michael Mulligan, president of MikLin Enterprises Inc, which operates the affected Jimmy John’s restaurants, told Reuters that the terminated union workers “crossed well over the line of protected activity” with their latest appeal.

“The posters dishonestly state that Jimmy John’s workers are forced to work while sick and suggest that the health of customers is at risk when eating at our restaurants,” said Mulligan, who characterized the IWW as anti-capitalist, anarchist and socialist.

“These posters are false and misleading at best, and in the view of our company, they are defamatory, disparaging and dishonest,” added Mulligan, who said that his business has operated for a decade and served 6 million sandwiches without getting diners sick.

Most fast-food restaurant workers receive low wages and get little in the way of benefits such as health insurance. Paid sick days are a rarity in the industry, which is known for squeezing out costs in order to offer low-priced fare. One exception is San Francisco, which in 2007 became the first U.S. city to require employers to give workers paid sick leave.

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a restaurant workers organization, in October released a study showing that  nearly 88 percent of workers reported not receiving paid sick days and that more than 63 percent of all restaurant workers admitted to cooking and serving food while sick.

from MediaFile:

Will my local Borders store close?

In filing for bankruptcy protection today, Borders Group Inc. said that it plans to close 200 of its 500 superstores nationwide. This has left many book fans wondering: Is my local Borders store going to close?

Here is a map of all the planned closings:

A complete list of planned Borders closures can be found here: Borders Store Closings

Root beer, roast beef, fish & chips: Who’s buying?

There’s a new batch of quick-service restaurants on the block – Arby’s, A&W and Long John Silver’s – and according to YouGov BrandIndex, A&W is the most popular of the three.

A&W, founded in 1919 and known for its root beer, had the trio’s highest satisfaction rates, said YouGov BrandIndex, which does daily consumer perception research on brands. 

A&W and Arby’s had higher satisfaction scores than an average of about two dozen fast-food chains, while Long John Silver’s fared worse. (See graphic below)

“A&W and Arby’s have a core group of supporters and satisfied customers,” said Ted Marzilli, global managing director for YouGov BrandIndex. “If I’m a buyer, that’s a strength.”

Marzilli predicted that all three brands would find buyers, although prices and other terms likely would differ.

He said A&W and Arby’s could be reinvigorated by buyers who focused on their strengths, while Long John Silver’s is more of a turnaround story.

Another big question is whether any of the chains will snag a valuation as rich as the one attached to Burger King’s $3.3 billion sale to 3G Capital last year.  The $24 per share sale price represented a 46 percent premium to Burger King’s price before news of the negotiations emerged.

from MediaFile:

Why won’t Amazon say how many Kindles it’s sold?

Something about returning from the Christmas holidays makes people want to show off what they received – a new sweater donned, a new gadget subtly pulled out at meetings, a few extra pounds padding the belly.

Jeff Bezos doesn't like this tradition. He will hint at the generous present that consumers gave to Amazon in the form of surprisingly strong sales, but he won't offer details.

Bezos wants you to know that his Kindle – the e-book reader that has done a remarkably good job surviving in the age of the iPad – was Amazon's “bestselling product of all time.” How many Kindles did Amazon sell? We don't know because Amazon isn't saying.

What Amazon does say is that the third generation of the Kindle surpassed even the number of Harry Potter 7 books it sold. Which is kind of disingenuous because Kindles are sold primarily through Amazon, while Harry Potter books are available in nearly every bookstore. But it does offer a hint: Some 5 million copies of Harry Potter have sold on Amazon since 2007, one analyst estimates.

Usually, analysts step in to offer sales figures that Amazon won't. But in the case of the Kindle, they can't seem to agree. One reckons Amazon has sold 5.4 million Kindles in 2010, while another pegs that number at 8 million.

Either number is impressive, so why doesn't Amazon share it? Over on Quora, a former Amazon employee suggested it's because the disclosure would help Amazon's competitors. But nobody sells Kindle's but Amazon, and few e-readers are even close to it in sales, unless you count the iPad.

But the iPad is a tablet, and the cheapest version of the iPad costs four times Kindle's $139 price tag. Besides, Apple makes a point in bragging about how many iPads, iPod Touches and iPhones it sells each quarter, and it only seems to fuel sales.

from MediaFile:

Mobile sales are helping eBay, but is it enough?

eBay said Wednesday that the value of goods sold in the U.S. through its mobile applications surged 133% to $100 million during the month before Christmas. Globally, the growth was even stronger: Up 166% to $230 million worth of goods.

That is good news from one angle. eBay is having success using mobile devices to sell goods during the busiest retailing period of the year. But it obscures another fact: Mobile sales may be a growing market, but it's a tiny portion of eBay's overall sales. And overall sales don't appear to be growing nearly as fast.

eBay's Gross Merchandise Volume (the total value of all goods sold through eBay) was $48.3 billion in 2009, excluding car sales, and that figure is likely to top $50 billion in 2010. The $230 million GMV of mobile sales is equal to only 0.5% of eBay's total GMV last year.

Put another way, the volume of goods sold through mobile devices during the holiday season is about 6 percent of the average volume of goods sold each month on eBay.

Overall, eBay's holiday business grew but not as fast as other online retailers. According to ChannelAdvisor, a software company working with online retailers, eBay's holiday business increased 11% during the busy Thanksgiving weekend, lagging the 68% growth rate for Amazon and the overall e-commerce growth rate of 27%.

eBay has a chance to use the growing popularity of its mobile apps to boost that growth rate in coming years. But if it wants to grow as fast as the rest of the e-commerce industry does during the Christmas season, it needs to find some additional incentives.

from Leslie Gevirtz:

Sparkling wine — pouring style without draining your wallet

Earlier this week, I wrote about alternatives to non-vintage and cuvee Champagnes that can lend a festive atmosphere to any occasion. Below is a list of the wines that I mentioned, some alternatives and their suggested U.S. retail prices.

1. Domaine Ste. Michelle Cuvee Brut  $12
2. Santa Margherita Prosecco Di Valdobbiadene Brut  $17
3. Freixenet Cordon Rosado $10
4. Domaine Tselepos Amalia Brut $24
5. Gruet $14
6. Dom Perignon $125-$150
7. Bollinger RD 1997 $130-$150
8. Krug Brut Grande Cuvee 1998 $180-$200
9. Giulio Ferrari 1997 $100

There are many other sparklers that didn't make it into the story such as:  Lucien Albrecht ($19), Nino Franco Rustico Prosecco ($19) and The Chook, a sparkling Shiraz from Australia ($17).

Why the price disparity? In part it has to do with marketing - Champagne makers have been at it for more than 200 years. In part, it has to do with labor and the cost of land.  An acre (or hectare) costs much less in New Mexico than it does in Champagne.

The different flavors: they come from different grapes. While Gruet uses the same grapes -- Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and  Pinot Meunier found in Champagne, the taste will reflect the terroir of New Mexico -- dry and like minerals.  Prosecco is the grape and the region just outside Venice where it is grown.

The long and short of it is that you don't have to spend a fortune to pop some pleasure.

Starbucks, coffee shops see collateral benefit from Black Friday

Black Friday bargain hunting is a marathon, requiring a shopper to be alert and aggressive to outmaneuver rivals for that last $200 LCD TV at Target. But with so many retailers opening their doors at midnight, why bother going to sleep? Even if you shopped at Kohl’s, which opened at 3 am or J.C. Penney, at 4 am, you were in for very short night for most.

So bleary-eyed shoppers turned out in drove at U.S. malls on Friday, with lines at coffee shops among the longest.

Mall operator Macerich said on Friday that the Starbucks at its Tysons Corner Center in suburban Washington had lines 30 people deep at 11 a.m. At the Newport Center mall in Jersey City, exhausted shoppers could be seen forming a line of 20 to get much needed java.

After all, no one wants to be caught unawares when cashmere sweaters for 50 percent off are at stake.

(Reuters photo)