Covina Bar, Restaurant and Cafe opened in March of 2016, in the Park South Hotel in Manhattan. It’s a new-American concept, joining the group of successful restaurants owned by James Beard award-winning chef, Tim Cushman and his wife, Nancy Cushman.
Together, they have already accomplished a lot: launching their hit modern sushi restaurant, o ya, with locations in New York City and Boston; their funky Japanese tavern, Hojoko, also in Boston; and one of New York City’s most popular spots to watch the skyline, Roof at Park South.
For the launch of Covina, Tim and Nancy created a menu inspired by Chef Tim’s travels to Mediterranean coastal regions, while the style of cooking on an open wood fire stems from his culinary upbringing in Southern California. The restaurant menu is impressive, with a good selection of sharing plates, homemade pasta and pizza.
The bar at Covina is “hospitality first,” employing the same approaches and techniques as some of the best cocktail bars in the city, “without taking themselves too seriously.” It’s a beautiful space, with an extensive beverage menu that’s sure to please any guest.
Ted Kilpatrick is the Director of Beverage and Service for Tim and Nancy’s Cushman Concepts group, where he oversees the beverage programs at their three New York City venues.
With award-winning food and a loyal customer following, the bars at these three locations are always busy, requiring significant attention and management. How does Ted control all three spots at once? The people over at ShakeStir wanted to know, so they recently interviewed him to find out how he does it. This interview originally appeared on ShakeStir.com.
“I do inventory once a week, which means I do three inventories once a week. I’ve done inventories that can take 8 to 10 hours. For just one inventory in a single hotel, costing and ordering can take me 6 hours plus, but now, I can do inventory with people who have never seen these bottles before. BevSpot enables them to just type in the name of the bottle and then the information gets entered in real time. This releases the monotony of transposing from handwritten to online. And, in addition—and this is maybe the easiest part—there’s a smart cart that populates and automatically sends the orders to all your distributors.”
Kilpatrick added, “I can now do it [ordering] in 30 seconds; as soon as my inventory is done, I see the orders and have them placed less than a minute after inventory is finished. Or, I can start it one night, finish it the next morning, figure out costs, identify each bottle, and BevSpot produces a report, zips it out, and puts out a purchase order that I can send to our receiver and accountant to make sure that we are all on the same page.”
He says, “I can call them [BevSpot] and get a real person on the phone and ask for help, such as assistance creating categories for sake and wine, etc. Within a day, it’s in there for me. They’re growing at a speed that lets them remain very customer reachable and customer-service focused.”
Read the full interview on ShakeStir’s website.
Looking for more articles on BevSpot’s best customers? Check out this one with Ryan Lotz, Bar Manager at No. 9 Park (now at Bar Mezzana), and subscribe to the blog for more.
