For over sixteen years, Trattoria Stella has been known for having one of the best wine lists in both content and presentation. Our business is one of relationships and we have many all over the wine world. Our experience ensures that each wine is of high quality and in fact representative of what appears on the label. Our list both tells a story and serves as a road map by which our highly educated service staff may navigate each guest experience. That model works well when guests are seated in our dining room. It is far more challenging to deliver our brand of hospitality over the phone or through a website.

To make it through the lockdowns and restrictions on our industry, it became clear we had to close The Franklin and redouble our efforts at Trattoria Stella. As we shifted to more carryout, we wanted everything we did to somehow emulate the experience our guests have come to expect when dining in. We are hospitality people, not techies, and asked:

• How can we translate Chef Myles’ ever changing menus to an online platform? 

• How can we recommend wines based on the mood and food of each guest or party?

• How can we ‘play around’ as we do table-side often, opening up a couple of our favorites or sharing the stories of our wine making friends while pulling corks? 

• How can we make ourselves flexible to meet our guests’ needs and schedules without compromising what it is to be ‘Stella’?

This is what we came up with: