For Release on May 14, 2006

Keywest Citizen

Ok, this really is an awesome little toy. After my column last week talking about the three levels of wine shops we have in Key West, I received an e-mail from Alton Weekly, the GM and wine buyer for Fausto's, telling me about a new kiosks that they've installed to combat the "no assistance here" aspect of grocery store wine buying.

"What's a kiosk?" I hear you asking; well it's a term that computer marketing people came up with to disguise the fact that you're talking about a computer. It just doesn't have a keyboard or mouse instead, they have a graphical user interface and touch screens (can you tell that I was a computer marketer in a previous life)?

So, what you do with this thing is take the bottle of wine you're interested in over to the kiosk and point the UPC (the bunch of lines on the back of the bottle) at the bar code reader (that dark piece of glass with the red laser coming out of it). Up pops the name of the wine and its price, as well as a description of the wine (most of the time, of the five bottles I scanned, four had descriptions) and any ratings that wineandreceipies.com have on the wine.

On top of that, it gives recommendations on cheeses that Fausto's sells that would go well with that wine and suggests dishes, with recipes, that would complement the wine. On top of that, you can print out any of these items, including the recipes, right at the kiosk. Then you can continue shopping at Fausto's with a printed list of the additional things you need to buy.

So obviously, the main point of this thing is basically to get you to buy more goods in the store, but at the same time, it does provide a really cool service. The descriptions and ratings, though it doesn't include Wine Dictator (oops, I mean Spectator) or Robert Parker ratings, really are helpful and the cheese and meal recommendations sounded sound to me. So from now on, we can say that we have four levels of wine shops in Key West. Now, let's see if the Waterfront Market steps up to the plate.