Under the Influence Training Philosophy and Services

We believe that our work does not end when our customers receive their beverages from us, in fact, this is when it begins. Using our Beverageintelligence​ services, we want to help our clients maximise their beverage returns and Guest experience around their drinks menu.

To this end, we are privileged to have trained over 25,000 waiters, bartenders, retail and hospitality staff in Africa since 2008. Education is at the heart of what we do. It creates the foundation for confident and knowledgable Wine Advisors to engage with Guests, and build brands and drinks experiences on the continent. We wanted to share an update on the training menu that we offer our clients (packaged with their drinks portfolio), and our philosophy of training.

Our Training Philosophy

Our mission is to create confident and knowledgeable Wine Advisors on the continent. This does not just include hospitality, but also retail staff and consumers. To achieve this we focus on three pillars of learning:

1. Live training / experiences. This is where we demystify the subject of wine, and take the lecture out of learning. We use these sessions to build confidence and communication skills, and create that spark of interest in the subject.

2. E-learning. This is where learners can dive deeper into the subject and engage with our Wine101 online course and Masterclass program. We have also just completed the filming of our Wine Advisor course (advanced wine and service), which will be rolled out later in 2022. One of Africa's top sommelier's, Joseph Dhafana, is a presenter and mentor to learners in this course.

3. Coaching. You can't become a great soccer player by just reading about the game, you need to kick the ball! We have created a range of coaching tools for a team to practice their skills, and work through different scenarios together. Game of Wines and Game of Service provides the opportunity for learners to put their skills and knowledge to the test!

We also believe strongly that learning is a journey, and we need to construct a path for learners to follow not just as a once-off interaction, but take a road of learning over multiple years. That is why we include so much of our training offering into our day to day engagement with our customers. It is also why we have invested so heavily in our E-learning courses and our own Cellar Studio, where we will be filming ongoing podcasts and snippets of knowledge for our learners across the continent. Click here for an overview of our learning journey.

Snippets from our Wine Advisor Course (2022 release)

Our Training Menu

Our Training Menu, which we offer to Customers across the continent, provides Live Training and E-learning options. Most of our Customers also purchase their drinks from us, and this enables us to provide most of the Training Menu for no cost over the year, depending on the engagement. See our Drinks Customer Services below. For Customers who don't purchase from us, we offering the training menu across 25 countries in Africa.

Drinks Customer Services

If you are a drinks customer of ours, or our Partners, we provide the below services to you. Each of our customers is placed on one of three packages, depending on how closely we engage. You can view our packages like frequent sipping miles, the more we do together the more training and list support you receive. A snapshot of our packages and services menu is found below. The training menu above is available should you wish to take up more of our training services.

Testimonials and who we work with

We have worked in over 600 properties across Africa and have captured a few testimonials on our training courses from customers here. With the toolkit we have built, we are confident we can up-skill and empower the next generation of hospitality and drinks ambassadors on the continent.