Austin, TX | Farm-to-Table Restaurant & Wine Garden | Wine Club Subscription

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Key results

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• Flexible tiers: two or three bottles, dealer's choice or reds-only, plus add-ons like Jess' Monthly Pick, sparkling, and Champagne
• Pickup days turned into events, with in-person tastings and an impromptu wine cocktail hour
• Zero added overhead, with Table22 handling onboarding, billing, and fulfillment
• A real creative outlet for Todd and Jess, running alongside the restaurant's own wine list

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Starting with the farmer

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Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher met while cooking in New York before deciding Austin was the place to build something of their own. They opened Lenoir in 2012 in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood, naming the restaurant after the Lenoir grape, a hardy varietal that grows wild across the Texas Hill Country, a fitting tribute to a restaurant built around farm-to-table food from day one.

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"Our main core value at this restaurant always has been: start with the farmer," Todd says. Rather than telling a grower what to plant, Todd and Jess ask what a farmer already does well, then build a dish around it. The same philosophy carries into the wine list. "With the wine program, it's usually a little bit further away from us, but we study what their farming practices are, how they're making wines," Todd explains. "We're trying to allow them to be great farmers."

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Loyal, but not always local

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Lenoir had built the thing every independent restaurant wants: a base of people who trusted Todd and Jess's palate and wanted to keep dining with them. The catch was that trust only had one entry point. "There's lots of people that want us to work with us and shop with us and stuff like that, but they don't always have the time or the inclination to come into the restaurant," Todd says. Guests who loved the wine garden on a Friday night weren't necessarily going to make a special trip on a Tuesday to pick up a bottle for a porch hang or a weeknight dinner.

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Todd and Jess wanted a way to reach that same base of guests without asking them to reserve a table first, something that could carry the feeling of Lenoir's wine garden home with them, on their own schedule.

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The why behind the wine

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Working with Table22, Lenoir launched a monthly wine club built around the same pillars that shape the restaurant's in-house list: small producers, seasonal picks, and bottles with a real story behind them. Members choose between a two-bottle drop of “dealer's choice” or reds only, and can layer on extras like a themed pick from Jess, a bottle of sparkling, or Champagne. Each month's release comes on a reliable schedule members can plan around, with notifications and reminders for pickups.
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In addition to the bottles, members get curated tasting notes. too. The notes give them a sense of Jess's thinking behind the why for these wines in a particular month, and have become the kind of thing subscribers mention back to Todd and Jess unprompted.

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"People love the themes, and they love the obvious effort that just puts into making it fun, making it different, giving it a point of view. That's been the best feedback that we've gotten so far, that people actually recognize that and notice it."

— Todd Duplechan, Chef/Owner, Lenoir

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A pickup cocktail hour 

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Rather than treat pickup day as a simple handoff, Todd and Jess are turning it into a reason for members to stay a while, piloting a monthly tasting that can turn a pickup into an impromptu wine cocktail hour. "We're using the club as a way to bring people in and actually get them to experience the food and wine that we have here in person," Todd says, "and not just make it something that you come and pick up and leave."

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For Todd, that in-person moment is the whole point. "The connection part is the part that we're in this for," he says. He sees the club less as a transaction and more as a way to give members the interaction and the bit of knowledge that makes a bottle worth opening. "So many things in this world need a little bit of explanation for you to understand why it's cool, or why it's different, or why somebody made that decision to give you this thing. I feel like the cooler things in life usually take a little bit of explanation."

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What Table22 brings to the table

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Ask Todd what he'd tell another operator considering a club, and the answer comes fast. "I would tell them to do it, because the logistical part of it that's hard to do on your own is what Table22 excels at: getting people onboarded, getting them paid, getting all the information in and out. That's a lot of work." Handling that in-house, he says, would mean bringing on one or two more people just to run it. "At that point, it makes it something that doesn't make financial sense. Having all that stuff taken care of by Table22 is what makes us do it. We wouldn't do it otherwise."

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It's a simple trade for Todd and Jess. Table22 takes on the part of the business they'd otherwise have to staff up for themselves, and in return the club becomes another channel for a growing revenue, plus another way to stay close to the guests who are ready to connect with them further. One partner handling it all, with no extra strain on a team already running a restaurant and a new second concept next door.

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Our platform, your values. Welcome to the club.

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