First, however, the wine bar has added outdoor patio seating out front.
The comfortable accomodations include outdoor space heaters.
Vino Volo is under more pressure with this belated opening, after not only canceling the original opening at the last minute, but also leaving many in the community feeling snubbed by its unusually-exclusive local marketing.
Perhaps appropriately for a business expanding out of the airport market, Vino Volo descended on Bethesda, apparently determining who they thought the important local media outlets were from 30,000 feet.
Although those few were invited in some form or another to the wine bar, strangely, no one has yet posted an actual review of the concept or - more importantly - the food. The result has been that maybe 3 or 4 online voices are talking about Vino Volo, rather than the dozens of influential local/food bloggers who might have been.
The exclusive media streams then made it difficult for those planning to attend last week's grand opening to find out it had been abruptly postponed. I myself was informed just prior to the start time of the opening. Not to mention that I've never heard of a well-publicized grand opening being canceled.
Then there are the passersby who have been asking me just what has been going on behind those papered-over windows the last two weeks. Honestly, I don't know myself. It appears there have been dozens of exclusive, private events of some kind. Almost as if an entire nearby city was invited to dine, while residents of our fair city were shut out. Occasionally, an attendee tweets from one of these events. But I haven't been able to figure out just who these attendees are, and why they were invited. What I do know is that a lot of potential customers have approached the storefront hopefully, and found yet another private event going on.
So it's definitely been an unusual opening strategy. Which is a shame, because I thought the menu sounded great. And Vino Volo is a perfect fit for Bethesda Row. This is the Federal Realty property where the company has really matched the tenants with the demographics of the area.
I think The Parva, Vapiano and Boloco have shown how to do a grand opening: getting actual community members and influential online entities into their restaurants, letting them sample the menu, and then posting their reactions en masse on their Twitter and Facebook accounts and/or blogs. That's how you engage the locality you are going to rely upon for the bulk of your customer base. You really can't afford, in the social media age, to ignore social media and the free advertising it provides.
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