The philosophy at ENO is to bring a Napa Valley tasting room to other parts of the country.

“That's a $1 million turnaround,” Geller points out.

That's serious money for a project that essentially began as an experiment. But instead of being a one-off, stand-alone location, ENO is now a brand poised for expansion.

In 2005 Strategic Hotels approached the Puccini Group to help it develop a wine bar that would not compete with the regular hotel bar, but would make “underutilized space” in its hotels profitable.

“We were doing market research and trying to build hotels that worked for meeting planners,” Geller says. “We had these hotels that were built on what baby boomers wanted, when it was the Gen Xers who are now planning meetings.”

The Puccini Group most often consults with restaurants—as many as 50 annually—on the operations side. Founder Bob Puccini came from the Kimpton hotel chain, where he helped changed the thinking about hotel bars and restaurants, showing that they did not need to be loss leaders and that they could attract locals as well as guests.

Emphasis is on the finer things in life—cheese, chocolate and wine—at ENO.

“Not everybody wants to be a wine aficionado. We did not want a guest who does not know a lot to be intimidated,” Reed says.

Approximately 60 percent of ENO customers are women, which Reed says is evidence that the locations are more inviting and approachable than a traditional hotel bar.

After the 2006 success of ENO (the name is a play on the word “oenephile”), Geller and the Puccini Group started looking at expansion within other Strategic Hotels. Second was the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Now there are five ENOs, with a second in Chicago and one in Washington, D.C., scheduled to open at press time. By year-end, there will be 10 ENOs open.

Some of the new ENO units will be considerably smaller than the InterContinental location, which is approximately 1,300 square feet with communal wood tables and cheese lockers (the original plan was for cheese rooms, but cheese lockers had fewer approval glitches with health departments). Some will be as small as 600 square feet, depending on the available space. But even if the spaces are smaller, expanded menus will make sure the spots are not overlooked. On the menu is more charcuterie, olives and, in some locations, savory panini sandwiches and sweet chocolate brioche.

David Henkis, vice president at Chicago consultancy Technomic Inc., thinks the panini addition is a smart decision as ENO expands. “Wine customers have a high propensity to order food,” he says.

ENO is designed to appeal both to locals and to hotel guests. The ENO wine bar at the InterContinental Chicago attracts 60 percent of its customers from outside the hotel.

Currently ENO stocks 35 to 50 cheeses, five to 10 meats, a chocolate case and wines as selected by the wine director. Many wines, as well as associated merchandise like corkscrews and wine notebooks, are sold as retail offerings in addition to the menu items. Currently sales are 75 percent wine and 25 percent food, but Reed says that may shift as the menu changes.

Expansion will not take place with a cookie-cutter approach, even as ENO looks at licensing its name and concept. The wine director shapes each location. For example, the Mexico City unit in development will stock Mexican wines, while Chicago is heavy on New World wines and D.C. favors Old World wines. In California, a beach-side ENO has outdoor tables with fire pits.

Geller says the first non-hotel ENO may open in Texas. If successful, that may lead to other licensed or franchised locations, with a goal of six or seven new units annually and 25 to 30 units open within the next three to five years. Such growth would put ENO on pace to rival The Grape, an Atlanta-based chain of wine bars that opened in 2000. Today The Grape has $45 million in sales and 21 units, according to Technomic.

Each ENO restaurant averages six employees, including a sommelier or wine director, and four or five wine attendants, keeping labor costs low. That, combined with the low costs associated with a no-kitchen restaurant, makes ENO attractive to prospective franchisees.

As ENO's expansion plans grow organically, so, too, should the concept's marketing and branding efforts, Reed says. The concept does not use much traditional advertising, and Reed doesn't see more in the future. Instead, the team has built brand awareness through local public relations in each market. Popular is ENO-versity, the concept's wine-appreciation classes that work with the core mission that wine does not have to be intimidating.

Jeff Siegel, a Dallas-based wine educator who conducts at-home wine tastings, is impressed by ENO's wine lists, noting that some of the offerings are rare enough to draw experienced foodies who want to try something they haven't had before.

The development of its own ENO cuvee branded bottles of wine have also captured people's attention, Geller says, and an ENO wine club may be in the future. Technomic's Henkis says such moves help link away-from-home behavior to at-home behavior, which is “important in driving interest as a category.”

Even if each new ENO location doesn't see the gains the InterContinental Chicago did, Geller will still be happy.

“This is an interesting experiment. Even if [new ENOs] just serve hotel clientele, they will be a success. They are profitable very quickly and make their returns in less than a year,” Geller says. “We do research every six months so we can change it or remove it if trends change, but I do not think that will happen with ENO.”