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Introduction
The restaurant industry is becoming highly competitive and it is essential for restaurants to try and develop a special gastronomical experience for increasingly demanding customers ([3] Asenjo, 2006; [22] Johnson et al. , 2005; [25] Keyt et al. , 1994). Traditionally, the existence of a supply of fine wines has been an excellent parameter for judging restaurant quality ([2] Asenjo, 2000). In this regard, the restaurant owner must carefully select wines and promote them accordingly ([30] Manske and Cordua, 2005). The literature indicates that the most commonly used ways of promoting wines include adding a wine selection to the menu ([13] Dodd, 1997), improving the wine list ([4] Aspler, 1991; [9] Brown, 2003) and training waiters in wine knowledge ([9] Brown, 2003; [18] Granucci et al. , 1994).
Because the positive effects of the best practices are considered generalizable, the practicing organizations are likely to become reference points for other organizations and imitation may be common in areas where standards are intangible and ambiguous ([29] Kyriakidou and Gore, 2005). In this direction, benchmarking, which is defined here as the continuous measurement and examination of practices against those organizations regarded as practice leaders ([6] Bamberger and Feigenbaum, 1996; [17] Goldwasser, 1995) embodies the idea that intangible standards can be revealed, established and transferred.
The present paper aims at defining the current practices and key standards of upscale restaurants depending on their positioning strategy based on their wine lists. This paper is structured as follows: the following section reviews literature on benchmarking. After that, the methodology, the sample and the databases are described. This is followed by presentation and discussion of the results. The final part of the paper contains the conclusions, limitations and new research lines.
Literature review
The demand for restaurants and, in general, the importance of food consumption outside the home has increased substantially in recent years in Spain ([35] Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentacion, 2006). Expenditure in restaurants represented 25.6 percent of total food expenditure in Spain for 2006, with moderate and sustainable growth for the last 15 years ([35] Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentacion, 2006). In particular, the expenditure per capita in restaurants in Spain increased 32.70 percent in the period 2000-2005 ([21] INE, 2008). In the gastronomical...