Hello Vino runs on the mobile web, desktops and SMA as well as iPhone. It is currently a tool for finding a wine according to four options - to go with a specific meal, for a specified occasion, by country or region, and by taste or style.
According to Rick Breslin of Hello Vino, there are plans to take advantage of GPS and inventory data to provide consumers with location-specific information. "If you were in, say, Joe's Wine Shop, your GPS would show your location and pull up the store's inventory for you to choose from," he said.
Breslin set up Hello Vino with two fellow web developers working in the wine industry. The volume of Internet enquiries about pairing food and wine convinced them of the potential for a mobile application.
"We were working on a little widget where someone could do a simple Q&A to find what wine they might like to try based on a dish or for an occasion," said Breslin. "Then we thought: mobile is emerging. There is a huge opportunity to package this resource onto a smartphone-formatted website."
The Hello Vino app is free but opportunities to monetise it are being considered. One comes from an e-commerce website selling wine that wants to use the Hello Vino widget and import the inventory into it. The other possibility is the sponsored placement of wine brands in Hello Vino.
