The highest-performing winery teams don’t wait for problems to coach. They coach so problems happen less often. For many leaders, coaching has become synonymous with difficult conversations. An employee misses a goal. A guest leaves unhappy. A policy isn’t followed. Sales decline. Only then does the coaching begin. That’s not…
One of the biggest mistakes we see wineries make isn’t during a wine tasting experience at the winery. It’s what happens after the tasting. A guest visits, they enjoy the experience, perhaps they buy a few bottles, but they aren’t quite ready to join the wine club. Then they leave…and…
Not Pushy. Just Helpful: Reframing the Wine Club Conversation There’s a quiet shift happening in tasting rooms right now, and it’s costing wineries more than they realize. A guest walks in. The experience is warm, engaging, and thoughtful. The wines are poured with care. There’s connection, conversation, even enthusiasm. And…
Train Like It’s the Championship Season (Because It Is) When the Super Bowl and Olympics approach, we celebrate the performance we see on the field. What we don’t see is the year-round conditioning, repetition, and skill-building that made that performance possible. Winning teams don’t train only when the lights are…
For years, the direct-to-consumer (DTC) model for wineries was built in clear, separate silos: the Tasting Room team poured and sold wine, the Wine Club team managed membership and retention, and the Marketing team focused on email, text campaigns, and social media engagement. Each department had its own set of…
Is the Pendulum Swinging Back? Rethinking Wine Experiences in a Shifting Landscape Like any other industry, the wine industry is cyclical. What goes around tends to come back around. And what can we learn from those trends—besides the fact that leg warmers were never cool, even in the ’80s? Wine…
Reimagining the Water Cooler: Building Connection in Remote DTC Wine Teams The COVID-era shift to remote and hybrid work brought many benefits: flexibility, broader talent pools, and increased autonomy. But it also came with a major cost—especially for those in the DTC wine world: we lost the spontaneous learning and…
Uncertain times can feel like a game of survival for many in the wine industry. With tighter budgets, shifting consumer spending, and market challenges, it’s tempting to cut back on non-essential expenses like staff training and development. Yet, those who invest in their teams during tough times often emerge stronger,…
Overdependence on Tasting Room traffic as the sole driver to grow our DTC business has become problematic for all wine regions. Between fires, the pandemic, changing travel patterns many wineries have focused new efforts on building DTC customer bases from programs that they can actually control – DTC road show…