Blog

It’s that time again…resolutions and goals for ourselves and businesses. If you are the leader of your winery you have hopefully set your financial goals, national sales goals and direct to consumer goals for 2018. Done and dusted. If you’re like other winery owners, you’re going to spend some time in the first two weeks... View Article

Setting good goals is the first step on your path to success. Without a target, excellent performance and poor performance may both go unrecognized. Here are six components of a good goal. 1 – Be Specific About the Goal What do you want to accomplish? Example: Increase tasting room traffic by 50% over prior year, from... View Article

“Why are wine club members so important to your winery?” This is a popular question we like to ask at the beginning of our Converting Guests to Wine Club training. (We spend about 3.5 hours talking about it in that training, so we want to make sure our students understand why it’s such a big... View Article

Tasting Room traffic… we all want it, but do bigger crowds equal more sales and club sign ups?  How do you manage traffic and coach your team members to build relationships on the busiest days in the tasting room? We all want guests...without them we couldn't exist! We hear from our clients who are often... View Article

It’s that time again…. the curtain is about to rise on another busy summer season. Wine lovers are planning their summer trips and winery destinations are top of the list! Will you be ready for your curtain call? Are all your roles filled, the right actors in place and the stage set for a successful... View Article

We hear it just about every day. You’re in the market for tasting room employees. And not just any employees, but hospitable, motivated, and reliable employees. The market is slim, because the competition is thick. You’ve heard the stats, there are over 9,000 wineries in the United States, and that number is growing every single... View Article

We’re often asked to help a winery set up their tasting room and guest experiences or we are asked to evaluate the tasting room setup to determine if it is detracting from or contributing to a great guest experience. As more wineries pop up across the U.S., winery owners realize that they must set themselves... View Article

con·nec·tion kəˈnekSH(ə)n/ noun a relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else. In terms of your winery, the specific definition of connection would be: A guest’s relationship in which the tasting room host, the wine, or the winery experience is associated with your winery In our experience (through... View Article

There is no lack of data to review when managing a tasting room. How do you determine what to measure, and when? What do you have in place to help you get the data you need in order to help you reach your goals? You likely have sales goals, traffic goals, and maybe wine club... View Article

At VingDirect, we exist to help family wineries grow their direct to consumer sales. Our winery clients receive education and training, customized consulting, and our Performance Tracker (PT) software, which provides actionable tasting room data. Ours is the only benchmarking tool in the wine industry and we’re happy to share 2016 learnings and insight to... View Article