Today, we are about 50 responses short of what we need to produce the Annual Direct to Consumer Report, so please participate. To help us reach the finish line, we are leaving the survey open over the weekend and closing it on 3/24.
Here are the questions if you want to prepare [link], as well as the [link] to the survey.
Let me give you some examples of important and interesting information from the survey so far.
Several sources have reported that tasting room visitation was down last year. Some have speculated that it's due to high tasting room fees. The headline slide is a chart from the interim survey data that puts a different spin on that conclusion.
Breaking the top chart into quartiles, the upper quartile seems expensive, especially considering people seldom taste alone. Life and wine tasting are a team sport—maybe someone can use that in a marketing pitch. Anyway, the lower two quartiles, representing half of the winery respondents so far, are about $23 or less.
Another fact you can pull from that same information set is the practice of using standard and reserve tasting fees. Surprisingly, 26.2% of responses thus far only use standard tasting fees. For those wineries that have both reserve and standard fees, the average reserve fee is 1.9 times larger than the reserve fee, with a maximum of 5 times the standard fee, down to 1.2 times the standard tasting fee.
Here is some more interesting information on tasting room reimbursement policies. From this chart below, you can see how you compare to other wineries on tasting fee reimbursement policies. If you participate in the survey and get the full anonymous data set, you can also sort this information out by region.
There is one other thing that might be of interest. Seven percent of the wineries do something besides the other choices offered. Aren't you curious about their policies? Only participants who complete the survey get this added data that you might use to generate ideas.
• We
comp tastings if you join the club or purchase 3 bottles.
• We
do flights, not tastings. No
reimbursement.
• Free
tastings for people who rent venue (we do weddings)
• 10%
off 12 bottles.
• We
will waive two tasting fees for a minimum $1,000 purchase.
• Club
Members get a limited number of free tastings; otherwise, we do not reimburse them.
• Tasting
fees waived for wine industry partners only
• Club
members only 4x per year
• We
don't charge our top buyers for their tasting fees
• We
only waive fees for people who have McMillan for a last name.
• we
don't offer tastings. We offer 5 oz glass for $3.75
• Our
state law doesn't allow "free" tastings, so we charge $1 per taste
• We
allow wine club members and up to three of their guests to taste for free. We
do not reimburse tasting fees otherwise.
• We waive tasting fees if the customer pays with cash.
