5 tasting room moves to stop club churn
Plus a four-state distributor rebuilding its book, and three captioned Reels from 20 minutes of phone video.
Jeremy Young5 min read
Today's Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter
What's inside:
šĀ Sales and Retention Ideas: Close the club signup at the bar: five DTC moves for your tasting room
šĀ Industry Opportunities Worth Watching: A Four-State Distributor Is Rebuilding Its Book: Wineries, Get in Front of It
š”Ā AI Prompts You Can Use: Describe a club shipment builder to Claude Code and have it running this week
š”Ā AI Prompts You Can Use: Turn 20 minutes of phone footage into three captioned Reels in an afternoon
š„Ā The Crew: Growing From Founder to 34 People Without Losing the Team You Built
Close the club signup at the bar: five DTC moves for your tasting room
Finish club signups while the guest is still sitting at the table or standing at the bar. Furleigh Estate converts four in ten tasting room guests into members, according to Commerce7's roundtable write-up. Make the form short enough that a busy pourer offers it every time, and track tasting-to-member conversion rate separately for walk-ins and reservations.
Take the discount out of your club pitch. Commerce7's group found the strongest clubs sell first access, member-only events, and time with the winemaker. Write down what a member gets that nobody else can buy; if the honest answer is a price break, rebuild the tier before your next release.
Calculate your annual club churn this week, for free. Export joins and cancellations for the last 12 months out of your POS or club platform into one spreadsheet. Commerce7 says wineries tracking members closely run about 10% annual churn, and wineries without that visibility can replace most of the base each year.
Add winery and event pickup as a shipment option. Shipping cost and breakage were the group's biggest pain point, and the same two costs hit every out-of-state shipment you send. Pickup protects margin and gives members a reason to visit again, which moves reorder rate.
Rewrite your visit, pricing, and club pages in plain language. One winery in the group estimated roughly 70% of its new traffic now comes from Google and AI search. Clear, current pages get quoted accurately and lift booking conversion rate.
A Four-State Distributor Is Rebuilding Its Book: Wineries, Get in Front of It
Columbia Distributing has completed its purchase of RNDC's assets in Alaska, according to The Spirits Business. It follows Columbia's acquisition of RNDC's Oregon and Washington distribution rights roughly five months earlier. RNDC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July and has spent the past year selling operations across multiple states.
Columbia president and CEO Chris Steffanci says the RNDC deals, plus a partnership with Hayden Beverage in Idaho, create a "connected four-state route to market" across Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The company says it sees "significant untapped potential" in Alaska and plans new investment there. Financial terms were not disclosed.
That is what is documented. The likely consequence is a book review. When a house absorbs another house's portfolio across four states, it ends up holding duplicate wine labels in the same varietals and price bands, and somebody has to decide which ones keep sales attention. Call that inference. Columbia has not announced any brand review.
The opening is best for small and mid-size wineries already selling in the Pacific Northwest, especially Oregon and Washington estates in the $18 to $35 shelf range, and for California and out-of-region wineries who have been told for years there was no room on a Northwest book. Alaska is the softer target, since the company itself describes the state as untapped and says investment is coming.
Here is what I would do this month. Pull your last 12 months of depletions by account in each of the four states and build a one-page velocity sheet: cases by account, rate of sale, repeat buyers, by-the-glass placements that reordered, and your three best-performing zip codes. Add your DtC shipping volume into those states as proof of consumer pull. Then ask your rep who owns your varietal and price band inside the combined organization now, and if you are not in the market yet, send that same sheet with a Q1 placement target and a specific support number attached.
You are my distributor strategy advisor for the wine trade. I own [WINERY NAME] in [AVA / STATE], producing about [ANNUAL CASES] cases a year, with wholesale SKUs at [FOB PRICE RANGE] FOB and [SHELF PRICE RANGE] on shelf. My current distribution situation in the Pacific Northwest is [e.g., "sold through RNDC in Oregon and Washington," or "self-distributed in Oregon only, no Washington or Alaska presence," or "Napa winery with no distribution west of Colorado," or "Walla Walla estate selling 80% DtC and wanting a first wholesale book"]. My top three wholesale SKUs and their 12-month depletions are [VARIETAL AND CASES, VARIETAL AND CASES, VARIETAL AND CASES]. My DtC shipping volume into these states last year was [CASES OR DOLLARS]. My realistic annual support budget for this region is [DOLLAR AMOUNT].
A large regional distributor in my market is absorbing another house's wine portfolio across several states and will be deciding which labels keep sales attention.
Give me:
1. A one-page velocity sheet outline: the exact six to eight data points I should put in front of a wine portfolio manager, in priority order, and the ones I should leave out because they invite hard questions.
2. Three ways my wines could be judged redundant against a bigger label in the same varietal and price band, and the specific counter-argument for each (estate or AVA pull, on-premise hand-sell, by-the-glass economics, allocation scarcity, DtC demand already proven in their zip codes).
3. A 150-word email to a portfolio manager requesting a 20-minute review, written for someone mid-integration with 400 unread emails. No winery origin story in the first two sentences.
4. Five questions I should ask on that call that reveal whether my labels are being kept, shelved, or quietly cut, and what each answer means.
5. A plan B if the answer is no: the two highest-value moves with the same budget (direct-to-trade in control and open states, a smaller independent wine-focused house, or pushing that budget into DtC and club acquisition in those same markets), with the tradeoff of each stated plainly.
Push back if my case volume or support budget is too small to realistically hold shelf attention in this market, and tell me so directly instead of writing me an optimistic plan.
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Describe a club shipment builder to Claude Code and have it running this week
The outcome: a small tool that lives on your own computer, reads your exported club member spreadsheet, and produces a proposed shipment list for every member: which bottles, how many, and why. You review it, override what you want, and send it to the fulfillment team as a clean spreadsheet.
Think about what that replaces. The release-week ritual of sorting a CSV by club tier, eyeballing who skipped last time, remembering that the Smiths asked for whites only, and rebuilding the whole thing when a wine sells through. One person usually owns that job and nobody else can run it. Once the tool exists, anyone on your team can rerun it in a minute when inventory changes.
Tool and difficulty: Claude Code, included in all paid Claude plans. Claude Pro is $17 a month with the annual subscription discount ($200 billed up front) or $20 billed monthly, read on claude.com/pricing on 2026-10-28. The free plan does not include Claude Code. Difficulty: Advanced, because you point it at a folder of your own files and run it more than once.
Set it up
Install the Claude desktop app, sign in with your paid account, and open the Code tab. On a Mac you can instead run
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bashin Terminal, then typeclaudeinside your project folder.Make a folder on your computer called club-shipments. Export your member list from Commerce7, VinoShipper, Ekos, or whatever you run, as CSV, and drop it in. Add a second CSV with your current available inventory: wine name, vintage, bottles on hand, retail price.
Open that folder with Claude Code and paste the prompt.
Answer its questions, then ask it to run the tool against your real files and show you the first 10 members.
One caution: check the first twenty rows by hand before you trust the whole file.
You are a developer building a small internal tool for [YOUR BUSINESS], a [winery / brewery / distillery] in [REGION]. I am not a programmer. Explain nothing technical unless I ask. Build the tool, run it, and show me results I can read in a spreadsheet.
WHAT I WANT BUILT
A club shipment builder. It reads my member spreadsheet and my current inventory spreadsheet, then proposes the exact bottles each member should receive in the [SHIPMENT NAME AND DATE] shipment, and writes the result to a new spreadsheet I can open in Excel.
MY FILES (both are in this folder)
1. Member file: [MEMBER FILE NAME AND COLUMNS, for example members.csv with columns: member name, email, club tier, join date, shipments received, last shipment skipped yes/no, stated preference red/white/mixed/no preference, lifetime spend, shipping state]
2. Inventory file: [INVENTORY FILE NAME AND COLUMNS, for example inventory.csv with columns: wine name, vintage, varietal, style red/white/rose/sparkling, bottles on hand, retail price, club price]
MY CLUB STRUCTURE
[CLUB TIERS AND BOTTLE COUNTS, for example: Estate Club 3 bottles per shipment, Reserve Club 6 bottles, Collector Club 12 bottles including at least 2 library reds]
MY ALLOCATION RULES
[YOUR ALLOCATION RULES, for example: never ship a red to a member whose stated preference is white; members in shipping states we cannot ship sparkling to get a still substitute; members who have received 4 or more shipments should not get the same varietal and vintage twice in a row; Collector members get first call on anything with fewer than 40 bottles on hand; total retail value per member must land within 10% of the tier target.]
BEFORE YOU BUILD ANYTHING
Read both files and tell me: how many members in each tier, what columns you actually found, any rows with missing or messy data, and whether my on-hand inventory is enough to cover every member at their tier count. If the math does not work, say so plainly and tell me how many bottles short I am, by wine. Then ask me up to five questions about rules you are unsure of. Do not guess at my allocation rules.
WHAT THE TOOL MUST PRODUCE
A spreadsheet with one row per member containing: member name, email, club tier, the exact bottles assigned (wine, vintage, quantity), total bottle count, total club-price value, a one-sentence plain-English reason for the picks that I could read out loud to that member on the phone, and a flag column marking any member I need to review by hand (preference conflict, shipping restriction, substitution made, value outside the target range).
Also produce a second summary sheet: bottles committed by wine against bottles on hand, remaining inventory after the shipment, and any wine that went oversold.
HOW TO WORK WITH ME
After you build it, run it on my real files and show me the first 10 member rows and the full summary sheet in the chat before writing anything out. Push back on rules that will cause problems: if my rules will leave 40 members short on a wine or produce shipments wildly off the price target, say so directly instead of quietly fixing it. When I ask for a change in plain English, edit the tool and rerun it rather than explaining what I would need to change.
Finally, write a short plain-language note in the folder telling me how to run this again next release with a fresh member export and a fresh inventory file.
Variables to swap: [YOUR BUSINESS], [CLUB TIERS AND BOTTLE COUNTS], [MEMBER FILE NAME AND COLUMNS], [INVENTORY FILE NAME AND COLUMNS], [YOUR ALLOCATION RULES], [SHIPMENT NAME AND DATE].
What to do with the output: open the generated spreadsheet, sort by the confidence or flag column, and work only the exceptions. Send the clean rows to fulfillment and hand the flagged ones to whoever knows those members. Keep the folder. Next release, drop in a fresh member export and a fresh inventory file and run it again. If the first pass misses, tell Claude Code exactly what it got wrong in plain English ("skipped members should default to the prior shipment's style, not the house pick") and let it edit the tool.
A brewery can run the same thing for a reserve bottle release, a distillery for a single-barrel allocation list, and a retail shop for a quarterly case-club build.
What good output looks like: every member has a bottle list that adds up to their tier count, no wine is oversold against your on-hand number, and each unusual call has a one-line reason next to it you can read out loud to the member on the phone.
Turn 20 minutes of phone footage into three captioned Reels in an afternoon
The outcome: a shot-by-shot edit plan for three vertical videos built from footage you already shot, with the exact clips to keep, the on-screen text for each beat, and separate caption copy for Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.
Tool and difficulty: Claude or ChatGPT for the plan, CapCut for the edit. Medium, because you paste in a log of your own footage. The Claude free plan handles the writing fine (Claude Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, per Anthropic's pricing page checked 2026-09-29). CapCut's free plan includes templates and basic editing; Pro is $19.99 a month, Ultra is $79 a month, and Teams is $12.49 a month per seat, read on capcut.com/pricing on 2026-10-28. That page says displayed pricing is for reference only and you need to sign in to see final pricing, and it was showing up to 40% off monthly and up to 30% off yearly. CapCut does not spell out which AI features sit behind Pro, so open auto captions and auto reframe in the app before you plan around them.
Prep, five minutes: scrub your footage once and write a plain log. One line per clip: file name, rough timestamp, what happens. For example, "IMG_4412, 0:14, Maria pours the AlbariƱo and says it smells like the coast." A brewery logs the mash-in and the canning line, a distillery logs the spirit coming off the still, a retail shop logs a staff pick pulled off the shelf, and a distributor rep logs a buyer tasting at the bar.
You are a short-form video editor who cuts Reels and TikToks for wine, beer, and spirits brands. You are working from raw, unscripted phone footage.
My business: [BUSINESS TYPE AND NAME, e.g., a 4,000-case winery in Walla Walla, a production brewery in Asheville, a craft rye distillery in the Hudson Valley, or a wine shop in Charleston]
Region: [REGION]
Brand voice: [BRAND VOICE, e.g., warm and plainspoken, dry and irreverent, quietly premium]
What I filmed: [PRODUCT OR MOMENT, e.g., the first pour of our 2025 AlbariƱo in the tasting room, dry-hopping the IPA, pulling a barrel sample in the rickhouse, our harvest crush pad at 6 am]
Goal: [GOAL, e.g., drive tasting room reservations, sell through 68 cases of rosƩ, recruit wine club members, get a buyer to reorder]
Call to action: [CTA, e.g., "link in bio to book a tasting," "club members get first access Friday"]
Here is my raw footage log, one line per clip with file name, timestamp, and what happens:
[FOOTAGE LOG]
Build me three separate vertical videos, each 20 to 45 seconds, using only clips that appear in my log. Do not invent footage. If a video idea needs a shot I do not have, say exactly what I should go film, in one sentence.
For each video give me:
1. Working title and the single idea it delivers.
2. A hook for the first 3 seconds: what the viewer sees and what the on-screen text says. Use a specific detail from my footage, not a generic line like "come visit us."
3. An edit table with four columns: clip file and timestamp, how long it runs, what the viewer hears, what the on-screen text says. Keep on-screen text under 8 words per card.
4. Caption copy written three ways: one for Instagram Reels, one for TikTok, one for YouTube Shorts. Match the tone each platform rewards, include my call to action, and suggest 5 hashtags that a real buyer or local would search, not broad tags like #wine.
5. One line on music direction and whether this video works with the sound off.
6. A suggested posting day and time, with your reasoning in one sentence.
Then push back on me. Tell me which of my clips are not worth using and why, and name the one shot missing from my log that would make these videos noticeably better.
Rules: no sommelier jargon, no tasting notes unless they help someone decide to buy, no health claims about alcohol, no em dashes. Write the way my staff actually talks. If my footage log is too thin to build three videos, say so and build the ones it supports.
Variables to swap: [BUSINESS TYPE AND NAME], [REGION], [BRAND VOICE], [PRODUCT OR MOMENT], [FOOTAGE LOG], [GOAL], [CTA].
What to do with the output: open CapCut, drop in only the clips the plan names, trim to the timestamps it gives you, run auto captions, type the on-screen text at the beats it marks, then use auto reframe to export each size. Paste the caption copy straight into each platform. Save your footage log format and rerun the prompt every time you shoot. If the first pass feels generic, paste back the three hooks you hate and tell it to rewrite them using one specific detail from your log.
Good output names real timestamps from your footage, not invented scenes, and the first three seconds of each video say something only your business could say.
Growing From Founder to 34 People Without Losing the Team You Built
Drea Helfer built DH Wine Compliance into what Wine Industry Advisor describes as the largest alcohol compliance consulting firm in the country, now at 34 employees. She talked through her family-forward management practices on the Small Fortune podcast with host Carol Collison. The number worth sitting with is 34, because that is roughly where most beverage businesses stop being a crew and start being a company.
You know the stage. At six or eight people, flexibility is a handshake. Someone needs to leave at 2 for a kid's game, you say yes, everybody understands. Nobody writes it down. At 25 or 30, the same handshake becomes a fairness problem, because now there are people who do not have your cell number and do not know what was promised to whom.
You have three options, and none of them are free.
Keep it informal. Cheapest, fastest, and it works until two people compare notes and one of them feels cheated. Risk goes up with headcount.
Write the practices down as policy. Costs you a few days and some handbook help, and it removes your discretion. The upside is that a new tasting room hire in month one gets the same deal as your ten-year cellar lead.
Formalize selectively. Put scheduling flexibility, time-off approval, and shift-swap rules in writing. Leave bonuses and one-off help as case-by-case so you keep room to be generous.
I'd take the third. Write down what people compare against each other, keep flexibility on the rest.
One caution: when informal practices become written policy, you can create wage and hour obligations you did not intend, particularly around flexible hours, on-call time, and whether a role is exempt. Have employment counsel in your state review the language before you hand it out. Pay benchmarks for this kind of role were not in the source, so do not treat any of this as a compensation guide.
Block 90 minutes this week and list every informal promise you have made to a staff member in the last year. That list is your handbook draft.
You are an HR operations advisor who works with small wine, beer, and spirits businesses. I run [WINERY/BREWERY/DISTILLERY/DISTRIBUTOR NAME] in [STATE/REGION]. We have [NUMBER] employees across [DEPARTMENTS, e.g., tasting room, cellar, DTC/club, sales, admin], and we are planning to hire [NUMBER] more in the next [TIMEFRAME].
Here are the informal practices and promises we currently run on, written exactly as they happen in real life:
[PASTE YOUR LIST, e.g., "tasting room staff can swap shifts by text with each other," "harvest crew gets comp bottles after crush," "club manager works from home Fridays," "I approve time off verbally, no form"]
Do three things:
1. Sort each practice into KEEP INFORMAL, WRITE DOWN NOW, or FIX BEFORE WRITING DOWN. For each one, give me one sentence on why, written for an owner, not an HR department.
2. For everything in WRITE DOWN NOW, draft the policy language in plain English, under 100 words each. No corporate filler. It should sound like a person wrote it.
3. Flag every practice that could create a wage-and-hour, classification, tip-pooling, or overtime question in my state, and tell me the specific question to ask an employment attorney about it. Do not give me legal conclusions, give me the question.
Then push back on me: name the two practices on my list that are most likely to cause a fairness complaint once we grow past [NUMBER] people, and tell me what I am avoiding dealing with. Be direct.
From the Editor:
I am always open to consulting, implementation, or brainstorming sessions. Just respond to this email, and I will get back to you shortly.
Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter: the three-times-a-week growth newsletter for wine, beer, and spirits businesses that need smarter marketing, better sales, practical AI tools, and clear ideas they can implement now.
By Jeremy Young: serial entrepreneur, growth marketer, wine critic, and beverage industry insider.
Respond to this email with questions, ideas, or opportunities, and I will get back to you shortly!
Until next time,
Jeremy
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