Who's still drinking more? Americans 50 to 64
Plus a distributor review prompt, the Wonderwerk party model, and the one age group still drinking more.
Jeremy Young5 min read
Today's Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter
Sorry for the long absence - I made some major changes...
Hi everyone,
You may have noticed it's been quiet here. I took two months off from the newsletter, and I want to tell you why and what's changed.
Putting each issue together a couple of times a week was taking far too long. I also wasn't happy with the website I'd paid a developer to build. So I stepped back and rebuilt everything myself with Claude Code. I now have my own back end where I manage every post and every issue. AI tools help me find the news and put each issue together much faster.
Here's what's new for you:
A new look. There's a new logo and a cleaner, more professional website.
Tools. A section with the AI tools I write about, all in one place.
Prompts. Every prompt from the newsletter, ready for you to use in your business.
The archive. Every past issue, easy to find.
Three issues a week. Now that each issue takes far less time to build, you'll hear from me every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Need help with something in your business? Rebuilding all of this showed me how fast problems can be solved now. With Claude Code, software and processes that used to take months can come together incredibly quickly. If something in your business is slow, manual, or just not working, I'd love to help build a fix. Reply to this email and we'll set up a call to talk it through.
One more favor. Right now this newsletter goes to a couple hundred people, and I'd love to grow it to 500 to 1,000 readers across the industry. If you know someone who would find it useful, please forward this email or send them to the site to subscribe. I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks for reading, Jeremy
What's inside:
🎯 Steal This Play: Turn Your Review Pile Into a Weekly 30-Minute Job With Claude
🎯 Steal This Play: Pour the allocated bottle instead of selling it: Evergreen's tasting bar play
🎯 Steal This Play: Stop waiting for younger buyers to visit. Go throw a party where they already are
📊 Three Numbers: Nearly 4% more drinking among Americans aged 50 to 64 since 2018
🔁 Sales and Retention Ideas: Walk into your distributor review with a depletion story Claude built in 20 minutes
Turn Your Review Pile Into a Weekly 30-Minute Job With Claude
Most tasting rooms, taprooms, and bottle shops answer the five-star reviews and quietly skip the one-star ones. That is backwards. The angry review is the one prospects read all the way through, and your reply is the only part of it you control.
Doing this by hand eats an hour or two a week and it never gets scheduled, so it never happens. Here is how to make it a 30-minute Friday job.
What to prepare
Copy your last 30 to 60 days of reviews into one document. Google Business Profile and Yelp both let you read them on screen: paste the star rating, the date, the reviewer's first name, and the full text into a Word doc or Google Doc. One review per block.
Write a one-page brand voice sheet. How you talk (warm, dry, plainspoken), words you never use, your owner's or GM's name and title, how you handle a refund or comp, and the two or three things you will not apologize for (your tasting fee, your dog policy, your no-bachelorette-party rule).
Grab your current tasting fees, hours, reservation policy, and shipping policy. Facts stop the AI from inventing them.
Set it up once in Claude
Go to claude.ai and create a Project. Projects hold standing context, so every chat inside it already knows your brand. Upload the voice sheet and the policy facts. Name it something like "Review Replies." Claude Pro is about $20 a month ($17 billed yearly), and Projects work inside it. Check Anthropic's pricing page before you buy.
Then start a new chat in that Project, upload the review document, and paste the prompt below.
Then what
Read every draft before it posts. Fix anything that promises a comp you did not authorize. Copy the replies into Google and Yelp yourself.
The second half of the output is the part that pays. If four people mention a 20-minute wait at the bar on Saturdays, that is a staffing decision, not a review problem. Run it every Friday and keep the pattern reports in the same Project so Claude can compare month to month.
Good output looks like: replies short enough to read on a phone, no two starting with the same word, and a pattern list with counts and named fixes, not "improve customer service."
You are the guest relations lead for [BUSINESS NAME], a [winery / brewery / distillery / wine and spirits shop] in [CITY, STATE]. You are drafting public replies to Google and Yelp reviews in our brand voice, using the voice sheet and policy facts in this Project.
I am pasting (or uploading) our reviews from [DATE RANGE]. Our tasting fee is [FEE], reservations are [REQUIRED / WALK-IN OK], and our refund or comp policy is [POLICY]. The person signing replies is [NAME, TITLE].
Deliver two things.
PART 1: THE REPLIES
Write one reply per review. Rules:
- Under 75 words each. People read these on a phone.
- Never start two replies with the same word, and never use "Thank you for taking the time."
- 4 and 5 star reviews: thank them by first name, name one specific thing they mentioned, and give a reason to come back that costs us nothing.
- 3 star reviews: acknowledge the gap plainly, name what we are changing if it is a real miss, and invite them back.
- 1 and 2 star reviews: no defensiveness, no legal language, no arguing facts in public. Own what is ours, state our policy once if the complaint is about policy, and move the conversation offline with a real email address: [EMAIL].
- If a review is abusive, false, or appears to violate platform rules, flag it as DO NOT REPLY and tell me why, plus whether to dispute it.
- Do not invent anything. If a reply needs a fact I did not give you, put it in [BRACKETS] so I fill it in.
Format as a table: Date | Stars | Reviewer | Platform | Draft reply | Anything I need to fill in.
PART 2: THE PATTERNS
After the replies, give me:
1. The top 5 recurring complaints, each with how many reviews mentioned it and a direct quote.
2. The top 5 recurring compliments, same format, so I know what to put in our marketing.
3. Which complaints are staffing, which are product, which are pricing or policy, and which are expectation-setting on our website or booking page.
4. Three fixes I could make this month, ranked by how many reviews each one would have prevented. Be specific: name the shift, the page, or the policy.
5. One thing our reviewers praise that we are not currently saying anywhere in our marketing.
Push back on me. If my voice sheet is making the replies sound stiff or corporate, say so and show me a better version of one reply.
Pour the allocated bottle instead of selling it: Evergreen's tasting bar play
Cox's Spirit Shoppe & Evergreen Liquors, an employee-owned Kentucky chain now at 26 stores, had a scarcity problem. A large national competitor was entering their market, and allocated bourbon allocations were brutal: two or three bottles for 15 to 20 stores. CEO Mike Fisk told Beverage Dynamics the question was simply "how do I decide you get a bottle and this person doesn't?"
The play: stop selling the allocated bottle and start pouring it. They built a tasting bar inside Evergreen and put the rare stuff on the backbar for anyone to buy by the glass, priced below steakhouse and bar pricing but at a better margin than a normal retail bottle sale.
Fisk's math: instead of making one person happy with a bottle of Pappy 23 year, you make 25 people happy. Bourbon Trail tourists started posting about which bars had the best whiskey at the best prices, and Evergreen climbed the must-visit lists. Beverage Dynamics reports the Louisville store boomed over the past five to ten years. Exact revenue figures are not public.
Adapt it down: one shop, one shelf, three allocated pours a week, posted on Instagram every Thursday. Adapt it up: concentrate scarce inventory in one destination store instead of splitting it. Wineries and breweries can run the same move with library vintages and one-off kegs. Check your state's pour license before you build the bar.
You are a beverage retail and hospitality operator who has launched by-the-glass tasting programs inside retail stores and tasting rooms. Help me design a "pour it, don't raffle it" program for scarce inventory.
My business: [winery / brewery / distillery / retail wine and spirits shop / distributor sample room]
Location and traffic type: [e.g., Louisville, KY, heavy bourbon tourist traffic in summer, local regulars year round]
The scarce inventory I fight over: [e.g., 3 bottles of allocated single barrel a quarter, 40 cases of library Cabernet, 2 kegs of barrel-aged stout]
Current way I allocate it: [e.g., email lottery, first come first served, club members only]
Retail price per bottle: [$]
My license situation: [e.g., we can pour samples only / we hold a by-the-drink license / unsure]
Staff on the floor at peak: [number]
Produce:
1. A pour pricing model. For each scarce item, give me a per-pour price (1 oz and 2 oz), the number of pours per bottle after spillage, total revenue versus selling the bottle whole, and the margin difference. Show the math.
2. The backbar lineup: how many rare items to keep open at once, how fast each must sell before it oxidizes, and what everyday pours pay the overhead between tourists.
3. The fairness script: exactly what my staff says to a guest who wants the bottle and cannot have it, in plain language, no apology.
4. The social hook: what gets photographed and posted, and a weekly post format that travels to people planning a visit.
5. A 30-day launch plan with the three things most likely to go wrong, and the fix for each.
6. The licensing and compliance questions I need to ask my state agency before I open the bar. List them as questions, do not guess the answers.
Push back if my pour price is too low to beat the margin on a bottle sale, or if my scarce inventory is too thin to keep a bar interesting.
Stop waiting for younger buyers to visit. Go throw a party where they already are
On BevNET's Taste Radio podcast, Wonderwerk co-founder Issamu Kamide described how the brand grew by going where younger consumers already live and breathe, and throwing a party once it got there. Kamide credits culture and community for the brand's traction, and says the team treats consumer behavior as the roadmap for what to make next.
That is the opposite of how most of us operate. We build a beautiful room, set a tasting fee, and wait. Then we wonder why the median age of our guest list keeps climbing.
Here is how I would run this play in the next 60 days.
Pick one cultural space your future customers are already in that has nothing to do with your category. A record shop, a run club, a skate park, a gallery night, a supper club, a gaming bar, a farmers market DJ set.
Call the organizer and offer to pour, sponsor, or co-host. Do not ask for a booth. Ask to be part of the thing.
Bring format that fits the room. Cans, half bottles, a slushie machine, a one-wine pour with a story, not a six-wine flight with spit cups.
Capture two things only: emails or phone numbers, and photos you can use for a month of content.
Write down what people asked for that you do not sell. That list is your product roadmap.
A distributor can do this with a portfolio of three brands and a brewery's parking lot. A retail shop can host the run club's finish line. A distillery can sponsor the after-party rather than the event.
Credit to BevNET's Taste Radio and Issamu Kamide for the original conversation.
Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT.
You are a field marketing strategist who has built beverage brands with younger consumers by embedding them in existing cultural scenes rather than running traditional tastings.
My business: [winery / brewery / distillery / distributor / retail wine and spirits shop]
Name and location: [NAME, CITY/REGION]
What I sell and price points: [e.g., $28 to $45 estate whites, DTC and local on-premise]
Who I am trying to reach: [e.g., 25 to 38 year olds in Denver who currently drink cocktails and seltzer]
My budget for one event: [DOLLAR AMOUNT]
My team size for this: [NUMBER OF PEOPLE]
Formats I can actually pour: [bottles, cans, kegs, half bottles, cocktails, N/A option]
Deliver the following:
1. Twelve specific types of local cultural gatherings in my market where my target customer already shows up and alcohol is welcome but not the point. For each, name the kind of organizer I would contact and why the fit works.
2. Rank the top three by likelihood of saying yes and cost to participate.
3. For the top pick, write the outreach email or DM to the organizer. Lead with what I give them, not what I want. Keep it under 120 words.
4. A run-of-show for the night: what we pour, how we serve it, how many staff, what we bring, and what we do NOT bring because it would make us look like a vendor booth.
5. The exact ask we use to capture an email or phone number in under 15 seconds without a clipboard.
6. A five-question list of things my staff should ask guests that will tell me what product, format, or price point to make next.
7. The three numbers I should measure afterward and what a good result looks like for a first attempt at my size.
Push back on anything in my setup that will make this feel like a corporate activation instead of a real part of the scene. Be blunt. Then ask me the three questions you need answered to sharpen the plan.
Nearly 4% more drinking among Americans aged 50 to 64 since 2018
Nearly 4% Alcohol use among Americans aged 50 to 64 rose nearly 4% from 2018 to 2024 while other generations cut back, the New York Post reports (carried by WineBusiness Daily News). If every dollar of your acquisition budget is chasing drinkers under 35, you are fishing in the one pond that is draining.
13% William Grant & Sons pre-tax profit fell 13% to £337 million ($447m) in 2025, on sales of £1.76 billion ($2.3b), down 4%, Daniel Marsteller reports in Shanken News Daily. Profit fell more than three times faster than sales, which is what happens when promo spend and trade support defend volume. Check your own bill-backs and depletion allowances before funding another discount.
4% The William Grant portfolio slipped 4% in volume in U.S. control states through July, per Shanken News Daily, with Hendrick's, Reyka, and Glenfiddich rising while Milagro and Sailor Jerry declined. Even inside a shrinking book, individual brands grow: find which of your SKUs are actually working and move support to them this quarter.
Walk into your distributor review with a depletion story Claude built in 20 minutes
A distributor review is usually 30 minutes. If you spend 20 of them scrolling through a depletion report on a laptop, you have given away the meeting.
The work of preparing properly (pulling numbers, writing the narrative, anticipating objections, building the leave-behind) is usually four to six hours of somebody's time. Claude can get you to a solid draft in about 20 minutes, and you spend the rest of your time rehearsing instead of formatting.
What to pull before you start
Gather these into one place. Most of it is a CSV or PDF export you already have:
Your depletion report from the distributor portal, last 12 months, by account or by market.
Your inventory on hand at the distributor (cases by SKU).
Your current price structure: FOB, wholesale, front-line retail.
A list of your top 10 accounts and any you have lost in the last year.
Whatever support you have spent: samples, work-withs, DA, POS.
If you are a brewery, swap depletions for chain and independent account velocity. A distillery, same idea by SKU and by market. A retail shop doing a supplier negotiation can run this in reverse: you are the buyer, and the same structure prepares you to push back.
The setup
Go to claude.ai and start a new chat. Upload the files directly (Claude reads CSV, Excel, and PDF). If you would rather keep this permanent, create a Project and drop your price list, brand story, and depletion exports in as standing context, so every future distributor chat already knows your numbers.
Then paste the prompt below.
When Claude gives you the draft, do two things. Read the objection answers out loud. If a line does not sound like you, tell Claude "rewrite number 3 the way a person actually talks." Then take the one-page leave-behind and ask Claude to tighten it until it fits on a single page with no more than six numbers on it. Six is the limit. Buyers do not read the seventh.
To take it further, paste the leave-behind outline into Gamma (gamma.app, free account) and generate a branded PDF version in a couple of minutes.
Good output looks like this: a depletion story you can tell in 90 seconds without notes, five objections with answers that name a specific number, and a one-pager where your ask is the largest thing on the page.
You are my distributor strategy advisor. You have spent 20 years on both sides of the desk: as a supplier sales director and as a distributor portfolio manager. You are direct and you do not let me hide behind brand romance.
I am preparing for a review meeting with my distributor. I have uploaded my depletion report, inventory position, and pricing. Read them before you answer.
My situation:
- Business: [WINERY / BREWERY / DISTILLERY NAME], a [size, e.g. 8,000 case winery] in [REGION]
- Distributor: [DISTRIBUTOR NAME] in [STATE/MARKET], we have been with them [LENGTH OF TIME]
- Who is in the room: [e.g. portfolio manager plus two market managers]
- Meeting length: [e.g. 30 minutes]
- What I want out of this meeting: [e.g. 15 new on-premise placements in Q2, a BTG push on the Sauvignon Blanc, better chain shelf position]
- What I am worried about: [e.g. depletions flat, too much inventory sitting, they added a competing brand]
- What I can offer: [e.g. two work-with days a quarter, $X per case DA, winemaker dinners, library allocation]
- My walk-away: [the lowest price or highest support cost I will accept]
Produce these five things, in this order:
1. THE DEPLETION STORY. A 90-second spoken narrative I can deliver from memory. Pull the three most favorable true numbers from my data and the one unfavorable number I should name first myself before they do. Tell me exactly which number to lead with and why. If my data does not support an optimistic story, say so plainly and give me the honest version instead.
2. THE NUMBERS THEY WILL CHECK. List the four metrics this distributor will run before the meeting (velocity, days of inventory, account retention, whatever fits my category). For each, tell me what my actual data shows and whether it helps or hurts me.
3. OBJECTIONS AND ANSWERS. The seven objections most likely to come up in this specific meeting, ranked by likelihood. For each: the objection in their words, my answer in plain spoken language (no more than four sentences), and the one number or fact that answer must include. Do not write corporate filler. Write how a person actually talks.
4. THE ONE-PAGE LEAVE-BEHIND. Give me the exact text for a single page: a headline, no more than six numbers, three bullet proof points, my specific ask, and my contact line. Nothing else fits. Tell me what to cut if it runs long.
5. THE ASK AND THE TRADE. Write the exact sentence I use to make my ask, and three things I can trade that cost me little but matter to them. Then name the one question I have not thought to ask.
After you deliver all five, ask me three questions that would sharpen this if I answered them, then challenge the weakest assumption in my plan.
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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