Your free SEO audit, now a 30-day fix list
Plus a three-touch pitch sequence for local accounts and a voice agent at $0.08 a minute.
Jeremy Young5 min read
Today's Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter
What's inside:
📊 Three Numbers: 95% of Wineries Say Their Next Move Is the Tasting Room
💡 AI Prompts You Can Use: Turn a free SEO audit of your site into a 30-day fix list
💡 AI Prompts You Can Use: Turn one list of local accounts into a researched three-touch pitch sequence
🛠️ Try These Tools: Answer after-hours tasting room calls with a voice agent at $0.08 a minute
95% of Wineries Say Their Next Move Is the Tasting Room
95% of wineries in Silicon Valley Bank's 2026 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report (450 respondents) told Rob McMillan essentially the same thing about what they are doing next: investing in the tasting room, whether that is facility spend, staff training, or new hospitality presentations. When nearly everyone runs the same play, it stops being an edge. Pick one revenue stream that reaches customers off your property and fund it this quarter.
+3% is what convenience retailers expect beer sales to do year over year, according to Goldman Sachs' Q3 Beverage Bytes survey reported by Brewbound, up from +2% in the Q1 survey. Respondents represent about 10% of the c-store channel, roughly 15,000 stores. C-store buyers are in a better mood than they were in the spring, so brewers and RTD brands should get their 2027 reset pitch in front of them now.
18% of US adults 21 and older drank a non-alcoholic beer, wine, spirit, RTD, or THC-infused beverage in the past six months, BevNET reports. That is close to one in five people walking into your tasting room or taproom. Put one credible zero-proof pour on the menu at a real price, and track how often it sells alongside a full-strength flight.
Turn a free SEO audit of your site into a 30-day fix list
The outcome: a Word document audit of your website, then a 30-day fix list that says what to do in week one, week two, week three, and week four, sorted by what will move traffic fastest.
Tool and difficulty: Claude Cowork (now part of Claude), in the desktop app. Advanced, because you install a plugin first and the audit runs for a while. Claude's free plan does not cover this: Cowork needs a paid plan, and Pro is $17 a month with the annual subscription discount ($200 billed up front) or $20 billed monthly, read on claude.com/pricing on 2026-10-20. Max starts at $100 a month.
Set it up once
Open the Claude desktop app and start a new Cowork prompt. Type this and send it:
claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
Then type this and send it:
claude plugin install Marketing
Now type a single / in the prompt box. You will see the skills the Marketing plugin added. Run the audit by typing:
/seo-audit [your website URL]
Depending on how big your site is, it takes 10 to 30 minutes and produces a Word document with ranked issues, keyword gaps, competitor comparisons, and recommendations. Let it finish before you do anything else.
Then turn the audit into a plan
The audit itself is the easy part. The reason most audits die is that nobody translates 60 pages of findings into Tuesday's to-do list. That is what this second prompt does. Paste it into the same Cowork conversation right after the audit finishes, so Claude still has the document in front of it.
You are an SEO consultant who works with beverage alcohol brands. You just produced an SEO audit for my website. Now turn that audit into a 30-day fix list I can actually execute.
My situation:
- Business: [YOUR BUSINESS NAME AND TYPE, e.g. a 9,000-case winery in Walla Walla with a tasting room and a 400-member club]
- Website: [YOUR WEBSITE URL]
- Who does the work: [WHO WILL DO THE WORK, e.g. our tasting room manager who also runs social, or an outside web contractor at 5 hours a month]
- Time available: [HOURS PER WEEK AVAILABLE, e.g. 4 hours a week]
- Platform: [YOUR WEBSITE PLATFORM, e.g. Commerce7, Squarespace, Shopify, WordPress]
- Revenue priorities for the next quarter: [YOUR TOP 3 REVENUE PRIORITIES, e.g. tasting room reservations, club signups, and shipping cases of our new Albarino]
- Market: [YOUR MARKET OR REGION]
Produce the following:
1. The 10 highest-impact findings from the audit, ranked by revenue impact, not by technical severity. For each one, state the specific page or URL affected, what is wrong in plain English, and what it is costing me in traffic or conversions. Skip anything that will not plausibly move reservations, club signups, or online orders.
2. A 30-day plan broken into four weeks. For each week give me a short list of tasks with: the exact page to change, the exact change to make (write the new title tag, meta description, or heading copy for me where that is the fix), who does it, and an honest time estimate. Front-load the work that pays off fastest. Do not put anything in week one that requires a developer or a new budget.
3. A separate "needs money or a developer" list for anything that cannot be done in 30 days with the time and people I have, with a rough sense of what each one would take.
4. The 5 search terms my [winery / brewery / distillery] should realistically win in the next six months given my size and region, with the one page on my site that should target each. Be honest: if a term is too competitive for a business my size, say so and give me a longer-tail version instead, for example a visitor searching for a specific varietal or a tasting experience near my town.
Rules: every task must trace back to a specific finding in the audit, and say which one. No generic SEO advice. If the audit did not find enough real problems to fill 30 days, tell me that instead of padding the list. If my stated priorities do not match what the audit says is broken, push back and tell me where I am wrong.
Format the whole thing as a document I can hand to the person doing the work, with checkboxes.
Variables to swap: [YOUR BUSINESS NAME AND TYPE], [YOUR WEBSITE URL], [WHO WILL DO THE WORK], [HOURS PER WEEK AVAILABLE], [YOUR WEBSITE PLATFORM], [YOUR TOP 3 REVENUE PRIORITIES], [YOUR MARKET OR REGION].
What to do with the output: ask Claude to save the 30-day plan as its own document, then drop the week one tasks into whatever you already use for assignments. If a week looks too heavy for one person, say "cut week two down to three hours of work and move the rest to a later-this-quarter list" and it will rebalance. Run the audit again in 90 days and ask Claude to compare the new one to the old one so you can see what actually got fixed.
What good output looks like: every task names a specific page on your site (not "improve meta descriptions" but "rewrite the title tag on your wine club signup page"), tells you who does it, and estimates the time. If you get generic SEO advice with no page URLs in it, tell Claude to go back to the audit document and cite the exact finding behind each task.
Turn one list of local accounts into a researched three-touch pitch sequence
The outcome: You paste in a list of local accounts you want on your book, plus the basics of what you sell, and Claude gives you back a target-by-target research brief and a three-touch outreach sequence (first email, follow-up, and a drop-by script) written for each account's actual menu, guest, and price point.
This is the work a good sales rep does on a Sunday night and most owners never get to. A winery uses it for by-the-glass placements. A brewery uses it for taproom-adjacent restaurant kegs and holiday staff gifting. A distillery uses it for cocktail program placements and corporate client gift boxes. A retail shop uses it for corporate gifting and hotel concierge referrals. A distributor rep uses it to prep a territory sweep before Monday.
Tool and difficulty: Claude (claude.ai). Medium, because you paste in your own account list and product details. The free plan handles this fine. If you want to keep your price sheet, brand voice, and account notes as standing context, Claude Pro is $17 a month with the annual subscription ($200 billed up front) or $20 billed monthly, read on claude.com/pricing on 2026-10-21.
Before you start, pull together three things: the names and neighborhoods of 8 to 12 local accounts you actually want, your wholesale and gifting pricing, and two or three sentences on what makes your product easy for a buyer to say yes to (allocation, local story, a format that pours well, a gift box that ships).
You are a beverage sales rep who has opened on-premise and corporate gifting accounts in [CITY/REGION] for 15 years. You are blunt, you hate fluff, and you know buyers delete anything that sounds mass-sent.
My business: [YOUR BUSINESS], a [winery / brewery / distillery / retail wine and spirits shop] in [CITY/REGION].
What I sell and at what price: [PRODUCTS AND PRICING, e.g. estate Albarino at $168/case FOB, SRP $32; a 5L keg program at $95/keg; a three-bottle corporate gift box at $85 with custom ribbon and a note card]
What I want from these accounts: [WHAT YOU WANT, e.g. one by-the-glass placement, a seasonal keg rotation, a hotel minibar or welcome-amenity program, a 50-unit holiday gift order]
My voice: [YOUR VOICE, e.g. warm and casual, no sommelier jargon]
My target accounts: [ACCOUNT LIST, e.g. Nighthawk Kitchen, farm-to-table restaurant, downtown; The Rivermark Hotel, 120 rooms, boutique; Keller Dental Group, 40-person office that sends client gifts every December]
Do the following, one account at a time:
1. RESEARCH BRIEF. In four bullets, tell me what you can reasonably infer about this account: who their guest is, their likely price ceiling, what they probably already pour or gift, and the one thing that would make them say yes. Mark any guess as a guess. Then list the two questions I should answer before I contact them (for example, who actually signs off on the wine list, or whether their gifting budget is set in October).
2. THE ANGLE. One sentence: why my product solves a problem they have, in their language, not mine. For a restaurant that is margin and staff hand-sell. For a hotel it is guest experience and local story. For a corporate buyer it is looking thoughtful without spending a week on it.
3. TOUCH ONE: email. 90 words or less. Subject line under 45 characters. Open with something specific to their business, not with my founding year. One clear ask that costs them nothing (a sample drop, a 15-minute tasting at their bar before service, a sample gift box). No tasting notes.
4. TOUCH TWO: follow-up email, sent seven days later. 60 words or less. New information, not a nudge. Give me something real to say: a new vintage or release, a nearby account that just took it, a seasonal reason to move now.
5. TOUCH THREE: the in-person drop-by. Five lines of what I actually say when I walk in with samples, including how to open when the buyer is not there and I am talking to a bartender or front desk manager.
After all accounts, give me:
- A RANKED ORDER of which three to hit first and why, based on likely close speed.
- A ONE-WEEK PLAN: what I send Monday through Friday.
- THE OBJECTIONS: the five things these buyers will actually say ("we buy everything through our distributor," "our list is locked until spring," "gifting is decided at corporate") and a one-line answer to each that keeps the door open.
Rules: no generic business examples, beverage only. If my pricing makes an account unrealistic, say so and tell me what I would need to change. Do not invent facts about these businesses; label every inference clearly so I can verify it before I send anything.
Variables to swap:
[YOUR BUSINESS] and [CITY/REGION]
[PRODUCTS AND PRICING] (SKUs, wholesale case price, BTG-friendly bottles, gift box tiers)
[ACCOUNT LIST] (names and type: restaurant, hotel, corporate gifting buyer)
[WHAT YOU WANT] (BTG placement, keg program, amenity program, holiday gift order)
[YOUR VOICE] (warm and casual, formal, dry and direct)
What to do with the output: Work the top three accounts first. Send touch one Tuesday or Wednesday morning, put touch two on your calendar for seven days later, and keep the drop-by script on your phone for when you are already in that part of town. Save the whole output into a Claude Project so next quarter you paste in a fresh account list and get the sequence back in two minutes.
If the emails come back sounding like a press release, tell Claude: "Rewrite every first touch at 90 words or less, no adjectives about the wine, and lead with what the buyer gets."
What good output looks like: each account's email mentions something specific and checkable about that place (its cuisine, its guest, its existing list), and you could send it without editing more than a sentence.
Work with Jeremy
Last year's playbook won't win this year's market.
Most beverage businesses are answering a down year with what worked in a good one: another discount, another email blast, the same trade calls. If you want a second set of eyes on yours, book a 30-minute strategy session with me. Bring the problem that's costing you the most right now, and we'll see how we could work together.
👉 Book a strategy session
30 minutes on Google Meet, Tuesday to Friday. Pick any open time on my calendar.
Answer after-hours tasting room calls with a voice agent at $0.08 a minute
ElevenLabs makes AI voice software. Its new Eleven Realtime models power voice agents that listen and answer in speech directly, instead of passing text back and forth between separate transcription and speech tools. Two versions exist: Eleven Realtime v1 Mini (620ms to first audio, 90+ languages) and v1 Max (570ms to first audio, with tool calling so the agent can look things up and take actions). The Neuron flagged the Max model's 0.57 second reply time on 2026-10-21, using ElevenLabs' own figures.
You build the agent in ElevenAgents, which ElevenLabs describes as having a visual builder for non-technical users. The company also sells Reception.ai, a ready-to-deploy AI phone receptionist for small and medium businesses that answers calls, books appointments, and handles day-to-day operations from one dashboard.
Who it is for: tasting room managers drowning in "are you open Sunday" calls, DTC leads fielding club change requests, taproom and distillery tour staff taking bookings while pouring, shop owners whose phone rings during the 5 p.m. rush, and distributor reps who want an order line that answers at 7 a.m.
First job: build one agent that answers your main phone line outside business hours. Give it your hours, directions and parking, current tasting flights and fees, dog and kids policy, group size limits, shipping states, and how to reach a human. Have it take a name and number for anything it cannot answer. That single agent covers the five questions that eat most of your front-of-house phone time.
Cost: the ElevenLabs API pricing page (read 2026-10-21) lists Realtime v1 Mini and Realtime v1 Max both at $0.08 per minute plus LLM usage. At that rate, 300 minutes of calls in a month runs about $24 plus LLM usage. Plan pricing for ElevenAgents and Reception.ai was not readable on the pages we pulled, so check current US pricing at elevenlabs.io/pricing before you commit.
Setup: open your agent in the dashboard, go to the Agent tab, set Voice mode to Realtime (it defaults to Mini), pick Max from the Model list if you need tool calling, then publish. Switching back to Custom and publishing turns it off.
The catch: Realtime models are rolling out gradually. If Voice mode does not appear on your Agent tab, your workspace does not have it yet. Mini is not available under Zero Retention Mode or HIPAA, Max is not available in the India and Singapore data residency environments, and agents using a custom LLM or text-only agents should stay in Custom mode.
Write the agent's script before you touch the dashboard. Draft it in Claude or ChatGPT (Claude's free plan handles this; Pro is $17 a month with the annual subscription, $200 billed up front, or $20 billed monthly, per claude.com/pricing read 2026-10-22), then call your own line and listen for the three answers it gets wrong.
You are a phone operations consultant who writes scripts for AI voice agents at small hospitality and beverage businesses. I run [winery / brewery / distillery / wine and spirits shop / distribution company] called [BUSINESS NAME] in [CITY, STATE]. I am building a voice agent to answer my main phone line [after hours / during peak hours / all the time].
Here is what the agent needs to know:
- Hours and days open: [HOURS]
- Location, directions, parking: [DETAILS]
- What we offer and what it costs: [TASTING FLIGHTS / TOURS / TAPROOM POURS / DELIVERY MINIMUMS AND PRICES]
- Reservation or ordering rules: [WALK-INS, GROUP SIZE LIMITS, DEPOSIT, LEAD TIME, ORDER CUTOFF]
- Policies people always ask about: [DOGS, KIDS, OUTSIDE FOOD, PRIVATE EVENTS, SHIPPING STATES, WILL-CALL]
- Club or loyalty program basics: [DETAILS]
- How to reach a human: [NAME, NUMBER, EMAIL, AND WHEN]
Produce three things:
1. A system prompt for the voice agent, written to be spoken aloud, not read. Short sentences, no jargon, no tasting notes. Include the greeting, the tone I want ([warm and casual / polished and formal]), and a hard rule that it never invents a price, a date, an allocation, or an availability it was not given.
2. An escalation and capture script: exactly what the agent says when it does not know an answer, when the caller is upset, when someone asks about a club cancellation or a billing problem, and when someone asks a question we are not allowed to answer on the phone. Each one ends with the agent taking a name, number, and reason for the call.
3. A test call sheet: 15 questions a real caller would ask my business, including three awkward ones (a complaint about a shipment, a request for a discount, a question about an allocated bottle), plus what a correct answer sounds like for each.
Then push back on me: list the three gaps in the information I gave you that will make this agent sound wrong on a real call, and tell me exactly what to go find before I publish it.
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
Share This Newsletter
If you found this content useful, please share it with your colleagues and friends…
Your personal link (every colleague who subscribes through it counts toward your rewards):
👉 https://alcoholindustryinsider.com/subscribe
Every past issue, the free apps, the Prompt Library, and the AI Tools pages are on the website:
👉 alcoholindustryinsider.com
Get the next one in your inbox.
Free, mondays, wednesdays, and fridays. Five minutes to read.
Work with Jeremy
Reading the plays is the easy part.
Changing what your team does on Monday morning is harder. Book a 30-minute strategy session with me, and we'll work out what to change first and how we could work together.
30 minutes on Google Meet