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Paso DTC Beats Market By 33% In July
In July 2020, Total DTC Sales in Paso Robles and the Central Coast grew +24.1% over July 2019.
This is significantly more July year over year growth achieved by other California wineries who declined on average -8.6%.
Analysis
The biggest differences in DTC Sales between Paso and other California wineries happened in the Tasting Room and Digital Sales (Online + Phone) Sales categories.
Tasting Room
The majority of July DTC Sales in Paso happened in the Tasting Room (61%) and Tasting Room Sales in Paso were up +1.4% compared to July of last year. This lies in sharp contrast to the -30.9 decline in sales among All California Tasting Rooms.
The dramatic out performance of Paso Tasting Rooms is based on Visitor traffic being down less and the Visitor traffic performing better – see below:
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Digital Sales
In addition to Tasting Room sales showing a substantial difference, Paso wineries grew their “Digital Sales” (Online + Phone) much more than All wineries.
Based on the lower starting point of last year’s “Digital Sales,” Paso and the Central Coast had more room to grow and are rapidly closing the gap.
And the Digital Shift is on. Below you can see that Paso Digital (Online + Phone) grew about 2.5 times in DTC significance as 2019 percentage of Digital Sales was 13% which grew to 32% of Total DTC in July this year.
Community Benchmark is trusted by:
Community Benchmark Member Spotlight
Kristen Darnell
VP of Sales, Epoch Estate Wines
What is your favorite wine business metric and why?
Keeping it simple, revenue tells it like it is. Money talks. Digging deeper… For our Tasting Room, I like to divide Revenue by Number of Visitors to get a “per person” metric vs. an AOV (since most couples will make one purchase vs. two). For our Allocation, however, I do like to look at AOV and how that evolves during our tiered release.
What is your favorite wine / food pairing?
Epoch wine paired with anything I didn’t have to cook.
Quote of the month:
“Like M.J. in The Last Dance, we gotta keep pivoting!”
What is unique about how you got into the wine business?
I fell into the biz… which is a longer story so I’ll keep it short and share my favorite “newbie” tale… In 2010 Bill Armstrong asked me to relocate from Denver to Paso to open Epoch’s first tasting room. I had never even visited a wine tasting room before and knew that that was the best place to start. I ventured out, took my trusty notebook, and while my first “taste” was being poured I vividly remember writing down the first to do in opening a tasting room: order wine glasses.
What do you love about managing a wine business?
Every day is different (for example, today is the Virtual Junior Livestock Auction. The Armstrongs love supporting our local community in this way every year. Since the auction is online this year, I’m currently scrolling thru pics and bidding on steer, hogs, and lambs while also answering these questions). And, the people I get to work with make it fun!
What is a unique management challenge you’re facing right now and how are you dealing with it?
Trying to find a groove since things change so often in our COVID-world. I wake up each morning and remind myself that there is always one thing I can control – my attitude.
Are there any unique ways your winery is using data? Or that you would love to be able to use data?
I love looking at data to draw conclusions about the who, what, and why. For us at Epoch, we often talk about another “W question”… “what if.” In the “what if” scenarios, I can pull statistics to apply to a new idea or trajectory – the daydreaming with a numeric foundation is super energizing.
What is unique about your winery amongst other wineries in your region?
History – we love keeping the York Mountain and Paderewski stories alive!