Wine Road Executive Board
October 9, 2019
Seghesio Family Winery
9:00am-10:50am
NOTES
** Follow up required
Attending: Beth Costa, Carri Holdredge, Chris Lynch, Devin Ruddick, Jack Seifrick, Joe Foppoli, John Viszlay, Oded Shakked, Stephanie Wycoff
Absent: Carla Jeffries, Danny Christensen, Jenny Lamarre, Julia Lander, Lillian Nichelsen, Thomas Schwarting
9:00 Call to order
9:05 Review minutes from August – minutes approved.
9:10 Approval of Joe Foppoli as Treasurer since Danny Christensen felt he had a conflict holding the Treasurer position.
9:12 Map printing update. Still one more round of edits to go before printing. WR recently added two new members so working to get them included.
9:14 County Benchmark: Presentation by John Keleher, founder of Benchmark. He shared his proposal to sell WR data services so that participating wineries can confidentially share their Tasting Room and Wine Club sales data for comparative purposes. He is expecting an 80% participation rate from member wineries. Benchmark would track the data (approximately 8 questions per month), and setup a dashboard for each participating winery.
No cost to member wineries – WR would absorb the minimum annual fee of $63K as a member benefit and add it as a new line item to the budget. Chris Lynch suggested adding an early termination clause if not enough wineries participate – **(that number needs to be determined); Chris also suggested asking for additional data for our members at no extra cost.
Benchmark would then have the option to upsell all of our members added data services resulting in a potentially lucrative revenue stream for Benchmark. Beth wants to rollout Benchmark’s program at the annual meeting next month.
** The Board will submit questions and/or suggestions re: which data categories are interesting (i.e., data measurements for each event; sales from small vs. med or large sized wineries, etc.) Feedback to Beth and John Viszlay due by this Friday, Oct. 10th so the Board can vote next week on Benchmark’s proposal.
10:20 PR and Social updates – LA trip for Beth coming up. WR now using Sprout Social for all social media reporting. Report sent via email to board members.
10:25 Wine Road Ambassadors – no discussion
10:25 WFA – event update: Ticket sales YTD same as last year (2300), but revenue is up due to increased ticket price. Goal is to sell 3900 tickets (same as last year).
** Beth to deliver an WFA e-brochure by next week for members to send to their customer database.
10:35 Partnerships / Map advertising: Three partners added to the map at $10K each including Compass Realty, Pure Luxury, and Visit Santa Rosa.
10:40 Golf Tournament: First planning meeting was last week. Event named “Tee to Table, Wine Road’s 1st Annual Golf Tournament”. Date: May 29th, 2020. 124 players @ $175 each. Beth has reached out to Eventbrite to be the big sponsor at $10K; waiting to hear back from them. Many sponsors will be needed, both large and small. Hoping to generate enough revenue to donate $14K to Redwood Empire Food Bank.
10:45 New / Old Business
Annual Meeting – help with presentation – task force
** Within the next two weeks, Beth wants to get 3-4 Board Members together to determine the handouts for the annual member meeting.
Staffing – Member and Partner Relations + intern general duties
WR is looking to hire a full-time customer service centric position to primarily handle Partnerships along with outreach to members as well as concierge services to guests. Also looking for a part-time intern, 10-15 hours per week at $18/hour.
10:50 Adjourn
Next Executive Board Meeting – November 6, 9:00-10:00 at Wine Road Office
Note – moved to 1st Wednesday, due to Annual Membership Meeting on Nov. 13th