Pending Approval of Board

Wine Road Board of Directors Meeting

Thursday August 20, 2015

Vintners Inn – 8:30am

 MINUTES

 

 

Members Present: Robin Calkins, Renae Perry, Robert Conard, Julia Lander, Sue Burnet, Aaron Krug, Kevin West, Jeff Noel, Carla Jeffries, Ross James, Carri Holdredge, Derek Trowbridge    Absent: Kathleen Inman, Stacy Rafanelli

8:30    Meeting called to order by Robin Calkins

 

8:35    Approval of June minutes – motion to approve by Ross James, 2^nd by Kevin West

8:45    Treasurer’s Report – Beth, Checking $101,707.32 Savings $170,223.01

• Assessments – slowly arriving, thus far 60 wineries and 32 lodgings paid

8:50    Events

• CA Wine Month – program online in about a week. We have a full-page ad booked in SF Chron, our monthly ad in Horizon and we’ll promote via social. We have about 20 wineries with the Boarding Pass promo and 40 with other offers. Debbie is also creating a Google map with participants
• Wine & Food Affair – editing recipes, posters and postcards will be mailed in time for Labor Day; ticket pages are ready to go. We’re ahead of schedule.
• Winter WINEland – nothing to report at this time.
• Need 10 point review for Debbie/events – Robin and Carri volunteered to help Beth after todays’ meeting to outline the 10point plan for her event bonus.

9:10    40^th Anniversary

• Sponsors – Marcy Gordon is working this. Beth just secured SF Chron and Cumulus radio in SF – both for sponsors and celebrity hosts as needed.
• Art of Oak – Mindy is pairing sponsors with artists.
• Member Sign-Ups – SLOWLY arriving. Beth will send out another email with a better calendar and encourage more members to get on board.

9:35    PRMD Update

Beth explained the task force that has been formed by the PRMD with winery and neighbor representative. The monthly meetings, and now the weekly meeting with the Presidents Council. Objective is to be proactive and write an ordinance to outline winery events with regard to: water use, noise, traffic, congestion, industry events vs. normal part of doing business. EXTREMELY complicated issues with very vocal, organized opposition to the wine industry. Robin will attend the next Pres. Council meeting and suggests other Board members trade off attending when possible.

9:45    New Logo Design – Mindy Joyce and Rich & Liz Pembroke –

Mindy walked us through the demographics of our visitors, the tourism numbers and comparisons off other logos within our competitors or like-minded businesses. From this we reviewed the scaled down options of new brand marks and discussed which one would be the best fit for our demographic. We highlighted how each could be used in different formats depending on the use – web, social, print etc. Renae made a motion to select version #3, Robin 2^nd the motion all in favor.

 

10:30  Public Relations     

• Press Trip – Press lunch planned in Sacramento Sept. 17, followed by an east coast trip to Chicago, NY and DCin October, then a lunch and dinner in LA. Now is the time to tell our story, so we’re making it a full-court press!
• 40^th gifts and new press kit/history – clocks, Capabunga and shades if appropriate.
• Central Coast – Beth is also heading south to the Savor the Central Coast in Sept to hand out our 40^th brochures, get emails and hand out maps!

10:45  ABC licensing update – no update at this point. Still waiting to hear if we’ll need to provide some sort of permit for each participating winery.

10:50  Staff Changes

• Laura Stafford – Office Manager – starting Aug. 31
• Debbie Osborn – Events Manager – review and promotion given in July
• Mysty Stewart – social media / contract employee – began Aug. 15

11:00  Old Business – The Board has agreed to offer the Wine Road staff a 401K going forward. Details to follow. They also completed Beth’s formal yearly review.

 

11:15  New Business

• Moving website – security reasons – now on WordPress Expert. We are also hiring a security company to do asecurity audit.
• Seminars – MOVING all seminar sign-ups to EventBrite, so we can continue to offer a great selection of educational opportunities but not find ourselves wasting a ton of time processing credit cards, creating RSVP lists etc. We will try to have 6 months at a time online.
• Thursday emails – going forward we will also be sending a simple note every Thursday that addresses ONE topic. The first Thurs of each month will just be a reminder to UPDATE your WineRoad.com page.

Meeting adjourned at 11:30

 

Robin, Carri and Beth met to discuss the 10pt bonus plan for our Event Manager, Debbie Osborn.

Minutes Respectfully Submitted by Beth Costa