Virtual Wine & Food Affair – Nov. 7-8, 2020

Hello to all of our winery members-

I am sorry to reach out to you this week about an event, but that’s my job. I need to look ahead and make sure we are in a position to help you sell wine and at the same time, generate income for Wine Road.

There will be better days ahead and we need to be ready to capitalize on them.
Unfortunately we are in crunch time.

To that end-
We are planning a Virtual Wine & Food Affair, Nov. 7-8, 2020.
Name may change somewhat, however Wine & Food Affair is branded and has a following.

Participating wineries will sell wine to Wine Road at 50% off, so we can create mixed cases for customers to buy — at full retail.

Each winery can submit ONE wine for inclusion.

Wineries will need to have a recipe to pair with that one wine.
If you were signed up for Wine & Food Affair last year, we suggest you use that wine and recipe – then you’re a step ahead of the game.

Wineries will be provided a template to upload and print out hard copies of their recipe. This will be at the winery expense. Wine Road will need your recipes printed and delivered to the office between Oct. 15-26. We will let you know how many copies we will need.

Wine Road will be packing cases in-house and working with UPS to ship within CA. We are able to do this using an ABC special permit #221.

Wineries may also print ONE piece of collateral which will be sent to all buyers, not just those who purchased the case with your wine included. Piece must be no more than 4” x 6”.

Case sales will be done thought WineRoad.com

Wine & Food Affair weekend, every winery will be scheduled a specific time to do a “Facebook live,” talking about their wine and food pairing, ideally having the chef or caterer on hand. Possibly doing a mini cooking demo. The segment will need to be 20 minutes. If you record for 20 minutes it will be saved and customers who missed it could tune in when it works for them.

We want customers to feel like that are at an event!
Wine tasting all day — hearing from winemakers or winery owners and chefs.
They will have their case of wine, recipe cards, collateral and a wood Wine Road cheese/cutting board (we ordered them for last year’s event).

Our website will have the Facebook Live schedule in advance, so customer can plan ahead.

Wineries need to sign-up to online using Eventbrite to participate.
We will make the link live this Friday and send it out to everyone.
We need to have an assortment of wines, so we are limiting the number of wineries that can submit a Cabernet, Zinfandel, Pinot Noir or Chardonnay – to the first 8 that sign-up for those. Lets showcase our diversity.

Deadline to sign-up is Sept. 6th

Cases will go on sale Sept. 15th, when we send out our email blast and launch or social media campaign.

We are working our budget assuming we will sell 100 mixed cases.
If 48 wineries sign up to participate, that gives us 4 mixed case options.
Case A – may sell 40 cases
Case B – may sell 16 cases
Case C – may sell 27 cases
Case D – may sell 17 cases

So if your wine is in case A we’d need to buy 40 bottles of your wine, but if your wine is in case B, we would only be buying 16 bottles of your wine.

We have NO idea how this will pencil out. Selling 100 cases is a best guess scenario.

We will wait to see who signs up and what the wines are. We may have mixed cases by AVA, or possible a case of red and a case of white, maybe Rhones. It will depend on what you submit. We also plan to have 1 or 2 6-pack options.

ADDITIONALLY

We can’t ship out of CA, but we want to encourage buyers from across the country, so we will be selling “Wine Stimulus Funds” (name to be determined).

These will be sold online in $10 increments, they will be worth $20 each

Buyers can redeem these at any of the Wine & Food Affair wineries on a minimum purchase of $100. (Every $20 voucher must be used on a $100 or more purchase)

Customers can purchase multiple Wine Stimulus Funds and combine them for one large purchase.

Example – purchase 5 at $10 each, total retail value of $100.
If a customer purchased a case that is $500 or more, they could use the full $100 Stimulus Funds.

Customers will need to PHONE in their orders, or bring their “Stimulus Funds” to the winery in person to redeem. Wineries will need to notify the Wine Road as they are redeemed. Call us, leave a message, scan info, shoot us an email – whatever.

Funds will be sold Sept. 15 – Nov. 8 and MUST be redeemed by Dec. 8th.
This will be promoted as part of our Wine & Food Affair weekend.

We assume locals will buy one or two and use them on a few bottles or maybe one more expense wine they may not have normally purchased.
Folks outiside of CA will buy in multiples and then use them toward a case.

Wine Road will keep the income from selling the Wine Stimulus Funds.

We have no idea how well this will work.
This is a trial run. Wineries can weigh in after Dec. 8th and let us know what worked, what was a problem and then we can determine if we want this program to continue.

This is a lot to take in, during a pandemic, fire evacuation, harvest madness, homeschooling, mental health crisis…day drinking – but we hope you see this as a positive step to keep your winery front and center with wine buyers across the country. #SipSonoma #VirtualWFA2020

Questions – shoot me an email.

Regards,
Beth

beth costa executive director/ring leader

Phone: 707-433-4335
Website: wineroad.com
Address: 1437 Grove Street, Healdsburg, CA 95448

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