US Wholesale Masterclass w/ Pete Przybylinski, The Duckhorn Portfolio (Part 2)
35m 18s
This podcast transcription discusses wine distribution strategies, featuring insights from Pete Presbilinski, former chief sales officer of Duckhorn Portfolio. Key topics include the balance between on-premise (restaurants, hotels) and off-premise (retailers) sales. Presbilinski explains that off-premise offers higher immediate ROI, but on-premise builds long-term brand equity; for high-tier wines, a 65-70% on-premise target is ideal, though legal constraints prevent strict enforcement. He advises wineries to manage large off-premise accounts directly rather than relying on distributors, who have competing priorities. Breaking into major retailers requires patience, compelling data, and consistent messaging to distributor teams, as shelf placement and displays are valuable but slow to yield results. On-premise accounts have longer lead times (up to two years for hotels) and require presence at industry events. The interview also highlights Decoy’s success: originally Duckhorn’s second label, it was repositioned as an off-premise “everyday wine” during the Great Recession, launching with Safeway in California and driving national growth. ENO-LITICS is promoted as a data platform helping clients achieve three times faster revenue growth through analytics. The conversation underscores the need for strategic channel management, patience, and direct supplier engagement to navigate the complex wine distribution landscape.
Hey listeners, have you heard of ENO-LITICS? Their data analytics platform for DTC and wholesale depletion data has led their clients to grow revenue three times faster than the industry average. Don't just take my word for it. Their client, Jesse Lang, YMaker and General Manager of Lang Winery in the Willamette Valley shared his experience with ENO-LITICS. Jesse, what has been your biggest win using ENO-LITICS? - Our biggest win overall is been a program that we put together for some of our single-vindered wines, like Freedom Hill and our Lang Dunne Hill's in the state, where we offered those wines to customers that had been looking at them previously and purchased them previously. We offered a nice incentive for that and the impact was significant. It kind of was very surprising and the amount of sales that we generated was spectacular. - Find out more by visiting ENO-LITICS.com. That's ENO-L-Y-T-I-C-S.com to learn more. - Welcome to X-Sh-T-O. - X-Sh-T-O. - The podcast that navigates the business of wine with unique perspectives and insights with your host, Robert Vernick and Peter Young. - Welcome to this episode of X-Sh-T-O. Today we continue our conversation with Pete Presbilinski, the former chief sales officer of the Duckhorn portfolio for nearly 30 years. We continue our conversation on managing US wholesale distribution and get all the insights from Pete. - So how do you think about the split between on and off premises sales for the portfolio? - So we would set targets for that. It would vary a lot from winery to winery. Decoe would have a far higher off premise percentage than cost of round. And those numbers would be fluid. There was time when I started at the winery, we were probably about 80% on premise. And then as you get larger, as on premise is a little bit more challenged, you start to change that and adjust. So we would vary the targets from brands or from winery to winery on that. And a little bit from market to market as well. - What are the key differences in selling into on versus off premise? - On premise tends to take a lot more time. And usually a presentation is involved for the particular wine and someone, so yep, that is great. I'll take a case. Whereas the off premise is much more bang for your buck right now. So there's a temptation to go heavily towards the off premise and then at the expense of the on premise. So that's a balance as well that varies from winery to winery and supplier to supplier about that. The on premise I do love the marketing that you got off of that. But if you get on, you know, LeBernadine wine list, they order a case of high tier wine from us, Costa Brown, three pumps per low, something relatively expensive. You know, maybe they're gonna go through 24 bottles a year on that on a big giant wine list. It's cool you wanna be on there. But you know that just the revenue coming in as a result of that is going to be less. If a big retailer in bottle king orders that, they'll take five times that wine right now and probably sell through it in a couple of months. So you had to balance that one out and so sometimes we would have for sales people, we would try to adjust that by using a central compensation to put more emphasis on on premise versus off premise or try and top with the whole sailor about having something be more on premise than off premise focus. - And how do you think about like the ROI 'cause you're driving a sales organization at the ROI of those two different channels because they seem quite different in terms of the lead times also the revenue generation. But then you get that claim of being on a list somewhere, right? - Yeah, if you're just strictly dollars and cents in ignoring the long term brand equity, the ROI is in the off premise. And so you had to be careful to avoid that temptation and of just, you know, to show your high and the quick off premise sale and think about what does that mean for brand equity? And your balancing that with obviously we all know the market's challenge right now. And so boy, if someone's gonna take a thousand cases of XYZ wine that I really thought about as being more of an on premise play, but damn on premise isn't doing it. And I could get this right now. It's really tempting. So I think that is something that either a supplier's sales leadership or executive team should have long and hard, thoughtful discussions about those types of things. And you know, that's gonna be individual discussion on what you wanna do there. But yeah, the ROI can be really gratifying off of that off premise with a quick hit that comes. - I don't know if you'll be able to answer this, but is there a over your tenure at Duckworn? Is there like a sweet spot in terms of a target percentage of either volume or revenue that you'd wanna have on premise versus off premise that you thought was like the right balance for generating that brand up. - Yeah, it would vary a lot for cholera, cost of brown, some of the Duckworn high tier wines. We like to have about 70, 65, 70% on premise, the balance being off premise. Sometimes so reality wouldn't dictate that and then also keep in mind in most states, actually maybe in all of them. It is illegal to tell an off premise account that they can't have a wine when the on premise is getting it. So even if we said to a wholesaler, hey, this is gonna be all on premise, right? The wholesaler also has the same goals that we do and so they have that same temptation. So we would set these targets recognizing, yes, that would be great if you can go that way. But reality is that we can't tell the wholesaler where to sell, it's their product, they own it. And secondly, if the retailer is asking for it, you can, maybe this happens, maybe it doesn't, but you are getting into a legal gray area which we did not wanna go into on that as well. That was one of the curses of being a larger winery. You have more of a target for that. And so at Duckforn, we were always extremely tight on making sure that we were in compliance with all the laws in every state, which was very difficult to do because sometimes you don't even know what the law is and sometimes you even call it the state and they don't know what the law is either. But we would do our best to make sure that we were in full compliance on that. So yeah, to get back to your question, we would set a target recognizing that target, it's a target, but it's going to be very difficult for us to strictly enforce that target for a number of reasons. - And so for these large, like off-premise chains, like a lot of the supermarkets or Costco or whatever, how much do you rely on the distributor to get your products into those accounts versus what could your team influence? - Very little on the distributor. And I would advise that any supplier that has the bandwidth to be able to do that on their own, I would advocate for getting that relationship on your own with Kroger, all about ABS, Costco, total one and more, whomever it is. I think there are really strong advantages to controlling your own destiny. And the distributor in those cases, they execute, they make sure the one is on the shelf, displayed properly, priced properly, bottles are clean, inventory is there, et cetera, et cetera. But I think making that sale should be the responsibility of the winery and not on the distributor. It doesn't involve just one distributor first off, it's gonna be multiple state. The distributor, again, they have their own interests, it may not be fully aligned with you. You as the supplier have more control over what the pricing is going to be and all these markets that are managed by different distributors, it just, you have one goal and that's to sell your own product. The distributor that's calling on them has many goals. And so I would advise just taking that on your own as best you can. Some states, it's illegal to go in without the distributor, by the way, so be aware of that as well. - And what do you think are the keys to breaking into one of those accounts and growing within it? - If you have a winery of brand that is delivering sufficient revenue to that account, the buyer will most likely take the time to be able to meet with you. If you are brand new winery starting out, maybe you've been independent fine wine and on-premising, you're trying to break in there. There are agents, brokers, maybe like brokers, maybe you don't, that can help you to facilitate that. I would also work with the wholesale, or in that case, backtracking, when they said, use them to get that initial discussion going and then perhaps you peel it off on your own at a later time. But it's not easy with, particularly with the way that the market is right now, I can only imagine some of these large retailers, how many calls and how many requests for appointments that they're getting. It's gonna be unwieldy. So recognize that it is, it's gonna take some patience and some perseverance to make that happen. And it's going to have to be really compelling. One thing that with those big retailers, they could care less, it's kind of sad, but I think it is the way it is. They're not concerned about what type of oak barrels or what your oak treatment is, what you're yielding the vineyard was. They're concerned about, is this something that my customers want and are going to show me that they want it by pulling it off the shelf at the price that I need them to. If you can answer it to yes to those, that's really the most important thing. And I had many conversations with ires about this. Yeah, I love this wine, XYZ wine, it's fantastic. No one is doing anything like this. Unfortunately, it doesn't sell. And therefore, I'm not able to divide it.
vote my valuable real estate to that product. I have that conversation many times. Sometimes even with our own watch. - Right, right. Part of, I think, selling within the construct of like a supermarket are the displays that are around the various parts of the supermarket that can often push a lot of volume. How do you think about pitching your wines to be on display versus whatever they have currently or other people's wines? - Fitson with the same on a broader level for what we were just talking about that. You have, and by the way, the retailers are always fighting for this display with another department manager, the person that's in charge of snacks, he wants his lays potato chips out there, the beverage manager wants their products out there. So there's even internal fighting off of that. So the point there is that that display piece, that display square footage is gold to the beverage manager. If they are not delivering the store manager, the regional manager, whoever will take away some other floor space and dedicate it to dog food or whatever's gonna go out there. So if you are going to present something and say this is a good idea for display, you better be right and having some data behind it, which is difficult to do if it's never been on display before. Interestingly, constellation did some data on this, which I saw that showed that most product, I was really surprised by this, is picked up at the shelf. It's not picked up on display, which I found fascinating. And so I remember talking with retailer, "Well, why do you care about the display then?" And they said, "The display is a really, really powerful billboard for the shopper as they're walking around with their cart and they're putting various items in there. They see that line and that makes them think of wine. Maybe they grab it off the display, but more than likely it's gonna push them down the wine aisle or give them a reminder about, "Oh yeah, I could use a few bottles of wine." So someone just keep in mind about the way that the system actually works there. - It's interesting that plays perfectly into the next question, which is the placement on the shelf can also be important in driving volume or in whether it's the shelf or the fridge for some of the cold lines. How do you think about if you have scale or you don't have scale being in that right place, like I height, close to the fridge door, whatever it is? - Yeah, and a cold box was a particularly good one like similar to displays and cold boxes limited. So A, just getting in there would be challenging because a lot of people want to be in there and then getting that right location as you were talking about. And so we would always ask, sometimes we would get it, sometimes we would not. But then you can also work with your wholesalers who have their own merchandising teams and you would give them schematics about, this is where we would like to be. So at least you have communicated that out to the people that are typically stocking those shelves and telling them where you would like it to be. Now, maybe they can get it, maybe they can't. But if you've never told them, the likelihood of them getting that is close to zero. They're gonna put someone else who has told them that to put it at this eye level next to this other competitor product or whatever it is, they're gonna do that. And so keeping that in mind and it gets down to keeping that message simpler with the wholesaler because they're gonna have to get it down to the off premise team. He's gonna have to get it down to their feet on the street people and there are a lot of them. And so keeping a simple message, we want to have our XYZ rosé stuck in on this shelf next to this competitor. At least you gave them those simple instructions so that they know that. Again, they may not be space there in that particular store and they can't get it. But at least you've told them that. Again, that is a slow build and whatever message you deliver, I think you're gonna have to stick with that message for a couple of years, so that or a long period of time so that it is getting down to all the distributor salespeople, merchandisers, just know that. So whatever message you're going to get across, stick with it and recognize that you're not gonna see immediate results 60, 90, even 120 days. It's gonna take a long time to start to see the increase and pull through at the shelf as a result of that. So have some patience with it and do not expect overnight results. And so I'm curious on how is this different for large national on-premise accounts, restaurants, hotel chains? How do you think about which accounts to lean into for your business? So we would look at just first off, who's doing the volume? And we could get some reports on that on that, whatever XYZ on-premise chain does this much volume and they're doing this much volume of lines above $15. So looking at, it's called the ACV of that particular account or chain and target those. It's similar to the off-premise that if they're gonna use their valuable real estate, IE their wine list or their wine room for your product, it better be something that sells and converts into cash for them, which is extremely tight and actually in both sides of the business. And then you would though, whereas a chain retail can take 5, 10, 20 labels from a particular supplier, you'd be very fortunate to get two, three or four into that on-premise account. So just setting the expectations a little bit differently, it tends to be a longer lead time for the on-premise. They don't have, they're not, you know what I call, grocery stores nimble, but relative to the on-premise chains, they are relatively nimble. Usually we would have that there's going to be a one year even with hotels, it can be a two year program. So once that window opens, make sure your presentation is done, buttoned up, compelling and you're able to get in during that window for the presentations because once that window closes for a hotel chain, there's very little likelihood that you're going to get in there. Volume is good, but not as good, and it could also be a really expensive proposition to get into those accounts. And they're also want to buy the glass, which is great, but that's going to cause some pricing complications that are really, really difficult, just logistically to overcome. So I mean, outside of really good timing in terms of those windows when they're taking new accounts, what are other keys to success for those kind of large scale on-premise accounts? - Showing up. So maybe you can't get an appointment, but there are various events that happen around the country. Some of them that, so I would look and just see, I know, ask Jeff G.P.T. What are the accounts where the on-premise buyers tend to go? Is it pebble beach, food and wine? Is it aspen, food and wine? Do you have whatever it may be? And then you're getting a booth there, and you're going to be there, and you're going to meet as many people as you can, and try and set up a couple meals beforehand, and hopefully get some people to join you for dinner, or round it all for whatever it may be. The reason that suppliers are going there is you have the an enjoy aspen, and they enjoy pebble beach, but the way it's important to just be there, front and center in front of those people. And so, oh boy, I see XYZ supplier. Every time I go out, they're there. They're a good partner to someone. I can see that they're always talking to someone else. So that's a combination of doing your homework, and also hiring the right person for it. Someone that really thrives on that type of activity. So the top of the interview, we talked about decoy briefly, and was a major driver of Duckhorren's Volumic Success. Was this initially driven by honor off-prem or both? Off-prem drove that, and it was, we were sold. There was group of about 100 families that owned the winery until 2007, when we were bought by private equity, GI partners, they were called. And it was great until the Great Recession started, more or less when that sale closed. And so all of a sudden, GI pointed out to us, "Hey, this plan that you sold the company to us on seems to be a little challenged right now, no one saw this thing coming, and you all remember on-premise was just dead in the water, overall business was tough, in expense, or excuse me, luxury wines weren't selling, luxury was almost a black mark, you maybe had a luxury product." Anyway, all kinds of bad things going on. And so GI said, "Hey, so was a plan that does work." And so we already had this classic second label at the time called decoy. So we said, "Well, we recognize that there's a little bit more activity happening at these lower price points, and there's whole channels that are going through a lot of wine that we're not even touching." So decoy was really spawned in its current iteration out of the great recession. And so we recognized that, "Hey, if we did this, Safeway would probably be interested in it." And they were, and it was Safeway in California that was really responsible for the launching of that brand into the current, into its current iteration. They had a lot of success with it. The consumers liked it. So therefore Safeway liked it, could really well in California, that traveled into other Safeway regions around the country, which really started the momentum rolling. And from there, the other big chains did the same. - So it was originally positioned as, it was an off premise. - Yeah. - Off premise, we called it at the time. We don't use it anymore. It was the everyday wine for the well-informed, we said. So you can make an argument about whether a $20 bottle is everyday for all people, but relative to $60 bottles of roll-on, Thank you.
and it was something that we could, now we had something of scale that could be a regular part of a set with the grocery store chain. Before that, we didn't have enough Duck Horn and it wasn't in the turn at those price points to justify it, but that opened the door to a lot of things and a lot of opportunities for us. - Originally decoy is positioned as a second label to Duck Horn. But as you made this move, did you keep that tie in terms of that as a second label order to become its own thing? And so, because it seems like it scaled beyond what you'd classically think of as a second label very quickly when you. - Far beyond. Yeah, yeah. And then we started sourcing wine specifically for decoy. The Appalachian went to Sonoma and then to California whereas Duck Horn, Marlowe and Cabernet, stayed in Napa. I think that to that earlier point about the brand equity, I think the Duck Horn brand equity was what gave decoy a springboard to launch. But after a little while, decoy just became its own entity and no longer needed the Duck Horn behind it. And today, I think that's the case. I think most decoy drinkers, and there was some research to show this, were to even. A, they weren't Duck Horn drinkers and B, a lot of them were to even aware that there was a correlation between decoy and Duck Horn. Which was positive. We didn't want one brand to be. We need to get a store of reliant upon the Appalachian. - Yeah, so making it less of a ladder in terms of to escalate into like a lot of wines doing its really its own thing. - Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that was what we found also that Duck theme was important to us. I think there are a lot of suppliers and we were among them that think that something is really important to us where the customer really could care less. And so maybe a couple of customers recognized though if there's a Duck on the label, it's a Duck Horn product and it's gonna be good. That was what we would tell ourselves. In reality, I think that was few and far between and each brand kind of stood on its own merits. So it's another thing as a supplier. Make sure that you're not talking amongst yourselves into the rest of the industry and thinking about it from a consumer perspective and not from a wine industry perspective. It's a big difference. - That's a very good push. So pricing and discounting are such pivotal issues for wineries especially in an era of rising costs. How do you think about price changes and when to increase price? - We would struggle with that a lot and it was do all the data, we get all the data that we could in pet or data where what's the consumer behavior, what's this going to change the shelf price? What happens when you go from 29 to $31 in terms of overall volume? Do all that analysis and then at the end though, you never really know exactly what's going to happen. And so we would do that and then try and get our guesstimate of what the volume was going to be at this new price or different price and then try and measure that out. But it was never an exact science and I don't know if anyone has ever got it down to an exact science. So it's the really the nuances of the consumer and differences and brand equity are so different from product to product that unless it's a pure commodity which wine is not, it's really really difficult to determine that. So largely what we would do is just use it in a long term plan or in a long range plan. We're going to have okay in five years. This is where we'll be and are we going to get there with 20 cents a year for the next five years or is it going to be a $1 jump in year three and then nothing after that? We would have this end target mapped out but then we would look at as we're budgeting for the next year look at what's happening in the market and do a little bit more of a gut check about that to determine price increases. In COVID as you guys know, it was no problem. I would put an extra two bucks a three bucks a bottle. Yeah, do it. That strategy lasted for a little while until it didn't. Now it's more just managing that. At the same time though, you have a little bit less price pressure because for better or for worse, great cost of gone down which is a huge contributor to your cost of goods. So on balance, I think most suppliers are seeing cost of goods coming down a little bit which gives you a little bit relief on margin and less urgency to raise prices. That's probably a general rule of sure there are exceptions to that. But yeah, so get as much data as you can and then finally you're jumping in the pool with that data. And lastly, I would whatever decision you make recognize that it's gonna take some time. There may be 60, 90, 120 days worth of inventory on your distributors for you change the price. That price doesn't affect the retailer for probably 120 days unless you're adjusting the price right away and what they already purchased from you. And then that's gonna take some time for that to adjust out to the consumer. And so you could be looking at six, eight, 12 months before you really know. So again, whatever strategy you have, give it some time. So make sure you make the decision carefully realizing that it's not something that you can just turn on a dime if you're not happy with it. - Oh, interesting. And so the flip of price increasing is discounting. How important is discounting and driving volume or placements? - Yeah, at the time when 20 years ago, we didn't even know how to account for it, never did it. As the company grew in the market chains, we recognized that that is a key part, particularly with grocery and we were talking about displays earlier. Being able to have some sort of discount, whether that shows up in the lower shelf price sort of shows up for extra margin for the retailer, those tools are really, really important. It's one tool, it's a big one. It's not your only tool. So I'm recognized that pricing should be done after all other less expensive and/or damaging or long-term options have been exhausted. - Got it. And you talked to at the beginning about how important brand value is, how do you think about not harming brand value with discounting? - It was always a discussion. The more you do it, the more the customer gets used to that lower price point and the more that they just think that that is the price for that product. And so that can be really, really damaging in the long term at the expense of that. They said earlier that short term should have rushed. It's coming. We would always look at that and then Duck Horned Shardinay was an example. Retailers would push that price down. We didn't want to have the Duck Horned Shardinay and the 20s, if you get down to $29, it's easier for someone to say, "Well, I need $28 now or what have you," or you get someone with us start to price war and the price goes down. That was always damaging. At the same time, there are very few things he can do to slow down sales more than raise the price. So you have to balance those. And I would just, I guess the biggest thing I would say on that is be aware of it and recognize that there are short and long-term impacts of any decision that you're going to make. - So speaking of brand value, I love that you have such a large sales background because I find a lot of people who call themselves marketing people are really, really sales people in disguise and you just own it. - Oh, yeah. (laughing) - Yeah, that's true. - That's not called marketing, it's actually sales. So how do you see the impact of marketing on sales? Do you see a difference in building demand and selling? - Yeah, I do. Particularly over the last several years, as we grew and recognized we had very little traditional marketing investment, the marketing to your point was largely based on sales support and recognizing that marketing can be far broader and should be. And so at the winery, we'd been increasing just the overall spend, I listed a one podcast on LVMH, so they spend 30%, 30% of the revenue on marketing. That's absolutely awesome. From my understanding of CPG, it's more about 10% of revenue is spent on and at the time of Duck Horn, it was minimal one and a half, 2%. And that included salaries, so it was very little. So recognizing the opportunity there that whether it's event sponsorship, whether it's a broader social media strategy, whether it is media placements, all those things coupled together. And now again, talk about ROI, which you guys have asked me about a couple times. What is that billboard on IADM on the Bray, Big Bridge, worth, I don't know if that's expensive. And so really, really difficult to quantify that. And so one thing that was in the works, and I don't know whether this actually happened, would be, let's do some marketing with, particularly a little bit more advertising, one particular market, and then see what happens with the scan data or just the overall depletions in that particular market. Give it a year, see what lift happens in that market, if any, and then you could say, okay, this worked really well in Florida. Let's try that in a couple more markets. But making sure that whatever you're doing, you're there, I think you're all the way in or you're all the way out. So let's do one social media campaign in this region. Well, that's probably not gonna do much. So making sure we're doing a social media campaign that we don't, we can't afford to do it everywhere. So we're gonna do it one concentrated area and do it really well and do it right. And then see what comes out of that. So again, take your time. We all know the wine business is not quick. We can't make more Napa Valley Cabernet tomorrow. It's gonna take three years. The sewing cycle is slightly faster than that in the marketing cycle, but nonetheless, it's not quick. So just,
just recognizing, make the decision, stick by it, devote the resources, and once those resources have been your mark for it, use them because you don't want to change your strategy midstream. Have just the kind of the courage and the tenacity to say, "I allocated $100,000 for this program. We're going to do this program, and then we'll evaluate once it's done, and then see whether we want to do it again or not." That's really difficult to do, and hopefully you get an ROI off of it. Hopefully you get a measurable ROI off it. It's probably a better term. And if you don't, then you have to make that call about, what do you think? It's tough. So, given all your trials and quantitative approach to how marketing support sales, where there's certain types of marketing levers that you saw work better than others at a high level. At the time that I was there, it was mostly these kind of sales support, for example, creating a partnership with another product for grocery, with a grill, with flowers, with a barbecue, whatever the other product was. Those types of marketing partnerships with other products were pretty effective. Sometimes it would be a sweepstakes or something like that. Where we go, again, you had all kinds of appliances used about that. But those were effective, and effective in a couple of ways. One, I think they drove activity, but the retailers loved them. So the retailer said, "Oh, you're doing something with whatever. Frances mustered. I love those types of things. Yes, I'm going to put up a display for that." So it was kind of a two-pronged benefit that you could get off of that. In some ways, if we sold more activity, because consumers were more aware of that, because they're buying French Sposter, they're going to buy some decoy at the same time. Great. But the really the big prize was that the retailer, the buyer loved it and said, "Let's stick this wine out there as a result of that." So the industry is definitely going through some major changes at the moment, which we touched on briefly. What advice do you have for wineries to best navigate that? Put up your production to align with an honest and believable sales plan that you know it's going to be wrong, but it's the best that you've put together. Holding inventory is extremely expensive in the wine business. So making sure that you are producing to what the salespeople can tell it can sell and not based on what awesome vineyard that you got or the big yield that you had this year or something like that. I think that one's really important. And then also recognizing that your growth is probably going to be below what you are hoping for it to be and having some patience. And then if you're cutting off X, yeah, that's fine, but recognizing that there are long term impacts of cutting off X and very few people are going to get their growth back up to what they wanted to be by cutting expenses. You're going to grow top line or you're not really going to grow the company. Most of your expenses are probably salaries anyway, so you can't really cut that very easily. And if you start letting sales and marketing people go, well, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because you're probably going to sell and market less. And so keeping that in mind that there is no easy fix to it. The easy ones I think are don't produce too much damn line that your sales team can sell. But be really to wrap up the episode on a personal note. We're curious, what is the most cherished wine in your cellar and when do you plan on drinking it? Well, I have two boys and they're very different, but I love them equally. And so actually, you know what? There are two of them based on, I'm going to go right into that. I have, my boys were born in 2000 and 2004. So a couple of years after they were born, they're about three years old when the hell mountain red blend came out. They were barely old enough to hold a sharpie, you know, in their fist. So I brought home those bottles and had them sign them all with that sharpie and put a little smiley face on them. So I look forward to drinking those when they get married or, you know, have a kid or something like that because those wines are pretty immortal and they'll hold up just fine no matter when that event comes. So that's those are probably the ones that are tribute to my children. That's a great answer. Peter and I are the same by wines for your kids, a birth year wines trans. We're right there with you. Pete, so much information, so much detail that we're going to break this up in the two parts. There is so much information. Thank you for your time and all your insights from all of your experience. It was really, really great and we appreciate you being on the show. Happy to talk to you guys. I love the business. Yeah, it's in the law right now, but it's a really great business and I love talking about it and I hope that you listen to it as well. Thank you so much. Take care guys. Thank you listeners. If you love the show, support it by buying a show notes book. They not only compile two years of episodes, but also organizes them into themes for better learning. They can be an inspiration to listen to or relist into an episode or provide a quick reference of the key learnings from a show. Go to xchatto.com and click on the store page for easy links to buy. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us. If you loved this episode of xchatto, we'd love for you to subscribe. Click the bell to get notifications of what you want to see.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
ENO-LITICS’ data analytics platform helps DTC and wholesale wine clients grow revenue three times faster than the industry average, with success stories like Lang Winery’s targeted single-vineyard wine sales program.
Duckhorn’s former chief sales officer, Pete Presbilinski, emphasizes balancing on-premise (e.g., restaurants) and off-premise (e.g., retailers) sales, noting off-premise offers higher short-term ROI but on-premise builds brand equity.
Off-premise accounts (e.g., Costco, Kroger) are best managed directly by wineries, not distributors, for pricing and goal alignment, though some states require distributor involvement.
Breaking into large accounts requires patience, compelling data, and simple, consistent messaging to distributors; displays act as billboards, not primary sales drivers.
Decoy, originally Duckhorn’s second label, was repositioned during the Great Recession as an off-premise wine ($20 price point), launching with Safeway in California and expanding nationally.
Summary:
This podcast transcription discusses wine distribution strategies, featuring insights from Pete Presbilinski, former chief sales officer of Duckhorn Portfolio. Key topics include the balance between on-premise (restaurants, hotels) and off-premise (retailers) sales. Presbilinski explains that off-premise offers higher immediate ROI, but on-premise builds long-term brand equity; for high-tier wines, a 65-70% on-premise target is ideal, though legal constraints prevent strict enforcement.
He advises wineries to manage large off-premise accounts directly rather than relying on distributors, who have competing priorities. Breaking into major retailers requires patience, compelling data, and consistent messaging to distributor teams, as shelf placement and displays are valuable but slow to yield results. On-premise accounts have longer lead times (up to two years for hotels) and require presence at industry events.
The interview also highlights Decoy’s success: originally Duckhorn’s second label, it was repositioned as an off-premise “everyday wine” during the Great Recession, launching with Safeway in California and driving national growth. ENO-LITICS is promoted as a data platform helping clients achieve three times faster revenue growth through analytics. The conversation underscores the need for strategic channel management, patience, and direct supplier engagement to navigate the complex wine distribution landscape.
FAQs
ENO-LITICS is a data analytics platform for DTC and wholesale depletion data. Their clients have grown revenue three times faster than the industry average.
They created a program offering single-vineyard wines to customers who had previously purchased or viewed them, with a nice incentive. The sales generated were spectacular.
On-premise takes more time and often requires a presentation, while off-premise offers quicker returns. On-premise builds brand equity, but off-premise has better short-term ROI.
It's best for the winery to control the relationship directly, rather than relying on distributors, as the winery has a single goal. Distributors then handle execution like shelf placement and inventory.
They care about whether customers want the product and will buy it at the required price, not details like oak treatment or vineyard yields.
Displays act as powerful billboards that remind shoppers to buy wine, often driving them to the wine aisle. They are valuable real estate for the beverage manager.
Chat with AI
Loading...
Pro features
Go deeper with this episode
Unlock creator-grade tools that turn any transcript into show notes and subtitle files.