Ep. 1513 Jeremy Hart | Masterclass US Wine Market With Juliana Colangelo

Since twenty seventeen, the Italian One podcast has exploded and expects to hit six million listens by the end of July twenty twenty three. We're celebrating this success by recognizing those who have shared the journey with us and giving them the opportunity to contribute to the on the success of the shows. By buying a paper copy of the Italian wine unplugged two point o or making a donation to help the ongoing running costs, members of the international Italian wine community will be given the chance to nominate future guests and even enter a price draw to have lunch with Stevie Kim and Professor Atigioshenza. To find out more, visit us at Italian wine podcast dot com. Welcome to Mastercross US Market with me, Juliana Colangelo. This show has been designed to demystify the US market for Italian wineries through interviews of experts in sales and distribution, social media, communications, and so much more. We will quiz each of our esteemed guests at the end of each episode to solidify the lessons that we've learned to sharpen your pencils, get out your notebooks, and join us each week to learn more about the US market. Hello. Welcome to master class US wine market. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Jeremy Hart to the Italian wine podcast. Jeremy has decades of previous experience in hospitality and wholesale. And in twenty twenty, he's co founded in knowledge marketing agency and created his own wine brand. Explicit content. In two thousand twenty one, he co founded another business called SOMDA AI and holds the role of the chief strategic marketing officer. Jeremy is dedicated to pushing the beverage industry's growth and promotion through data enhancement it. And we're really excited to learn from him today on today's episode, about all that he's doing with Sonda AI and Inology. Welcome to the show, Jeremy. It's so great to have you here. Very nice, to be here. So before we dive into today's discussion about sales data, fascinating topic. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you got into the wine industry? I got into the wine industry in two thousand and five. I was, I was in a bar and restaurant prior to that, but it was the first time I was working. At a place that was exclusively wine. And so it's a little retail restaurant that was in Houston that was just super far ahead of its time, and I was super fortunate to work there. We used to do fifty wines by the class in o five. Sixteen flights that we changed every week. And then we we did just a an insane amount of retail sales monthly in a little five thousand square foot space. And so it's a really cool place. Amazing. So that was two thousand five. Let's fast forward to two thousand twenty and twenty one when you started these new companies. Tell us a little bit about about that. So, we launched in neurology essentially as a marketing agency. And so, the original plan was essentially to to, in a creative way, teach people how to self import, if they're your products. And so that was kind of the background to that. And then gotten a little bit of brokerage. I still do some of that as well. But for the most part, it was just coaching, you know, wineries on essentially how to do it on the round. And so I saw that that was definitely a need and it's much time as I spent on the import side of that for seven and a half years. I definitely noticed that it didn't really matter how often anyone would come to the US. For the most part, to do business, there was still always a gap on education on how things function. Right. And it's probably difficult because each state has their own set of laws and operations and kind of standards of practice. And so it is it is a minefield. And so it was it was a definite need. Yeah. And that's, you know, part of the reason we're doing This series on the Italian White Podcasts all about the US white market is to help demystify and break down, working the US market for our our listeners. So, we we share that common that common belief in in the need for education and and providing more insights and information to people in order to really master and learn how to to make the most of this market. Exactly. Exactly. In this episode, Jeremy, we're gonna talk to you about how wineries and wine companies can better use sales data specifically to inform their sales and marketing decisions in the US market. So our three key takeaways for today's master class, and we're really excited to learn from you are number one. What are the biggest challenges Italian wineries are facing today, specifically in the on premise, and also on the flip side, what are the opportunities. Number two, industry benchmarking, how can brands accurately compare themselves to their competitors using sales data, And number three, when and how do you know as a brand when to push on your distributor for performance? So, I think we're gonna learn so much from you today. So let's dive in. So to start with, talk to us a little bit about the state of the on premise market in the US. For Italian wine, what categories are performing best? What states are we seeing the most growth? Where are we maybe seeing some declines in Italian wine category? I just give us a broad picture overview of where we are at. In two thousand twenty three for Italian wine and US market. Well, the really interesting piece of information within the the data, we cover currently right now across the US about forty five thousand on premise accounts. And so we we go across all those wine lists. We understand what's on all those wine lists. And then anything that we see on those wine lists, we can break down via country regions, subregions, economic rate, right? And so between those things, you get a really good blueprint of what's happening at any given moment. We also track changes, so things that come on, come off. So right now in the US, the last, you know, year to date, basically for net ads right now. The for US wines in the US, it's almost flat. It's point three percent as far as growth. As far as for, European products, France is in the lead, but significantly driven by, by champagne, the bordeaux and a little bit of burgundy. The really fun stuff is with Italy. It's it's it's number two as far as growth. Net ad. It's it's up twelve hundred placements, which is fantastic. And so, as far as net ads, the the leading area for this is actually gonna be, Barolla, which is pretty exciting. It's always like right now, the really interesting thing is that with all the talk of recession, decline, the major growth categories for for all the the major One countries, US, France, Italy are are on their premium side. It's Ridley. You're looking at Barolo. You're looking at Supertuskins. You're looking at Bernelo, and then at the same point in time, Kianni. And so those are always kinda some of the drivers, but as far as their price points, you typically don't see that much growth, within this time frame. So it's it's kind of interesting information. And even Barbara, you know, it's basically number four and it's a very small place. And those kinds of things are interesting. That's what they can really easily kinda identify. Yeah. That's interesting that, you know, that that follows what we've been seeing in the industry headlines about the super premium luxury categories growing, but it's it's so interesting that that is the trend considering all the negative headlines we're seeing about the economy and rising prices. So I guess consumers though, you know, they're they're still spending, as if as if we're not interested, which is is interesting just to to think about the consumer behavior there. I don't think it's it's specific to wine either. You look at fashion and beauty. I mean, the cost of everything is going up and people seem to be keeping up with the the spending somehow. So maybe a lot of credit card debt out there. Yeah. That's what I'm gonna assume as well. Yep. But regardless, it's it's good for for Italy to see, some of those those categories performing well. That's exciting. Even you know, Barbara Resco to hear that that's on the rise as well. So that that's really exciting. What about the highest performing Italian skew on premise? Can you tell us that? Well, one of the other things I wanted to mention really quick, which I was looking into this morning that's really, really quite exciting is that if you break this down and look at it by state, there's one state that is absolutely off the charts as far as growth and it's Colorado. Oh. Colorado is up nineteen percent. For Italy specifically. Correct? Italy specifically. Wow. Interesting. I know Bobby Stuckies out there with with Frasca and his restaurants, and he's big gonna tell you why, but maybe, people are following his leadership and his path. That's that's very interesting. I would not have guessed Colorado. I would I would have thought maybe Florida since that state's grown so much in the last few years, but Colorado, very cool. Yeah. It's really, really kind of unusual. Let's see here. As far as for the question you just asked, oh, and the other interesting thing here, with all of this as far as, you know, it's it's a lot of the same states that you would kind of imagine your California and New Jersey. Illinois is always right there. Massachusetts is like one of those sleeper states. So much Italian business gets done in Massachusetts. It's wild. Interesting. And then DC is always a major player than Pennsylvania as well. But, let's see here. As far as some of the the highest performing SKUs or producers, yeah, one of the this is gonna blow your mind. So one of the top performing It's basically tied. And so for on premise growth, this is so crazy. Lamar is number one for net ads for Perseca, just in general. These are all SKUs for Italy, right, the last year. They're up one fifty two for net ads. Wow. Okay. Guess what's number two? You're never gonna guess. It's gonna be Orneliah. Wow. That's one hundred and fifty one net ads. That's wild. The average price difference between this two. The mark on a wine list, it's at forty eight bucks on average. One of the lines, it's at four fifty one. Wow. That's fascinating. So and they're not too dissimilar too in terms of their their net ads. Right? Like, they they see. Yeah. So that is that is really, really fascinating. I mean, we know Praseckel has had such a boom. So Lamar isn't that's not entirely surprising. I I would fig I was figuring it was gonna be a very commercial brand in in number one, but to here that we're in Aliyah is number two. I mean, that is really, really interesting, and and speaks to what you you said earlier about the growth in the luxury space too. Right? So that speaks directly to that. Can you see in the data where, which states or Nalia has seen the most growth recently? So as far as by state, the ones that have grown the most, California. Okay. DC is number two, and then Massachusetts. Okay. Right from that one in Illinois, New Jersey. Interesting. But the the heavy lifting significantly is in California. Okay. They're plus Plus fifteen in California. Wow. Okay. I'll have to fill them to look out out here in California for or to lie on more lists. That's that's great. Very interesting. Well, this is it's fun to dig into to the data for sure, and I think this is a good example of Jeremy what you're bringing to to wineries in terms of the data that that you can offer. I mean, that's that's really interesting. Thing. So, you know, let's also talk about benchmarking. You know, it's important to look at our competitors, you know, within our category, outside of our category. You know, you mentioned France isn't that number one position ahead of Italy, but there's also Spain, Portugal, not to mention you know, domestic wines here in the US market that are are huge. You know, I'm sitting here near Napa, and it's it's very California centric out here in terms of what people are drinking. So how should Italian wineries be looking at data in order to benchmark their performance on premise to other brands, other regions, competitors, talk to us a little bit about about benchmarking. Italian wine podcast, part of the mama jumbo shrimp family. I think the the big piece in like, with today, the interesting pieces of the premium is is such a a benchmarkable category just by price point. You know, if you just wanna look at reds, you know, over three hundred dollars on a wine list or something like that, you get some really interesting data. Right? And so that's one way to look at it. If you just wanna drill into by appalachian, I think that that is also super duper important. The funny thing in the past is that all of this business has existed and the way to go about doing business has existed is that you're basically going off of feeling or kinda like looking around and, you know, am I seeing other people in wine list? You know, am I seeing a shelf space, but there was never really any true kind of tangible for on premise. And so you didn't know if you were just having a flat year. You didn't know if a bad vintage was offsetting everyone else's much as it was you or a short vintage or whatever else. And so those kind of things are super duper interesting, to drill into. And you can do that within the platform. So, like, any particular place you want me to dig into, on the premium side, it's super duper easy to see. And that's also one of the really interesting pieces here is that having that pricing component that you're able to see on a platform is that you can also see sometimes growth. You know, it you could understand that maybe someone's having significant growth because they're a little bit cheaper or the things, but to be able to look at it accurately and understand that, like, that doesn't always matter. Like, you know, sometimes not at all. So, like, for Borola, for example, I'm looking at Scavino. They're the number one, producer as far as net ads. They're up one hundred and ninety four, total, total, placements the last year. Right? So it's eleven percent growth. Okay. Their average price point's one ninety six. Okay. Below that one's Vira. Their average price point's one twenty five across all their SKUs. They're up one forty one. Okay. A really interesting thing though. Is if you keep digging into some of the stuff, some of these that are are significantly expensive are still having wild growth. Like a ton of katerno is is average price points, basically seven hundred and twenty seven dollars on a wine list. They're up fifty fifty net ads. They're number seven at this far as total growth. And so, you know, I think the barrier to entry to where I wouldn't always get the discount and those kinds of things. I don't really think that's that's that's a problem. That's something that I always considered to kind of be a problem sell and tell you why they did for seven and a half years almost exclusively, Italian one across six states, and then also in the national accounts. And so one of the pushbacks I got often was this one's too inexpensive. Interesting. You know? And so now I think it's finally caught up to where, you know, people want the premium. And if you wanna compete with, you know, some major players from California, if you wanna be on the best white list for awards, those kinds of things, some of those things, if it can't go by the class, there's only something by the class slots, Some of these boxes need to be raised or you're also seeing producers doing kind of a premium packages now on on why is it that you typically wouldn't see? Like, I don't say a reserve Vermentino. But especially made Vermentino that sits on the leaves and extended time of ripening in there. Those kinds of things to make a premium package of a one that you didn't always typically see. And so I I think now is the time we were looking to push all those things. I think they're gonna be able to find homes a lot easier. And there's this weird thing right now to where, like, the cool James Beard kinda driven restaurants, hipster hipster restaurants have this affinity to tell me why. Of. Like, you can find Italian wine more now than I think you could ever could. And are you seeing within those, I mean, can you categorize in your data, those hipster, quote unquote restaurants and see what categories of Italian wine are performing better and We can't then. And so, like, one of the neat things is you can sort by awards. So, like, if I just wanted to go look at, like, all the Michelin Star restaurants or all the Grand's Beard restaurants, whatever or combination are those? Like, if I just wanna put on the filter for Italian and James Beard restaurants, and then, just gonna see. So for James Beard winning restaurants, they're they're number two as far as net ads. France has more. Okay. Right? And so freight basically has five hundred net ads the last year in James Beard award winning restaurants. Okay? But that percentage of change is only two point six percent. Okay. So other growth, even though it's almost five hundred net ads is a two point six percent. For Italian wines in those restaurants. It's it's three hundred and fifty three net adds, but the percentage of growth is seven point three. I see. Anually higher. As far as like, you know, as far as the trends, And so, I mean, that's exciting to me. Yeah. That's very exciting. How would you look at benchmarking or comparing, you know, we see France as the competitor for Italy? So how would you like let's say let's say we're in Hawaii, seen substantial growth in the last year. If Guadalaya wanted to look at target accounts against their French competitors, how would you how would you look at that, like, outside of the Italian category? So there's there's a couple different ways to do it. So, like, if I wanted to pull up one alive, gonna pull up Ornelia just the ornelia ornelia. Right? Mhmm. Pull up that one. So, essentially, is what we'll have this tagged as is gonna be a red red border blend from Tuscany. Right? Okay. And this average price point, this is quite the range, but it is. It's average price point, we have it on nine hundred and fourteen restaurants. Within our forty five thousand, they they buy order line or line. Right? Average price point, our median price point is four fifty, but their range is three fifty to six twenty five. Okay? If I wanna do a what, like, a comp just to get against that, I'm gonna go ahead and do that. The only thing I'm gonna take out from here, instead of having tuscany in here, I'm just gonna leave it open. I'm gonna go to France and Italy. So we're still looking at red bordeaux blends. Okay. Right? Now, but now let's just see where everything kinda sits within all of this stuff. Mhmm. So if I wanna look at this bike producer, I'm gonna look at a bike view real quick instead bike produce. I think it's gonna be a little bit more accurate picture. So the price range is three fifty and six twenty five. Okay. As simply the amount of accounts that buy a red border Oakland from either France or Italy. So, basically, Super Tuscans are bored over the most part because of the price point. Within within our forty five thousand on premise accounts, which is we skewed towards the high end for our account. Right? And so, basically, there's twenty one hundred and fifty seven accounts that I can show you to target. Okay? That's basically the account pull of it. The total amount of replacements is twelve thousand because some of these carry multiple vintages. They can carry multiple, kind of skews that fit within this category so on and so forth. Right? So basically every account carries about six. Right? He also will carry this. And the average price point between all that's four twenty five. The way that this ranks as far as my total placements, the funniest thing, number one is Sausakaya. Okay. And this is between Supertuscans and Bordeaux. Who is Orneliah orneliah? Right. So Sausicaiah has nine hundred and sixty five placements. Okay. Orneliah has eight hundred and seventy eight. Okay. The next one below that one is Clodester now. You're looking at it's a huge jump down. We're looking at five hundred and seventy two. So we're less than three hundred placements between that just to get to board out. I mean, that's a power of super super tuscans, especially premium super tuscans. Right. And what that tells me too is that the power of the Supertuscan brand name of Ornelius Esakiya is stronger than some of the brand names perhaps in Bordeaux. I mean, that's what I'm that's what I'm gathering from what you're saying. It's Yeah. No. I I totally agree. I one hundred percent agree. And so, the really funny thing on here, saw Sakaya even being the leader here. They're actually down. They're actually down four percent. Interesting. That white. Yeah. And and so besides that, it's just basically Bordeaux for for a bit after that, but, it's to me, it's transcended that category. You know what I mean? It's at the same. It's premium. It's the same ideal kind of customer avatar, what are you gonna call it? Like, it's really, really funny, you know, and then now we're here. The next that's gonna after that. Just FYI just for for for knowledge is actually gonna be a basically Carmaconda. From Gaia. Yeah. And so and that's a little bit further down. So at the same point in time, it's in the top twenty. Very interesting. I mean, there's so much data at your fingertips, Jeremy, that you're you're pulling up. Right? And we know that with supplier and important distributor relationships, a lot of it is working in partnership and in tandem to to be successful in the market. So how you've been on both sides of this now. How and when do you think brands should be pushing their distributor for performance? Like, how can they use some of the data insights that you're pulling to go to the distributor, and look at either changing strategy, improving strategy, etcetera? I think I think that benchmarking piece obviously is gonna be the key to all those things. Because in the past, like we've, as mentioned prior is, you know, it was basically based off a feeling. You know what I mean? Like, you could kind of understand what other people were doing. You look around, oh, they hiring more people, those kinds of things. But besides that, there were a lot of tangibles. Some of the the the major kind of wholesalers because they were essentially kind of the leaders for these kind of categories or these kinds of progressions of the business, is essentially that they could say for this, you know, category You know, there's fifteen wines within here. You know what I mean? That exists within the account pool for this state. And then this is the share, but there's no names to the wineries, typically. Part, and then you can't really understand. And the other thing is too, even if you're surveying that for yourself, the big huge disadvantage is that you're only looking at information provided by the person that sells your same line. And so asking for them to go increase your business you're literally asking them to go trade horses. Basically, take business away from someone else to plug you in with what we with what we do, we provide a more accurate clear picture of the entire state of what's going on and it's outside. So, like, one of the neat things with the platform is that you can actually go in here and then chop it up even by wholesalers as best as we could tag a total seller. And so you only need if it time to push and you can see it within the within the information. You can see whether everyone's being flat, whether the market soft, or if it's on the rise, you can see, you know, how your wholesaler is doing with that. And then also you can give them a list of targets for, their competing wholesaler. So when you do nudge with this kind of information, in the past, you would ask for a target list. You would ask for these things. Now you can literally provide the target list And now it's it's more encouraging than being like, hey, you're doing a terrible job. Now the push is like, hey, this is where your competitors are at. You know, don't replace someone else's wanting that you represent as well. You can now take another guy's placement. Right. Right. You're giving them information that allows them to to go out to into the market more strategically. Right. Because it's just based off of feeling, but based off of of real numbers. Like, tangibles. Yeah. Yeah. And so now now there's just it's a different conversation entirely. You know what I mean? You're hoping to pull the rope and at the same point in time, you're showing them where to fish all those things. And so, another piece to the platform that's kinda interesting as far as like nudging distributors or wholesalers is that with the platform, you can see what that ever x category. Like, if I wanna go look up, you know, brolo or it doesn't really matter here. I'll just pop open one real quick. But if I wanna go look at brolo and see the all of my, all of my, competitors, I can literally go in here and look at notifications. And then within that, I can see who's raised their prices. Right? So there's ever pushback from a wholesaler on, like, hey, you know, we can't stomach this. You know, you're gonna lose all these placements. You can literally go in here with tangibles and be like, everyone's doing it. Right. We're not the only ones. And so now it's like it it changes the conversation entirely. It makes all those conversations a lot easier. Yeah. Because you're going in there, not just off a feeling or emotion, but you're, like you said, we're going in with tangibles. Yeah. That that's that's super powerful. So, Jeremy, we're coming to the the close of today's episode. And before we finish, we always do our rapid fire quiz. We will ask you three questions, and we'll ask you to respond in a couple sentences or less in order to really hammer home. Some of the key takeaways of today's episode, and and we learn so much from you. So, and this might be hard to answer in one or two questions each of these, but we'll do your best here. So, question number one, what are the biggest challenges Italian wineries are facing today in the on premise? I would I would have said in the past, education, but that's no longer applicable. I think that, I think as far as some of the biggest hurdles for Italian producers, probably FaceTime. East time in in the past, it used to be that you used to fight for FaceTime with your with your sales reps. I think the best use of time that we're in the US market has spent as much time with buyers as possible. And in this age, especially where, you know, not everyone staying at the same position, you know, and so and that rep might not cover what you need them to cover in the future because now they're trying to restart a relationship. The really cool thing is if you make relationships with buyers and they leave a place, sometimes they leave your placements there and no one touches you. Yeah. That's a great point. It also propagates it from there. And so that one relationship can benefit so much or they fall into a restaurant group position. And now your your relationship just went times five because now you're across a bunch of restaurants. And so that would be the the the the biggest hurdle, would be getting the FaceTime, but as much as it's been with buyers. Question number two, industry benchmarking, how can brands more accurately compare themselves to their competitors? There's there's ways within our platform to where and I would suggest using our platform, obviously. But there's there's ways for the first time you can have tangibles. Yeah. Before, you know, thoughts were in more kind of generalizations. How's Tuscany doing? How's Piedmont doing? Those kinds of things to where it can actually drill down to get finite? That's where there's there's a lot of, there's a lot of riches there. Okay. And finally, Jeremy, question number three, when and how does a supplier know when to push on their distributor for performance? Being flat used to be a pretty clear indication of a a distributor's point of view on on whether they're gonna put your product or not. There's now tangibles that exist to prove whether a flat year was actually a great year. And so that's an important piece to it. The one time I would I would absolutely know it's time to push a wholesaler is if my products are falling behind within their hierarchy of things that need to get done. And I'm not talking about generally, they're always gonna have some brands that are more important. But if my lateral brand within their book is being represented better than mine or my placements are gonna replace with those wines, then that's time to definitely go push a wholesaler. Okay. That's really valuable advice. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today on Master POS US wine market on the Italian wine podcast. We really appreciate you being here. How can our listeners connect with you, and follow what you're doing with Sounditic dot ai? Yeah. Please be sure to to follow me on LinkedIn and then also, my information to contact me will be posted with us. Fantastic. Alright. Thank you so much, Jeremy. It's so great to have you here today. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. Anytime. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned each week for new episodes of Master Class US wine market with me, Juliana Colangelo. I remember if you enjoyed today's show, hit the like and follow buttons wherever you get your podcasts.