WHY YOU CAN’T FIND GOOD WINE IN THE GROCERY STORE
(OR WHAT ITS LIKE TRYING TO SELL REAL WINE IN THE WHOLESALE WINE WORLD)
I am a wino. Not the kind that’s sleeping on a hot air grate with a bottle of jacked up grape alcohol somewhat ambiguously but affectionately called wine, but some of my friends think that could be in my future. And if I don’t sell yet another whole container to yet another wine wholesaler this month, that scenario might not be far off. However, I really love good wine, think most wine drinkers probably love good wine too, and try to make a living buying and selling good wine. In addition to the wino label, I am also known as an “importer,” because I buy wines from other countries to sell here in the good ol’ US of A ( so much for drinking close to the farm, but so be it). In winebiz speak, however, I am known as the “supplier.”
Now, being called the “supplier” suggests you deal in a controlled substance, which in fact I do. Being called an importer sounds more glamorous at cocktail parties and wienie roasts, but in reality I’m just a wino. My gig, in a nutshell, is to buy the wine that I think is wonderful from other countries, and then sell it at a profit state-by-state to wholesalers across America. I can’t, for reasons duly noted below, legally sell to anyone but a licensed wholesaler, even though that would make sense and be a lot more efficient. It’s up to those state wholesalers or distributors who are my customers to re-sell in their own markets to their customers: restaurants, hotels, wine shops and grocery stores. Finally, the restaurants and grocery stores and liquor shops and wine markets are the ones who have to sell to you.
As the wino, I actually try to have really interesting great things that people will want to drink instead of creating brands on the cheap that taste dull but have good marketing appeal. Alas, my US customers –the wholesalers --are not all that interested in wine that tastes good: they would rather have goods that taste somewhat like wine, but more importantly have brand appeal and can be put into the grocery stores. Unfortunately, the product is relatively unimportant in this buying and selling transaction. Instead, it’s all about the margin, and will it sell in Peoria.
An aside and irony of my business: most wine wholesalers don’t even like wine. Wine is just a commodity to be crunched into grocery chain sets and crammed into case stacks. Wine is something wholesalers buy by the case, sell by the case, and try to make a small profit on the difference. And the only way to do that is have low overhead, employ cheap order-taking drones, keep customer service standards to a minimum and only sell items known to have big brand appeal, and corresponding big brand budgets. Keeping inventory down and keeping a no-muss, no-fuss attitude is crucial for wholesalers if they want o maintain healthy profitability. That is the prevailing state of the wholesale wine Union in America today.
This is the exact opposite of what I am trying to do, however. I try to get great wines that people will love because they taste really good. With wines like mine --which are not big brands-- you have to actually pull corks and ask customers to taste them if you want to sell them because nobody has ever heard of them. You have to talk about them. You have to choose them, because you like them. From the wholesaler’s perspective, this is a very inefficient way to sell product. Who wants to move one bottle or even one box at a time when you could just buy by the truckload, ship out to the big box stores by another truckload and sit back and count the profits? What I need to sell my wine, and what my customer the wholesaler needs in order to to sell wine, are two very different things.
And I am stuck with my customers, in a way that’s almost like being married to the Mob. These wholesalers and I are bound in an agreement and a structure that hasn’t changed for nearly 80 years, even though there is much talk about fixing that. I can’t change the system and just sell directly to restaurants or stores, let alone even contemplate selling directly to you. This isn’t just a weird scheme or custom: it’s the law. Federal Law. A supplier must only sell to a wholesaler who must sell only to a retailer or a restaurant. And the end consumer –that’s you – can only buy from that licensed retailer or restaurant. Much like the cocaine market where a dozen people exchange ownership in the transaction between the farmer in Peru and the Olympic gold medalist partying at the frat house, there are a lot of folks steppin’ on the wine sale before you get to your shot to pay for it and to drink it.
This ridiculous sales scheme is what we in the wine biz expansively call the “three-tier-system.” The problem with this multi-headed monster – at least from my perspective -- is that the monkeys in the middle can’t do any actual wine work. Instead, they do distribution work: they parcel out the wine they buy to their customers in their state only. Most are simply logisticians. But that’s not what I want or need: I want them to sell my wine! Instead, because wholesalers by law are guaranteed the middle-man role in the supplier to customer transaction, all they can do is buy low, sell high, take the profit to the bank, and let the supplier do all the heavy lifting we call “marketing” and “selling.” And that heavy lifting is about creating market pull. The way the big suppliers do that is by spending huge amounts of cash starting with the creation of marketing programs, sales tie-ins, beautiful packaging, sexy images and brand-building strategies, and wine quality is simply not part of that deal. It can’t be: after all that marketing brouhaha, there is no money left over to buy or make quality wine. Coupons, rebates, product tie-ins, downright bribes, clever labels, pretty boxes, cute animals and witty clichés are the values big branded suppliers add to their wine creations.
And my suppliers, I like to think, don’t spend money on any of those things, because their resources are all tied up in the actual creation of great juice. I don’t have big budgets, because I have simply chosen wines to sell that are good, offer value and are those I personally would like to drink. I want my wholesalers to sell my values and my ideas about what makes these wines interesting: where they come from, what they represent, how they taste, why they would be good in your house at the dinner table tonight. But those wishes are a tall order.
To be fair to these wholesalers, you have to understand that their margins aren’t great. These guys are under enormous pressure to cut costs at every turn in order to get their products on the grocery shelves competitive with other wholesalers. That means they need to run lean, mean machines. Service, frills, education, enjoying wine? – these are all luxuries a competitive wholesaler simply can’t afford. What this means for me –and every supplier trying to sell wine based on its intrinsic quality instead of its label or brand appeal -- is that the wholesale system just doesn’t work for us. We don’t fit. Branded wine trumps wholesale wine in the US wine market all the time.
The things I need to get my wine sold --smart, wine-savvy well trained sales pros who can explain and focus on my wineries –don’t and can’t exist in a branded wholesale house. Precious human resources allotted to small, low-profit-generating but GREAT wines simply can’t be squandered on the likes of me. Instead, if I want to get my wines sold, I have to do it myself. But I have to do it within the wholesale system. Again, its agin’ the law for me to sell to ANYONE except the wholesalers. And if I sell it to the wholesaler and it just sits in their inventory because they are too busy working the brands and the groceries, how will I ever sell that wholesaler any more wine? So…first I gotta sell it into the wholesaler, and then I need to go out and help him sell it to his customers.
And how do we sell wines like mine? One customer at a time. Like I said, I don’t have a budget to get into the grocery stores, which require the aforementioned ad money, rebate coupons, racking programs and manager bribes. I don’t have extra margin built into the wine to be able to offer special discounts on quantity. All my value is tied up in the quality of the wine itself. I’m in a broken system but I have few options.
My only real choice in this sorry state of affairs is to I go out and try to sell all my wine on my own, calling on every customer I can. Now, the US is a big country. I personally work with dozens of wholesalers, from Florida to New York to Washington to Arizona and Texas and everywhere in between. They each have hundreds, sometimes thousands of customers. The only way to sell to those customers is to go see them, crack a bottle and ask the buyer to taste the wine. I work hard, but it’s pretty tough for me to reach each and every account out there. But I try. So I drive and I fly and I rent cars and I beg rooms from old college roommates in strange cities, and eat in diners and I sleep in a different bed almost every night. I really do try to see ‘em all. Because if I don’t nobody else will. That hot air grate is always beckoning.
And since I can’t just sell my wine directly, I have to work with my wholesaler to do it, and what a fracas that arrangement is. I have to work with their sales reps. I have to ride with a harried stranger who has a hundred more important things to do that day than schlep me around. I am at her mercy.
To do this, I first have to call my wholesaler in yon distant state, and we arrange these rides in what we call “work-withs.” (My friend Terri calls them “drag-alongs,” because that’s what happens: a local sales rep will drags me along with her as she makes her appointed rounds culling orders from her “route“ in order for me to try to sell my wine to her accounts while she goes about her normal business. ) Now I set up these work-withs, ride-withs or drag-along appointments weeks - sometimes months even - in advance, and request the wholesaler to get these dates scheduled and organized so that they can be productive. But because the wholesalers are just crisis managers trying to move their branded boxes, and because they really aren’t all that motivated to sell my wines, the scheduling usually goes unheeded. Instead, the planned drag-along usually does not get communicated to the sales rep until the day or night before, sometimes seemingly as an afterthought. While it appears to me this is done just to insure that said rep will be hostile and sullen upon my arrival, the real reason is sheer lack of resources on my wholesaler’s part. They are just too busy, have too many wines, have too little time and are trying to do all this work on skinny margins. And my wines – which sell hundreds of cases of year instead of the branded wines which sell thousands – don’t make a whole lot of difference to that wholesaler’s bottom line.
To complicate matters, there is some planned indifference on the wholesaler’s part on getting me into the market. Not only do these wholesalers like to keep their sales reps in the dark, but also they like to keep small suppliers like me out of their hair. Too much information given to a sales rep could actually allow that rep to plan a productive and meaningful day, which in turn would make me happy and want to work even more in the market. They throw me a bone, give me a day here and there, schedule me with the newbie or toss me onto a flunky, but they don’t like waste their top sales reps’ time and energy on the little guy. But he has such cool wines, you might say. Yeah, but it’s not about wine, remember? Plus, if I have a bad experience, maybe I will stay away forever, leaving them time to focus on the big boy brands.
But I don’t. So to counter this dismal state of communication, I call the local sales rep a few days before the actual date, and I usually try to email her as well. Sometimes they respond; a lot of times they don’t. Not infrequently, my call is the first they have heard of my pending visit, and then they are alarmed, as my time in the market wasn’t exactly how they had planned their day. These poor saps are so harried with pushing those twelve crappy branded items that the wholesaler makes its big bucks on that they can’t be distracted with a lost day and my measly wines. For even with all those cute animals and clever branding, not every buyer really wants the generic stuff, making the sales rep’s job a constant uphill battle, pushing, pushing and pushing some more those branded cases up that steep slope, by any means possible. They beg, they plead, they cajole, they call in favors, the pretty female ones bat their eyes and the mean male ones bully. But it takes all their efforts, and there is no extra energy to spare. These big brands are what put money on the table, and there are quotas to hit, and it doesn’t matter a whit if that new hot Tapas bistro or the bullet-proof liquor store on the corner really wants those wines or not. They will find a way to get them in. They have to. That’s their job. And because a lot of buyers don’t know or care anything about wine themselves, they will be sold. You will probably buy the wine yourself the next time you go to the store, just because that’s what’s sitting there on the shelf.
But back to our date: we agree to time and place to meet, usually at one of the accounts in the morning run. It’s not usually the sales rep’s first call of the day, however: he has already spent the first couple hours of the day packing out the grocery stores orders from the day before or chasing checks from delinquent retailers. I arrive at the appointed time, but the sales reps are always late. ALWAYS. We’ve probably never met, but I spot them immediately when I see them: harried, driving beat-up old cars with the chocolate pudding stains on the baby seat, maybe thousands of sell sheets like so much trunk mulch littering the back, belated wine deliveries cooking in the trunk, branded wine bags in tow, a grocery store Vendor ID badge around their neck. We shake hands and they take me, a perfect stranger, into their car and into their world for the day.
There are several types of reps, but they all more or less fit into about five or six types, or some combination thereof. Each presents challenges. There is the golden boy of the Big Box wholesaler, the Good Soldier; sometimes I work with the favorite of cheesy liquor store owners, the Femme Fatale; occasionally I get paired with the bane of all, The Wine Geek. More frequently, however, I get stuck with the Hapless Soul, who is in this biz probably because he can’t get any other job. Or, I can find myself tethered to the Old Dog, who has been doing this since Prohibition was repealed. For a more exotic experience, occasionally, I will connect with the Eccentric/Free Spirit, attracted to the bohemian and dysfunctional nature of our business, and last but rarest, is everyone’s favorite, The True Wine Sales Professional. This wine pro is a rare breed, but a day with her is worth a week of everyone else.
In the big brand houses, it’s the good soldier who is treasured more than any other, and he is the most likely to be my traveling companion for the day. The Soldier is just like his military counterpart. Rigor and protocol are followed, orders are obeyed and the good soldier never, I repeat never, thinks for himself. These types are almost always men, but like the Army, more and more soldiers these days are women. He or she is but a tool in the wholesale machine, to be deployed according to his superior officers, and he follows his orders unflinchingly. Forms are filled out, the house brands with quotas are dutifully schlepped to each account, sales calls are made with Swiss precision, sometimes even when you are trying to work your brand. These are the Stepford wives of the wine biz. Since my brand isn’t part of the house agenda, the Soldier will have very little interest, outside of polite regard, in learning about or selling my wines. In fact, he will have done absolutely nothing in preparation for our day, other than to wear a smarter tie. Accounts will not be called upon because an opportunity for my wines might exist there: they will be called upon because that’s who he normally sees that day. I am merely baggage, dead front-seat weight that must be dealt with because his superior officer told him so. Sir yes sir. A work-with with the Soldier means I will follow the exact route he takes every Tuesday if I am with him on a Tuesday, and we might sell some wine. But my presence in his car is merely a major distraction from his normal demanding duties of making goal and hitting quotas. Moreover, he will probably never discuss, pull a sample or sell another bottle of my wine ever again, unless of course I ride with him another time. He himself doesn’t much care for wine: this is a job, and he will do what he has to earn the affectionate appreciation of his manager, usually doled out the same way you would praise a dog. He serves the wholesaler with canine devotion, dreaming of moving up the chain with a promotion to drill sergeant/sales manager, where he himself can become the barker of orders to sales rep underlings.
A ride-with the Femme Fatale is another kind of torture, albeit a relatively pleasant one. Hired mainly for the size of her breasts and breadth of her high heeled shoe collection, she is a coquettish beauty partial to vixen-like clothing, and she cuts an impressive figure. She is unconcerned with product knowledge, basic sales skills or customer needs. Instead, she will let you know that it’s all about “building relationships,” in which she will assure you she is highly skilled. Apparently, that relationship-building does not include learning her customers’ last names, as she never uses them and can’t tell you them if you ask when it comes time to send a follow-up note. She calls everyone “hon.,” or, if under 30, “baby,” or “mamacita,” flirts so easily and naturally you are hardly aware it is even happening, and sells a lot of wine, sometimes even to women buyers. If she likes you, you are in luck, because even though you’re not part of the core program she might adopt you like a pet and somehow no one even notices she is spending more time with your brand than what the house deems appropriate. Don’t let the shallow interior and glossy veneer fool you: she can be a great asset for your wines. The flip side of this coin is that if she doesn’t like you or if you are bald or middle-aged or grievously unhip you will have a day—and a long term outcome -- just like the one with the Soldier.
The Wine Geek work-with is the worst kind there is, but the geeks usually get trammeled through the wholesale system pretty quickly, finding themselves swiftly canned by their non-wine appreciative management. As a consequence, this type of work-with is relatively rare. But you know you are in for a long ride when you get stuck inside the Geek’s car for the day. The true Geek got into the business because he knows so much about his subject that it seemed as shame for him not to be able to share his wealth with the less fortunate, and what better place to accomplish that than by becoming a wine salesman? He is always his own biggest fan and is not shy about pontificating, professing or directing any and everyone in his vinous path. He knows more about Kimmeridian limestone and the skittish peccadilloes of the Pinot Noir grape than anyone else you have ever met, and will gladly wax poetically on these or myriad other wine subjects for hours. He has had his ears permanently tuned to their lowest setting (sometimes even shut off), and he pays no heed to any questions a buyer may have other that their first one, which can set him off on a breathless stream-of-consciousness roll forever. The Geek knows so much about wine in general that he will never prepare sell sheets pertaining to my wine, and does not believe any customer might want some info on paper or in a format other than that which comes from his own vast storehouse of oenophaleptic lore. The only way you can possibly sell wine when riding with the Wine Geek is if you can get him to shut up and get in a word edgewise.
Oh, and then there is the Hapless Soul. Usually a brother or idiot cousin of someone in management, the Hap has been given his route out of pity and nepotism. He probably can’t find meaningful employment elsewhere anyway. You will recognize him by that hang-dog look and short-sleeved polyester dress white, or alternatively by the beer belly and late model Buick he is driving. Think Uncle Buck meets first cousin Billy Carter and you have the idea. The Hap’s car is littered with greasy used take-out containers, old sell sheets, a mouldering gym bag and maybe a few weeks worth of stale cigarette butts. The thought of being confined in this environment, gloomy as it might be, is nothing compared to the relentless stream of pessimism you must endure while the Hap goes about his business. You will learn how bad the economy is, how pitifully stupid most of his buyers are, the sorry state of management within his own company and probably more about his nagging wife, his son in prison on trumped-on drug charges and that idiot President than you ever cared to know. The Hap doesn’t make appointments, because he is convinced his customers aren’t all that interested in buying anyway, so the day with him is really hit-or-miss. If you do get a chance to get in front of one of his customers who is mildly interested in your product, he still doesn’t step up to the plate. You see, these glass-half-empty types don’t do closing the deal all so well, so you usually have to present the wine and then make sure it gets sold as well, wondering why you didn’t just drive your own car while you were at it.
Even if you have been in the biz yourself for awhile, you are in for an edifying treat if you get the Old Dog for your work-with. Because he’s been peddling alcoholic beverages since the Truman administration, this guy knows and has forgotten more about booze than the rest of the company combined. Back when he started there was no “wine” business - it was all about hooch. And how he longs for the good old days when all he had to do was make a few sales calls to his liquor store buds by noon, put back a few belts of the company booze for lunch, play a round or two of golf in the afternoon, and then hit happy hour. Yeah those were the good times: when liquor men were men and women knew their place, which certainly wasn’t in this crazy biz. Geez, what is all this new-fangled fuss about wine anyway? The Old Dog can’t quite understand why anybody wants more than a good Chardonnay and Merlot or two and where did you say your wine came from? This poor guy is always technologically challenged, doesn’t use email and can’t place his orders electronically. At any rate, after you leave him, The Old Dog will never sell your wine. He will, however, probably have supplied you with an arsenal of off-color jokes and enough raunchy bigoted sentiments that you will never lack for entertainment material down at the pool hall. Just make certain you drop all your clothes off at the dry cleaners before you go home: you will need to get the raunchy cigarette smoke out.
Just when you begin to believer that this kind of work is prosaically non-creative, you find yourself saddled in for a day (or a night) with the Wacky Eccentric. Lured by the supposedly glamorous aura surrounding the wine biz, Eccentrics are drawn like moths to the flame of the dysfunctional world of wine sales. They like the independent nature of the job, are especially fond of bars and hotel night life, and probably landed this gig after a long and colorful career in the restaurant world. Eccentrics have a zen-like disdain for appointments and structure, but understand their customers well. They are especially good at coaxing sales out of the types of buyers who are awake while the rest of the world sleeps. Of course the problem is that these wacky night owls don’t usually show up on time for your appointed start, and when you do finally see the bloodshot whites of their eyes, they are only firing on five cylinders, nursing a whopping hang-over from the previous evening’ s antics. These are the reps who are the most unorganized, and while everyone loves them, their follow-up skills are minimal. Orders are taken on stray scraps of paper and cocktail napkins. After a long day’s night riding with the Eccentric you will rack up lots of maybes, but the Eccentric never takes real notes and has forgotten every commitment by midnight. You will have to call every buyer yourself the next day or next week if you ever expect to close them. But these guys are fun and you yourself will probably be a bit green about the gills after a long day’s journey into night with the Wack.
Not every work-with is so special, however. Once in awhile, maybe one out of every ten, you find yourself in the hands of the True Wine Sales Professional. After stints in the trenches with everyone else, this kind of day is really enough to bring tears of joy and gratitude to your eyes, and you will probably start blubbering sloppy good-byes by the time of your leave-taking, because you finally found someone who likes your wines, I mean, to paraphrase Sally Fields, really likes your wines! It will be hard to resist the urge to say “I love you Man!” but you probably should.
Before you even start, he True Pro actually has either looked up your wines or already knows them, and has scheduled a day of appointments where the buyers might actually be interested in tasting and purchasing them. Trying to fit my wines to a buyers’ needs? What a remarkably smart yet novel concept! Actually going places where we have good prospects? Is this guy a genius or what! The Pro picks you up or meets you on time in a clean car (no dog fuzz or McDonalds wrappers! No trunk full of baking wine! He even has a cooler: the whites are chilled!) First thing, the Pro hands you a printed itinerary of the day’s proposed calls (with buyers first and last names!), has your wine samples opened and ready (he checked them at home for cork taint already), tells you the lay of the land and you hit the road running. After the Soldier, the Geek, the Hap, The Wack and the Blonde Bombshell this kind of service seems a respite worthy of the concierge floor at the Ritz-Carlton, but it gets even better. You find the True Pro can walk, talk wine and chew gum simultaneously, and you usually hit it off well, after you convince yourself you’re not just dreaming... The Pro has made “sell sheets” for your wines, complete with background information, relevant wine reviews and pricing, and uses these in his presentations. He is usually a superstar in the company, and after you have been out with him for only a few calls you know why: he is respected by his accounts because he listens to them, shows them wines that actually will fit their concepts and is truly service-oriented. He gets his branded work done but still finds a spot for your wines. He lets you tell your wine story, but always goes for the close himself. If he doesn’t get the sale on the spot, he makes notes and follows up. He even emails you later to let you the outcome. He texts you if he has a question. He follows up. You have such a great day that you end up having a glass of wine together around 6 pm or so, and by then the True Pro is your new best friend. He is such a dazzling superstar you decide you want hire him yourself to sell for you - which is exactly what happens so these guys don’t last too long before they get snapped up by supplier talent seekers.