Nick Fede Jr., Executive Director, Rhode Island Liquor Operators Collaborative.

Stimulate Business & Increase Customer Outreach

By Nick Fede, Jr., Director, Rhode Island Liquor Operators Collaborative

It may seem like light-years away, but the holiday season is already upon us! For readers of Mark Brown’s daily “Industry News Update,” you are already familiar with the wine industry being in, how should I say it, a weird place right now. There are many contributing factors to this trend, most of which are completely out of our control. However, the things we can control revolve around increasing consumer education and overdelivering on the customer experience. Hosting a well-run Grand Wine Tasting this November delivers on both these points.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we, as an industry, have struggled to regain the full attention of beverage alcohol consumers. May it be rising costs, the advent of canned cocktails or increased legalization of cannabis, wine has simply fallen out of style with younger consumers. By hosting a Grand Wine Tasting, you get to remove the most significant barrier between wine and consumers: a closed cork.

By statute, Grand Wine Tastings—which can be held in March, August and November—allow a retailer to provide, free of charge, samplings of unlimited selections of wines. Now, I’m in no way suggesting a retailer should open hundreds of random bottles in one sitting. That would be most wasteful. However, a carefully and thoughtfully curated tasting of a size you’re comfortable with would be the most effective way for you to connect with your clients. Use the month of October to partner with your wholesaler representatives and come up with a strategy to present your customer base with a tasting that is balanced from both a regional and a cost perspective.

The worst thing one can do is exclude segments of your customer base at these tastings; meet the consumer where they’re comfortable and provide approachable selections that they may not otherwise select. This, in turn, will translate to increased wine sales during the holiday season, helping your bottom line at a time where every sale counts.

Don’t be afraid to ask your sales representatives what is working elsewhere in the market. The easiest way to begin this conversation is with the simple question, “Have you had any success with by-the-glass pours in restaurants local to my store?” View a restaurant’s by-the-glass list as your best and most effective marketing tool for your own liquor store. Oftentimes, you will be sharing the same consumer base as your local restaurants, so leveraging a larger purchase of a restaurant’s by-the-glass selection from your wholesaler is a safe bet when deciding what items to get behind when heading into the largest season for wine purchasing.

As we look forward to the holidays, one cannot help but see January on the horizon and the beginning of yet another legislative session. Facing major funding shortfalls that became the overture of the finale of this year’s legislative session, expect an extremely busy year up at the State House. There’s never been a more important time to be active and plugged in with the Rhode Island Liquor Operators Collaborative (RILOC).

Familiar issues are sure to come up, especially when it comes to the Bottle Bill, which has been consistently reintroduced every year for the past half decade. In the interim, little has been done to make improvements at Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation to increase our recycling rates to early 2010s levels, the last time the Materials Recovery Facility was updated. Technology advances, with a significant emphasis on artificial intelligence, would translate to a wave of progress and improvement for our state’s materials reclamation efforts. Meeting consumers at the curb is still the best, most convenient way to recycle. Rhode Island needs to do a better job investing in our infrastructure to support the amount of materials consumers are attempting to recycle, much of which unfortunately ends up in the landfill.

At the time of writing, Texas has again defeated a hemp-derived THC ban, which has continually been championed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Instead, Gov. Greg Abbott is supporting regulation and taxation, which is exactly what RILOC and our affiliates at American Beverage Licensees are advocating for across the country. Expect the regulatory effort for hemp-derived THC to continue in 2026.

Stay tuned and alert…

Nick Fede Jr. serves as RILOC’s Executive Director, American Beverage Licensees’ Vice President (Off-Premise) and is a third-generation liquor retailer.