Last Updated on June 24, 2021 by
Drew Thomas Hendricks 5:40
What did what did your neighbor teach you? What was the big takeaway that you kind of reflect back upon?
Paul Salcedo 5:45
You know, he just just kind of my neighbor was just a winner. He’s one of the I think there’s his talent like he, at one point, he was head winemaker for Franciscan, but he was so passionate about what he does and and some of the stuff that he wouldn’t give in I mean, there’s, there’s some things as a normal business person where you have to kind of network and kind of suck it up, sometimes you could say, and he wasn’t willing to give some of the for some opportunities I think he could have been with would have been, you know, I think you could read a great novel. I think I know he was a great winemaker. One of my favorite wines is an 83 FAY Cab from the FAY vineyard that he had produced himself. But what I learned from him was literally just the appreciation of food and wine. I used to go over there. And it was, you know, literally just homemade meals, wines. And I mean, just incredible homemade meals, like, you know, one of my favorite dishes or beef stroganoff. And then one other time he made me he’s he wasn’t the first people you have to go innovation wise, but he was doing woodfire woodfired pizzas on his barbecue on his hibachi. And so you kind of if we recall one time when he was remodeling a house and use some of the wood from the house to burn and we actually had the pizza and it tasted like some type of, you know, tarnish or something. And we’re like, oh my gosh, this doesn’t taste good. But, you know, that might be
Drew Thomas Hendricks 7:08
a lesson right there.
Paul Salcedo 7:11
your house, don’t reuse wood for cooking, or for barbecuing? You know, he made one of the first barbecue chicken pieces I’ve ever had, you know, CPK is gonna make that that famous right now. But one of the things that I learned from him from a wide perspective, you know, as I was growing up, he would literally go you know, take a look at the color, swirl it smell it. I know when his when his nose and his palate was at their prime. He could literally tell you, you know, if he’s had it before, you know what vineyard what vintage, what know what region, you know, he hit his nose, and his palate was that good. And his wife Vivian was exactly the same way. And, you know, my, I’m a Filipino, you know, my background. My parents are Filipino. And it was for them the first generation and snuffers I’m first generation they moved from the Philippines. And so when it comes to mathematics, or homework and stuff like that, you know, my next-door neighbor has helped me through a lot of my homework and education growing up. And so I was blessed to be able to go over there. But then, you know, I also got educated in food and wine. So it’s just one of those things. And you know, to this day, I visit them you know, COVID has been a little tough because they’re, they’re elderly as well, right now. Believe Ken is like 60 in the mid-60s at this point, but they have a daughter, her name is Amelia that I believe she’s 20 I’m bad with ages right now. But talk about someone that is a foodie and knows her and palate. She’s gotten all that from both of her parents. And so I believe I got some of that too. But I’m, you know, I’m getting getting past that Prime where my nose isn’t as good as it was back in the day. So, but hey, you know, I learned a lot from Ken so
Drew Thomas Hendricks 8:47
so it sounds like a lot of the stuff you learned might be culminating right now in BottleVin. Yes. Technology. Tell us a little bit about this new venture you’ve
Paul Salcedo 8:55
got going on? Yeah, so BottleVin started. So I had actually took a little bit of a stab in 2008 and nine with a so part of my background is is customization or they call it print on demand. I ran operations for for the software development in manufacturing for a company called Zazzle. And And what they did was essentially they did you know, print on demand shirts, hats, and you name it, they did if you go to Zazzle you’ll see you’ll see they do a bunch of stuff. And I did that for close to eight years. And so after that piece I did site I got we bootstrapped a company called Blending Table and Blending Table was almost a Shopify for wineries where you could you custom labels and we had three we had two main wineries that we worked with at the time one was large at a winery up in Santa Cruz and then we did another one with the Wine Foundry which is custom press facility in Napa where we would do custom labels for them and it was using a technology where you could design the label online with a store. we also did we did partner had a few partners the order for their their special runs with Silverado Vineyards where we did like a Christmas label for them and stuff like that. So it was custom labels. And, and, and you know it, it’s one of the things. So one thing I’ve learned with technology is timing. And the timing wasn’t quite there yet for that, that technology. And so, BottleVin as what I did with different so going into BottleVin is I did a little bit of research. And in 2018, Apple had opened up the market for third-party developers to now use the NFC chip reader inside of their iPhones. And for people that don’t know what that is. Essentially, if you use Apple Pay or Google pay, and you tap your phone on the register, typically grocery stores, I’m seeing them on gas pumps now all over the place. A great one is NFC chips for Tesla. That’s how you open their cards. But NFC is built into all iPhones and Android. So iPhone six plus and up. And then Google’s had it in their phones since 2008. So they This is kind of the second iteration kind of with QR codes happening right now as well. But this is a second iteration of NFC. I believe NFC didn’t make it the first time around because Apple wasn’t supportive of Apple wanted to do their own thing. So back to my investigation, I did some r&d, I talked to wineries had a friend that used to manage Sterling Vineyards in the tasting room, went back to a friend of mine that actually ran the Wine Foundry, I have another, the president of Loretta Bargetto of our Bargetto Winery, and I had created a proof of concept mobile app based on the idea of what I was going to do with BottleVin. And all the all the people I talked to when industry was fascinated about telling the story when I tap the bottle of wine. And now here comes you know, this app launches where you can now say, Here’s everything about the winery show pictures, show videos, and all those everything about that one, right, because you can only fit so much on a back label. And so the journey started when one of our investors Tuoc Luong said, You know, I was used to he’s a mentor of mine on how to raise invest, because I knew that I really wanted to take this company, you know, big. And so being in the Silicon Valley, you hear those stories all the time. And so I was just getting guidance from from Tuoc on how do I do this stuff, right? How like what is what is the, you know, I had to build a deck, I had to build financials, I had to do all these pieces. And when I got the positive feedback from the winery, it seemed like I want in. And so that’s what launched BottleVin. And what BottleVin started off with was we were very fortunate we off the bat within the first year, we had three wineries that want to be our pilot wineries. And so the first one that you know, we ran with, and we did a press release back in 2009 on this but the first run we did was with Reynolds Family Winery and Steve Reynolds, Steve Reynolds says, you know, it’s become such a really close friend. But I also feel like a family in that winery. Like I could go to the winery and just feel comfortable there. And that’s what they bring another winery. It’s a family-owned winery. But Steve it he has visions he has you know, he’s he’s he’s a guy that’s an early adopter and understands. And when we came to Steve, I met Steve through another friend, his name is Neville Boston. If you go look at the first digital license plate in California, he is the founder and inventor of that. I believe they’re in Washington now and it’s in Texas. Neville is a high school friend of mine, incredible individual on, if you think about it, he made a digital license plate for California. So Neville introduced me to Steve Reynolds. And when I talk to Steve about what he’s like, Hey, I definitely want to know what you know about that. So when we got funding, I thought, you know, talking to Steve Steve’s like, I want it on my next line. So we literally end up 2018 2019 bottling up 2019. We did our first run of NFC labels with the Reynolds family winery line for that year. And so to date, we have over 200,000 bottles with NFC chips on them we have so we’ve expanded quite a bit. And I can go more into this later. But we now support not only NFC, we also support QR codes, we we support UPC codes. And we also support label recognition. Meaning you can it’s if you’re familiar with a vino and they do label recognition by taking a picture, we support that now in our class. And so the whole the whole thing behind BottleVin is we’re a mobile-first technology meaning we concentrated focus on on engaging with your customer through a mobile platform and through you know, any type of scan. So it’s not just a label scan. Some stuff we’ve done is like shelf talkers. We’ve done promotional codes where we send inserts into the wine clubs, and there’ll be promotions on there that they can scan a QR code and then it’ll unlock And inside the bottle of an app. So there’s a bunch of just digital ways to engage your brand with the BottleVin platform. We’ve made it very easy on that site to to also manage that we have a web portal where all the any winery partner goes in and they can literally manage, they can they can put a wine into the system, and it probably takes them maybe five or 10 minutes, and then it’s alive. So all our content, and everything about this stuff you see in the in the mobile apps are real time updatable. So part of the you know, evergreen movement is part of you know, if I get a new video, I get a new accolade or I get a new recipes like, one thing we added along the journey is we added support for distilleries and spirits. And so one of the really cool ones, one of the sellers we partnered with is Humboldt Distillery, and pop they have some incredible recipes with with with their with all their spirits. And it’s just you know, when you see that inside the app that you when you scan a bottle of you do a label scan or through the UPC with the Humboldt spirits. And all of a sudden you have all these recipes that are accessible that they’ve produced on their, you know, their website or through the the BottleVin platform, then it’s an engaging piece, you know, the so backing up a little bit. So Steve Steve was our first producer to do NFC labels. Bricoleur Vineyards was our second they were the first to actually hop on board with us. But they hadn’t produced that that was a first year of producing wine. So their whole lineup went into and Bricoleur or that story in itself. So Drew, you may want to interview Mark is the owner and proprietor of Bricoleur Vineyards. written it down? Yeah. And I’ll send an intro to you. But
he’s Mark and his daughter, Sarah, they they started this incredible venue, the story’s incredible because it started off as an event venue to where it’s a winery now. But they also open their test tasting room during COVID. So think about just that. I mean, you’re ready to open your toast tasting room. And you might have some conversations, but you’re going to you’re going to open your tasting room, and now you’re hit with COVID and all the you know, all the rules and regulations and shelter in place and all that stuff. But Mark was you know, he was our really our first person to actually do it, you know, become our first pilot winery. But we bottled with all their labels with NFC chips. And then the third what
Drew Thomas Hendricks 17:29
type of information do they put in it. So once you look in that you click your NFC chip your phone to the NFC chip and something comes up what information did they choose to put in that first pilot release it so so what’s
Paul Salcedo 17:41
happened with that, so what it is, is you literally when you go into there, and you can put in everything about that wine, so the vineyard, the terroir, the vintage notes, the you know, tasting notes, drinking window, videos and lifestyle images of bottle shots and people you know, part of BottleVin too is that you can actually add notes and photos to those bottles of wine that you actually scan. So when you scan a bottle of wine from Bricoleur or from Reynolds Family Winery or from Balboa, what happens is it launches that wine it shows the vintage it shows the name of the wine and gives you you know, a summary of what that wine is typically the tasting notes and then it gives you any of the cool geeky stuff that you may want. The very first iteration of our mobile app was at Steve Reynolds. His app is Steadfast Wine Club it’s incredible bottle of wine it’s got a big metal, you know label on it. And we went to one of his release parties for that and it was literally the app was made for the Steadfast wine. You know, we did we did a video on how Steadfast became Steadfast we did a bunch of imagery. We again had all the informations on you know, the the grapes, the vintage the blends and it was funny because I remember some some of his wine club members like Hey, no, this is what I heard. I heard it was this right and I had gotten all the datasheet info from Steve you know, you know a couple of weeks before that to put it into the to the app. And you know, it’s funny during this you know, I had no idea I thought it was this bland and this type of thing. So it was you know, it was a really cool thing and my co-founder Jason Driver, he is the other so give you a little bit BottleVin is not just me BottleVin is also Jason Driver. He is a restaurant tour up in Boise, Idaho, but talk about we both met in Napa Valley. And so a lot of you know what BottleVin is. So the status is that combination of Jason and I working together on on what we feel and and talking to people in the industry. But again, we are you know, our launch was with making smart bottles up to this point. We’re actually using just scanning technology to essentially give that mobile experience if you look at if you look at what’s happening in normal retail right now. Right, Amazon is a great point, right? You, everyone in retail looks at the mobile experience. Because when you get an email when you get when you get some type of ad or or you’re on Facebook or whatever, typically you’re on your phone, right. So so you know, we focus on that we also focus on being able to allow wineries and distilleries did do that in an affordable fashion because building a mobile app is not cheap. And so
Drew Thomas Hendricks 20:25
and skin scanning is actually finally came into the mainstream, we’ve been working with QR codes for probably a decade. And it was it was a slow adoption in the US versus some of the other countries. But once COVID hit in all the restaurant menus turned into scan the QR code on the table. I think everyone gave it a boost. Now now it’s just very intuitive to use. And you guys are now you that’s one of the main ways that I see you guys using on the back of a bottle
Paul Salcedo 20:53
100%. So are this past year with all our pilot wineries? Have? They’ve all converted a QR code? And so I love you asking about QR code, because prior to the pandemic, there was this, you can say a bad taste in the mouth with the QR code. And I had to explain that many wineries because I don’t think they understood why QR code wasn’t successful. QR code. The reason why it wasn’t successful was one back when it launched, not everyone had a smartphone. Right? So yes, some people were still on their flip phones, right. So you didn’t have that opportunity to scan a QR code to was not everyone had broadband on their photos? Right. So you, if you had broadband, it was, you know, it was it was really slow back then I think it was 3g or whatever it was right. And so that experience in itself was not as great. And the third big one for me was is this is one of the biggest failures, I think, is that you had to go find a mobile app to go scan a QR code. Yeah, like, I
Drew Thomas Hendricks 21:58
think I use laser laser something or other
Paul Salcedo 22:00
well, and they still have people doing that. But I don’t know if you know this, but it’s an education thing. I’ve learned to kind of educate on the technology that we build the moment and as of now, you can literally on iPhone and on an Android just open the native camera, and it will read a QR code, you don’t need software, you don’t need anything, you literally just use the phone camera, and it will go and launch. Now if you have an app that works with that it like in our scenario, if you scan a BottleVin QR code, it’ll autumn and you have the app on your phone, it’ll automatically open up the app and whatever that experience is going to be. If you if you don’t have a whole app, it will take you to wherever usually a website of some sort. And you’re hoping that’s mobile responsive. You know, I had this discussion with a an individual that’s looking to sell help us sell BottleVin just yesterday, and and one of the conversations for him was kind of like, what’s the difference between your QR code and me making a QR QR code. And I said, the difference is that our QR codes are smart, and they’re dynamic. I’m not saying we’re the only ones that are doing this. From a platform perspective, there’s a lot of QR code generators out on the internet and services. But what these QR code services do, and what we do is be able to track data. So you can create a QR code that says www.drew.com. Right? But all it’s doing is taking me to the website. But if you’re doing it in a technology way where you want to learn about your QR codes and the engagement with the people you’re dealing with, and there’s there’s a bunch of levels of privacy, and that’s all opt-in for the user when they use you see these prompts, Hey, can you you know, can we get your location? Can we do all this stuff? Right? Again, the privacy’s there, especially with Apple, they’ve done a lot of recent, you know, locking down the notifications and the locations where, as a developer, you have to make sure you’re complying with those development bases. But you know, back to what I was saying, on the QR code, you want a huge industry-wide, I don’t care who you’re doing it with, you want to use some type of QR code generated platform that gives you data behind that. And the reason you want to do that are a couple of reasons why, if I just do the drew.com, static, I can never ever, like change that on the bottle. And I do it in a dynamic form where there’s an ID, so we do what we do IDs and a bunch. So when you see these URLs with all these question marks, this ID and all that stuff, the normal term for them are called UTM. And I forgot what they’re called UTM links, I forgot what UTM universe. Again, I forgot what UTM stands for. But it what it does, it lets you know what the campaigns are and let you ID what that scan was. And so in our world in BottleVin, then, you know, if you use our platform, and you allow certain things we there’s one thing, I’m getting kind of geeky technical here, so stop me if you want me to start. It’s a lot. So think of like a house address, right? There’s 1234, whatever rows rows lane, there’s 568 whatever those All the numbers for the house addresses and streets. And in the internet world there, those things are called IP addresses. So every every phone, every PC, anyone that’s on the internet is connected with some type of an IP address. And so the IP address has basic information, like, you know, if this IP address, you know, it’s served up by Verizon or at&t or whoever, and it’s coming from some type of data center. And so you can when you get these IP addresses, you can find out like, you know, way to measure like a campaign on a QR code with let’s say, a bottle of wine, you you can start looking at how many different IP addresses are actually being scanned on this. And you know that if that QR codes being scanned with the 1990 Reynold Chardonnay, that I know that that model wine has been scanned from this IP address, which, which typically IP addresses associated with a city, so we know that it’s in LA, it’s in Seattle, or it’s in this right, so what I’m, you know, what I’ve kind of gone off pamphlet about is that that’s what a smart QR code does.
Drew Thomas Hendricks 26:09
So the wineries to better track where their wines are being drunk and consumed, and we’re interested is where they should target maybe more, or marketing dollars towards
Paul Salcedo 26:19
exactly when also is anyone even looking at your wine, right? So yeah, people looking at the engagement piece, what I’ve learned with you our code in the pandemic, and just go any, you may not look at this now, but I think anyone listening to the podcast, they will kind of open it up on this, go into a grocery store right now and pick up any piece of any any like cookies, bread, milk, and you will see a QR code on it. It’s pretty, it’s pretty incredible, just in a year, how QR codes have kind of taken over the society and in retail, like you said, in restaurants, people are offering QR codes to read the rest of the menu. Right. So I went into Alexander’s, which is a high-end Steakhouse out here in the southern Valley. And the first thing I went into when I checked in, whereas, you know, would you like serve a paper menu? Or would you like just a QR code to check out your right. And so, you know, besides that, think about, you know, QR codes, I, I’ve been in the Home Depot and Lowe’s, because I’m one of these hobbyists that like fixing up my house. And literally just training with banners with training video QRs.
Drew Thomas Hendricks 27:27
is amazing. How means if you ask I think we talked at the Direct Consumer Wine Symposium, and we were talking about BottleVin a year ago, right before the pandemic and we had a conversation about QR codes. And it’s changed night and day. And I never never, never would have experienced if he asked me a year ago, I wouldn’t have guessed it, but it makes complete sense that it’s now mainstream. It which has done a lot the pandemics done a lot to help educate the consumers. How are your wineries educating the consumers knowing to show them what what’s behind this QR code? What they’re going to see,
Paul Salcedo 27:59
I should have prepped you on on which I should have been able to share some photos with you. And I can send them to you afterwards. If you want to send them we’ll
Drew Thomas Hendricks 28:06
put them in the show notes.
Paul Salcedo 28:08
Yeah, so what’s cool is so Bricoleur up in Windsor, California. There they are, they are totally using BottleVin and like they’re our biggest supporter of using the technology. Part of it’s does Mark come from Tech Mark is an enterprise tech person. And so you know, when we told them what we did, he was just like, this is a no-brainer for us. Right. And so I was just at the winery three weeks ago with my family, because they just opened up, you know, outside tasting again. And you know, me my family have been sheltered the whole time. And we haven’t had a trip and we haven’t done anything so as my family and a another close family that we used to do summer trips with. And we went to Bricoleur or we went to Reynolds and we went to another one called Anarchist, which we’ve been talking to, but they’re on by the wind boundary. And so Bricoleur it’s, it’s pretty incredible. You walk in and the first thing you see is a QR code at the check-in station and what that QR code does for them, and I help them integrate this is that that QR code is COVID consent form. So they take their phone, they scan the QR code, it now redirects them to an online consent form. So I helped them build this because again, we were using the bottles and technology to do this stuff. So that that code gets scanned and redirects to a online page with the online form. One of our you know, you’ve married you mentioned Laurie of Outshinery the other person that I love the debt and love this company is Commerce7. Zach has been one of the best supporters. His dad Andrew as well, you know, industry, just this guy that knows everything about tech and wine. But Zach and I met when they first start, we kind of all came up in the same timeframe, you could say a little bit. We did an early version of a pace product syncing tool, meaning you can put in your Commerce7 credentials, and all the bottles of wine will get synced into the BottleVin platform. Back up to Bricoleur. So what’s nice about that is that online forum is managed through the Commerce7 platform. So it was this kind of, if you are so one of the things I love about Commerce7 is that if you’re a being a tech guy, if you’re not, if you’re not doing kind of API’s and sharing, like ways to build your platform out, then you know you’re not doing it, you know that that’s the old school way of, of software development, software development was I would bring my database, I’d bring all my stuff, I do it all, all my user management, all those pieces I would build in house nowadays are so many services that you can tap into like an account management tool or like, like Commerce7 I can build into other API with all the content, all the information so we can grab all that data and also sync it with our BottleVin platform. So Commerce7 was really kind of for me, when I looked at POS is this an innovator? And they have they’re going, they’re going crazy right now. And mad props to them, because they have for me, when I have a winery, ask me, that’s kind of the one. That’s the one POS platform I recommend. Oh, absolutely.
Drew Thomas Hendricks 31:15
I’m a fan of that. And also the fact that they’re a little more nimble, and they don’t try to do everything. From a design standpoint, you can actually use your own like web framework and put the Commerce7 on it. And they don’t, they’re not trying to be the one one one stop shop marketing platform
Paul Salcedo 31:31
is exactly And so again, I went off path, but you know,
Drew Thomas Hendricks 31:34
so I hope to have Commerce7 on the show I’ve been I’ve been trying to get ahold of Zach,
Paul Salcedo 31:38
well, I can try to ping him for you. He’s usually pretty responsive. Let me let me talk to see if I get a hold of him. But you know, back to Bricoleur is you know, they have that. So when you get into the winery, every tasting table has a QR code on it. So all the QR codes go to their online menu, right, and all their tastings and all their pairings, right? Every one of their bottles have either NFC or QR code on it. And so their wine, yo their wine club members, there are people that are looking at the wine can engage with that. What’s been nice with regular is that Isabella is one of the people over there that I work with that’s doing their marketing and Sarah, they’re both in charge of marketing. They are very incredible with always engaging with me when they have a new wine coming out, or they have a new thing they want. Like they just recently engaged with me on an event they’re going to and then hey, Paul, can you help us generate a QR code for this tasting event that we’re having with this individual? You know what, that’s what BottleVin’s about BottleVin’s about Literally How can we help the wineries and distilleries be able to engage with that customer and let them know about that stuff. And as this technology has been in retail, I’d say for the last three to five years, it was it was really I will be very open and honest, the last two years have been pretty hard for me to get one rates to understand and distilleries why this makes sense for them. And I will tell you why. Because if you look at their normal distribution, it was the groceries, it was through restaurants, it was through normal, you know, on-premise type of stuff, sales. So the pandemic, you know, the wineries and wine clubs, which is one of the partners we’re dealing with, we have a wine club that we’re doing a mobile app for, that’s all run off the bottle and platform, the ones that were already doing this pre-pandemic have grown exponentially in their customer base. This is no secret because I know they talk about it. But you know, Commerce7 I think went from 100 customers to 500. I think those are latest. Right? And, and everything I’ve watched, I’ve been keeping up with the industry. You know, I look at everyone that had, you know, their DTC online sales have gone, what led to the three to 400% increase during the pandemic. And so, prior to that, this what BottleVin had built you you had to find the early adopter, the guy like Steve Reynolds, a guy like a Mark that understood even Tom Blase of Balboa. They just said, this makes so much sense for us. And we’re going to do this our whole line. Right now. I talk to you prior to the show, in the last month, it’s been amazing on the amount of of opportunity that has come my way. And talking to wineries. We have, you know, a few proposals out there right now with some incredible, incredible campaigns. You know, one is based off authenticity on an allocated wine. And the other one is kind of an on-premise wine tour feature that works with BottleVin and so the pandemic was good for having the industry in itself understand understand what you know, tech can do for them. I think one of the SVP report that’s every year at the start of every year that they have on on the in the state of the industry we called Matt Ray and that one of the things I really respect that he said, He’s like, Guys, you got to understand that this is a year, this is now the start of kind of the Golden Age of tech in the wine industry. It’s kind of like I personally believe from a from a technology point in the wine industry right now that it’s going to, there are going to be wineries that don’t adopt technology and I it’s you’re going to kind of see some and I hate to say this, but it’s just what’s happening with technology, kind of what what’s gone through with the retail industry with brick and mortars and and Amazon and and and Target and all that. So the retail industry and brick and mortars that pivoted and started using technology to sell even during that. And we think about restaurants that are doing curbside pickup or doing takeout, you know, innovating. I did a little experiment. I’m doing ready meals where you can warm up a food. It was just I love cooking again, I’m a foodie. So I wanted pasta fresh, and it was my founder, my other co-founder, Jason, we kind of came up with this idea of Hey, how can we make fresh pasta that it seems like it came off the grill, but also be able to preserve it in the fridge? Right? And so we kind of created these ready meal things. But you know, in talking with him, right, you look at you know there’s these things called ghost kitchens now, so when you order food through Doordash, or Uber or whatever it is, it may not be even a restaurant, a physical brick and mortar. It literally could be a commercial kitchen. And it’s just the Doordash guys are going to pick it but they’re called ghost kitchens. If you’re not familiar with that a lot of these ghost kitchens are running multiple restaurants out of their kitchens. So it’s a commercial kitchen if they’re producing an Italian restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a Thai restaurant, and it’s all coming out of the same kitchen and a Doordash Doordash Postmates and Uber Eats guys are all just going to this commercial kitchen picking up the food and delivering it to the consumer. So as a consumer, you don’t really know that and I will say the number one goes kitchen that I am aware of. And I don’t know how much you know about the influence community but there is an influencer in the community is called Mr. Beast I know about him because my son is a 10-year-old and this guy came up he’s a gaming influencer how he started but he’s just made he gives back to the community. I mean, he gives away houses and cars. It’s pretty incredible. His his community is 50 million YouTube users. Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. I mean, think about 50 million people that are subscribed to your YouTube channel, right? And this guy did his ghost kitchen for making burgers. They call it Mr. Beast’s burgers, obviously, my son was like, Dad, I want a Mr. Beast burger. I like Okay, sure. Let’s go see what this is about. And there’s no address, there’s no nothing on there. It gives you kind of a location, but you don’t know where they’re coming from. But you can only order it on Uber. I mean, Uber Eats, right, or Doordash. And I’m like, Okay, well, it’s ordered, I get their meal comes within an hour, all the burgers and fries and all that stuff, I found out how that’s run literally what they’re doing is Mr. Beast works with a company that works with restaurants around the country that says hey, if you want supplemental income, because your kitchens are running 100% during the pandemic, if you make burgers for this, you know, Mr. Beast burgers, then we give you a percentage of that for each one you’re made. So these burgers are typically being made out of another restaurant’s kitchen. And so, you know, that’s another big thing that we could go into. It’s not really I mean, it’s something that BottleVin is always looking at, but I actually see the influencer community and and what’s going on in that world and how tech is starting to in you know, with these ghost kitchens, and there’s so much stuff that the pandemic has come out. I mean, you right now talk about Zoom. Yeah, a year and a half ago, you know, did you even have them? Right? I did, because I was a tech guy. But now everyone in the wine industry I talk about knows how to use Zoom.
Drew Thomas Hendricks 38:50
Yeah, that was that was a huge learning curve for a few people right at the start.
Paul Salcedo 38:54
Yeah. And so again, that’s that’s kind of what’s kind of changed, you know, for the pandemic, there’s just so the, you know, back to what I was getting at was the industry itself, you know, is changing the wine industry and the ones that have already gone into the so you as a winery, I believe in you being a marketer, and no one knows I believe that you they need to start looking at you know, digital marketing, through Facebook, through Instagram through you know, the big one right now is TikTok, you know, isn’t right for the wine industry. I’ve heard pluses and minuses on that. I’ve done a couple of TikToks to make a fool of myself just to I wanted to see what the traction was. And it’s funny because back when I was young, I used to dance and I made a couple old man dancing videos, I wanted to see how those went and I got about 150 views, which isn’t shabby, but then I started making so that ready melting as I started making videos on how I made the pasta, and I’m getting 600 plus views on TikTok with that right? And so my friends laugh at me more and because I’m making these videos, but I’m actually doing data analytics and that’s what it’s about. It’s kind of like When I put something out there in digital media, like, if you’re not learning from that, and you’re not taking advantage of it, there’s no reason to do it. And that’s what I tell every winery with BottleVin is a BottleVin is a tool for you to to engage and promote with your tribe or your consumers that buy your wine or your spirits. But unless you actively use it, it’s not just going to work for you. I’ve had conversations where with the winery owners that are like, yeah, I put an ad up on Facebook, and I didn’t get anything out of it. So it’s not really working for me. Well, I
Drew Thomas Hendricks 40:32
hear that often. You gotta you gotta use the technology correctly. And that the technology today, I think a lot of thing Paul was right, Paul Mulberry was right on the money when he said, technology is becoming vital. And it’s becoming now seen as a way to actually enhance the story. Like what you’re doing with BottleVin, the winery, it’s not, it’s no longer opposed to the story. It’s actually one of those tools. And if you’re not using it, you’re not you’re not fully being able to express your story.
Paul Salcedo 40:59
And that’s it, because the whole thing for me is that, you know, back to the influencers and digital marketing and ads, Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, right? The wineries that invested in that, because I will tell you that, you know, focusing in digital marketing is not cheap. You can have your tasting room guy do it. And maybe he’ll do it every now and then. But that’s not getting you anywhere, right? You want you need a guy that’s doing full-time, not full-time, but at least on it, you want it you want to engage with the people that are looking at what you’re doing. And that’s the way you become successful. The wine club that we’re working with has over 100,000 Instagram followers, and I look at the way they digitally market their dead on with how they do it. You look at you know, this is a comparison I give you know with you know, it’s not to knock anyone or anything here but it’s it’s old school versus new school traditional way of marketing and wineries the way they brand themselves. Yeah, you I’m assuming you’re familiar with Heitz Cellar. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Heitz Cellar is one of the most incredible wineries in the Napa Valley. I’ve have I been fortunate my neighbor gave me a 1970 Martha’s Vineyard cab that, you know, I’ve had, I’ve had a couple of those. And it’s one of my favorite wines. But again, you think about the price on what that would be. It’s like I got lucky because he gave it to me he as a critic, though, but back to what I was getting at is go look at Heitz Cellars. You know, you would think that they’ve got this big, incredible market, right? Well, and they do of selling wine, but go look at their digital go look at what their Instagram followers are and then compare them to a winery like Scribe. Scribe was born in 2007. And, you know, I believe, I can’t remember what the scribes falling was, but I believe it’s 50,000 Plus, and I think Heitz when I looked at Alaska, something like three or 4000
Drew Thomas Hendricks 42:51
Yeah, Heitz. You may have pinpointed the most old-school winery on the trail there. Yeah. I’m always sure I always stop there. I love their wines,
Paul Salcedo 43:00
incredible wines. But that’s what I’m saying is the difference between, you know, what people are doing now and what people were doing back then, you know, wine, the industries started off as a handshake deal. And that’s, you know, and it’s like when I grew up there it was farming country. Right? We the shift is starting to happen. My demographic. I’m a Gen X, we’re the predominant buyer right now of wine. And we’ve got some of the old school and some of the new school. But as it shifts and the next generation the millennials come into play and their primary you know, wine connoisseur and purchaser there, they live on phones, right and so you know, they live on the web, but in specific they live on phones and and right now the wine understand I’m saying is focusing on their web experience. And hopefully if you have a company or consulting within you redeveloping your website, you’re picking a mobile what I call a mobile web responsive website to be able to make your website we’d be able to purchase on that, like I we consulted right at the start of of sip, while my reseller essentially emergent. Their website was literally a non-responsive site. So they’re their biggest thing was you go on with your phone, and it was like a really dinky dinky Oh, yeah. No, it was essentially the wide view on a phone where you couldn’t really order on it because it wasn’t a mobile responsive website. And so back to the millennials, that is, you know, millennials, then then the next gen z that’s coming up after that. And my son, that’s 10, right? It’s just, I have I was joking with him, like, what’s going to happen when I’m old and you’re my age? And are you going to have like, a real like Minority Report, I think on Tom Cruise where he’s just you’re doing in the air, but you know, computers and stuff like that. I said, Are you going to be you know, am I going to be hopping in a car that’s hovering, you know, by the time you know, I’m gonna be scared because I don’t know if I want to get on this. I don’t know what it’s doing right. But you know this for me what you know, we have a back to what Paul said on the on the industry is that’s the Golden Age. And I think you’re gonna see you’re gonna see wineries that are going to go thrive and get, you know, incredible results. And you’re going to have some of that struggle. I, another guy I talked with, he was talking with a winery and the owner is 70 plus years old. And he was like, I don’t have time to learn any of this new stuff. And he said, so I’m gonna hire you to do it for me, because I know what’s needed. Right. And so, I hate to say this, I really hope that like Napa Valley will come back into its realm of being the second biggest destination point for tourism at two next to Disneyland. But what’s also has happened with the pandemic is people that don’t live near the Napa Valley has now started exploring wineries in their areas. Right. So you start looking at the Eldorado region right up in Sacramento. You look at even here in the Silicon Valley, people are looking at Santa Cruz and Cupertino. right you’re looking at you know, people that were up in Oregon now they’re they’re looking more than they’re looking down on the sun and the Central Coast Paso Robles as you know, Santa Barbara, all these regions make some incredible one one of my favorite regions that I don’t think a lot of people know about, which is one of our partners is Balboa Winery up in Walla Walla. Man, Walla Walla reminds me of me growing up in Napa Valley. Whoa, whoa,
Drew Thomas Hendricks 46:35
we took a trip up there two years ago.
Paul Salcedo 46:37
It’s incredible. And you know, every year I go up, I have an opportunity to go up there. It’s you know, when I first went up there in 2000, I think was 2012 was the first time I went up to that region, it was still very farm and you know, a few things. But when I went up, you know, like, 2019, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like the food, you know, the, you know, the restaurants that are up and coming up there. The wines like they’re reds. I mean, some of them for me, were actually blowing away some of the Reds that I got from Napa.
Drew Thomas Hendricks 47:05
Oh, yeah. Remember that the Reininger Wine Club, and I love their wines.
Paul Salcedo 47:08
And that’s the thing. So the pandemic has literally started putting people into those. And so the wineries we’re talking about that are interested in BottleVin, you know, we had a we had, we have a winery that contacted us from the saw, I saw it’s a I saw, and I mentioned it to them that because they’re innovative is a company called Whistler Wines. I’m like, okay, Vancouver, because there’s a big movement up in Canada, right? But no, they were Barossa Valley, Australia. And they’re interested in our QR technology, they want to generate QR codes using our system. So I have a follow-up call with them here in the next week. So they’re interesting enough, they’re moving to Commerce7, right. And so it’s kind of like, like, we’re going through a Commerce7 upgrade, but we want to talk with you after that, right. And so, you know, hit a winery should be looking at that they should be looking at, you can’t have that one individual that’s doing it part-time, and you’re putting one post up once a month, or once every three or four months. You’re preaching to the choir, you’ll mean to so I’m putting post up with BottleVin, and probably once a month, once or twice a month, a lot of that is due to the pandemic, and we’ve been kind of like, you know, kind of mainstreaming, you know, where we’re at, and trying to keep everything, you know, just maintained. But one of the things that we’ve I’ve recently done, I’ve engaged with a friend of mine, that’s actually going to be kind of our growth manager. Right? And she’s already talking about it. She’s like, okay, Paul, let’s people don’t know what NFC is, let’s make a YouTube video on NFC. Let’s educate people on how your platform can help the wineries right because I will admit my thought I’ve been focused so much with helping wineries and people in the industry and kind of showing them how we use our platform that our website and the content we have doesn’t really grab you of what we are as a as a technology well that’s what we find in marketing companies,
Drew Thomas Hendricks 48:53
you and I, our companies are all the same we the cobbler shoes situation where we spend so much time trying to help our clients tell their story and get their message out. really concentrate on our own
Paul Salcedo 49:05
100% correct. And so, you know, I am definitely walking working with a friend of ours that’s you know, doing growth management. So it’ll, you know, it’ll be interesting how you know, she gets everything put together for us. I mean, she’s got the innovation, the chops, she’s understanding everything and she’s brought out stuff that I was like, Yeah, I know that’s what we should be doing but I haven’t had the time because I’m helping another winery.
Drew Thomas Hendricks 49:27
So Paul, as we’re sort of wrapping down here where can people learn more about BottleVin and you
Paul Salcedo 49:32
feel free to send us leads that we’ve got is on our website, there’s there’s email forums and email phone numbers while you leave messages, the uh
Drew Thomas Hendricks 49:41
And that’s BottleVin.com
Paul Salcedo 49:42
BottleVin.com you can also send email to info@bottlevin.com if you want to go directly to it, and we ever formed there you we have a YouTube channel that’s really small, but I’ve been putting some videos up there and hoping to start putting a few more things but it talks to the videos of intros and pieces on that. I will tell you That, you know and. Can I do a little sales plug here a little bit? Absolutely. So we’re getting ready to do a nice plan. So if you an entry-level plan for any winery that you know, or distillery that wants to be part of the bottom end plan, we’re doing a a $50 a month, no, no, no commitment, self-service, meaning you get access to our web portal, and you can we we will onboard the winery products for you. But then you can start managing all the content and all the text and all that stuff behind the winery or a full concierge service for $99 a month. And it’s an intro offer that we’re just starting. Part of what happened to us in the pandemic 2020 was a year that focus on sales and marketing. And with a pandemic, with everyone just trying to figure it out. We kind of shelved all that. And so what we did, what ended during the pandemic was, how can we come up with innovative ways to help our wineries you know, help them engage with their customers, you can see some really cool, you know, we did some cool virtual tastings with Steve Reynolds. We did one with Husic Vineyards as well. We did a bunch of webinars, we did a webinar with Commerce7, Outshinery, Palate Exposure, another podcast. You know, we did that. So we did a bunch of things that we were trying to see how we could help with engaging remotely beauty about every one of those videos that we did it Oh, we did it. We did a tequila series too with Steve and a bunch of people in the tequila industry. But what’s awesome about those videos was I produced all of those remotely, no one had to come on-site, it was a little bit of a different with with the Husic one, the winemaker and Scotty the you know, the sommelier, and it was kind of, you know, working with Husic, they actually went outside and had were socially distant six feet apart. And so there’s so I was I produced it remotely, and it wasn’t on site. But you know, they were at that piece. But all the rest of the videos are all literally like what we’re doing right now. And again, it’s a testament to, you know, the way things have changed and how we interact, and we do meetings, but they were all produced remotely. And so again, you know, it’s it’s BottleVin itself. When I when I got to I was like we our sales and marketing was supposed to be 2020 are focusing back here in 2021. And part of that focus is literally doing the promotion, oh, there’s no matter how they find out about that promotion? they can again, email us they can, you know, they can contact our phone number. We’re also partnering up with a photography company that also does the bottle shots where they’re giving you high discounts on bottles shots, if you’re using the BottleVin platform, so we’re starting to look at cross partnerships on platforms and services. But that one, you know, it’s a no-brainer. And we we are at this point is wanting to let you try it out, you know, it is what it is. And again, it’s a month a month, right? If you’re not seeing it’s going to work, then feel free to leave and you’re not going to get it’s going to be pretty hard to find a platform that does everything we do for 50 bucks a month. And so but you know on that, on that note, we also have a couple more tiers on that. So if you want a fully branded one, we have a what we call a white label where we’ll skin it to your wineries colors. And then we have a another chair on that which we’re working with the proposals I was telling you about. We have two large wineries that are working with an app to make a fully custom app what BottleVin’s platform has done for us, it’s been able to create a database and API like I was talking about that can essentially build any software. And since we’re software developers, we can build any mobile app, any web app, and so and power right towards the spirit and wine industry. Again, it’s one of those things that you know, we were able to provide that, you know, half the cost usually of what you would pay for someone else to do mobile apps.
Drew Thomas Hendricks 53:38
That’s amazing. So it’s been great talking to you, Paul, fascinating product about fascinating tech and super great timing going forward into the pandemic as we emerged in the pandemic, educating helping wineries tell their stories. And if you want to learn more, check out info@bottlevin.com. Thank you so much, Paul, for being on the show.
Paul Salcedo 53:58
Thank you appreciate it.
Outro 54:05
Thanks for listening to the Legends Behind the Craft podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.