You’ve spent countless hours selecting the perfect notes and flavors to make your wines delicious and unique. With all this time spent on your product, don’t overlook the space where new customers and seasoned wine lovers get to try out your wine. By thoughtfully designing the tasting room at your winery, you can elevate the experience for all and pair the atmosphere and environment to your thoughtfully-curated products.
Be unique
The last thing you want to do is design a tasting room that looks just like every other winery and doesn’t allow you to stand out. While the standard in the industry has been a darker or Tuscan-based design, recent trends have shown a departure from this lane as wineries are beginning to play with different design concepts. You can choose to stick to the status quo or create a design that is totally unique, but your customers will be able to sense if you are being authentic to your brand or if the tasting room was an afterthought.
Social media
Don’t underestimate the power that social media can have for your business. By designing an “Instagrammable” tasting room, you can be sure that customers will be snapping pictures of the aesthetically pleasing space you’ve created and tagging your business online. This can create a buzz and excitement around your company and its products, and drive even more traffic to your winery.
Invite interaction
Allowing your customers to ask questions, try out new wines, and explore food pairing options is a great way to keep them interested and expose them to a variety of your products. By having staff on hand strictly for educational purposes and designing a space that invites interaction, your customers will have a deeper understanding and respect of the products, and will be inclined to come back for future events or parties.
Lighting
Increasing the natural lighting in your space will modernize your tasting room and make it easier to take quality pictures and showcase your products. When permissible, you may consider a location where you can have both an indoor and outdoor space, which makes your tasting room even more interesting and dynamic.
Creating a relationship with your wine-loving customers is an important part of doing business, so give them a place where they can relax, hang out with friends, and explore new products. By carefully curating the style and aesthetic of your tasting room, your customers will be able to see the physical embodiment of your brand and will always want to come back for more.
Bailey Schramm is a writer from Happy Writers, Co. in partnership with silverware wholesaler, Silver Superstore.