A Winery Partnership Boosts Sales At Rohrbach’s Farm Market
January 21, 2016 
Denise and Dan Bosworth and their children, Rohrbach’s Farm Market
Three years ago, Denise Bosworth returned to work on her family’s farm for the first time in 17 years. At that time, she and her husband, Dan, opened a roadside barbecue businesses in the parking lot of her family’s farm market.
In 2015, the same year that Rohrbach’s Farm Market celebrated 60 years as a family-owned-and-operated farm and business, the couple took over managing the farm market, while Bosworth’s brother and father continue farming the land. In their new role, the Bosworths decided to shake things up and to see if she could drive more traffic to her business by diversifying the product mix.
“This year we added a local winery to our farm market,” she says. “We do not run the winery, they rent the space as well as pay us commission on sales. This has been a success because it improved the use of our floor space (greater profit on that floor space), it brought new customers through our doors, and it was a source of providing diversification within our farm market without adding more work for us. We have received so many compliments on this addition, and it has been a successful year for the winery, too. For next year we will continue to do more cross promotion between products we sell in our farm market, along with wine pairings.”
We asked Bosworth a few question about how this partnership works:
Q: Can you give us an idea of the scale of the wine display in your farm market? I’m curious about the floor space taken up with the display compared to the size of your market.
A: We have approximately 5,900 square feet of retail space; 2,776 sq feet of that is in what we call the barn loft, that includes our gift shop and an area for workshop, small meetings/conferences, etc. The workshop space is approx. 432 square feet and the winery is approximately 432 sq feet. So the winery is about 7% of our overall space. The remaining retail space (non-barn-loft) is produce, deli, bakery, and gourmet.
Q: How do you divide the responsibilities between you and the winery on issues like re-stocking, merchandising, deliveries, tracking sales, and so on?
A: The winery has their own space, in fact, it is set up in such a way that we can rope it off when they are not open. They are not open all the same hours that our farm market is. They are only open on Fridays and Saturdays (and for special event days). Within their space they are fully responsibly for all their own inventory, stocking, sales tracking, etc. As far as advertising, I take care of the advertising but I always ask the owners if they are ok with everything we do. All wine and wine accessories in their area sales go through them.
Q: If you’re willing to share, will you tell us how the money earned through the consignment compares with the sales you would make if you had your own products in that area?
A: I don’t have any specific numbers to share with you, primarily because we don’t have numbers to compare with previous years. For us, we have so much space to fill in the entire farm market that we don’t feel like it is taking anything away from our own products. In the past, that was gift-shop space, but scaling back the gift shop was a key decision we made 2015 because of the changing gift industry. Eliminating that section as gift space eliminated the need for more inventory, product handling, merchandising, etc., and we still had plenty of remaining floor space for our gift shop. Unfortunately, we don’t have the concrete numbers to confirm our assumption, but we believed that space was probably costing us money to maintain in the past, where now it is a guaranteed income, as well as it attracts new clientele. Because the winery is located directly in our gift shop, people have to walk through our farm market and gift shop to access it, so it brings foot traffic through the entire store.
Q: What type of cross promotions do the two businesses do?
A: Throughout our farm market, we have little table talker displays (little plastic stand up displays with signage), along with empty wine bottles to catch people’s eyes. We keep them on our outside picnic tables at the BBQ stand too. We have outside roadside flags (banners), too. We started using them with the BBQ stand and noticed they made a big difference. So since then we have added an “Open” sign for our farm market and “Wine Tasting.”
We primarily do our advertising through our Facebook and email distribution list. We do a lot of cross promotion on Facebook, and we highlight a pairing in our email (not every email). For special events we do have newspaper ads and when we do we include the winery in the ad.
I also use our sign board out front to promote “Wine Tasting Fri & Sat.” We are five minutes from Knoebels Amusement Park, a popular and family-owned park. Our area is popular for campers and tourists, and we depend on this tourism as a major part of our business.
Q: Do you offer wine tastings or suggesting pairings with your produce offerings?
A: Yes, we did that throughout the year. That is an area we have a goal to be more intentional and prepared this year. We are planning to make a weekly schedule of a item we have in our store, they will then decide how to pair it in the winery and sample it out along with their wine. Obviously we will choose a product we know we have in stock and we know is popular. This past year we did primarily dips and desserts. In addition, when they had pairings at their main location, they often ordered items from us so that they could cross promote for us.
Q: If a farm marketer in another part of the country wanted to create a similar partnership, what advice would you offer?
A: Make sure you are partnering with a business who has the same approach that you do to values, laws, and even involvement in the community. Doing everything with integrity, quality and being above-board is very important to us. Being generous and responsible in our community is also very important to us. We felt the owners of the winery shared those same values. In addition, they were very informed on the laws and regulations related to liquor sales, an industry we did not have a familiarity with. They were able to make sure we were all following those laws, and they were, too, in the context of our farm market. We do have a written, formal contract, and I do think that is always important no matter how comfortable you feel with the other business. I would suggest making sure the winery has what they need to feel welcome and be a success in the context of your store.
We are definitely finding the multi-business partnership and experience for our farm market is so beneficial.