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Hello, and welcome to samples. Episode five, Monday, 02/02/2026, Groundhog Day. He did it. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and ran back into his, I don't know, cave or whatever he has. So you know what that means.
Speaker 1:Six more weeks of winter. But knowing that by the February, there's gonna be one extra hour of sunlight, that's keeping me positive. So Groundhog Day, the movie starring Bill Murray and Andy McDowell, fun fact, it was actually filmed in Woodstock, Illinois. And I was looking at cream clients in Woodstock, Illinois. And did you know that in 2025, we did over $10,000 worth of business with three accounts?
Speaker 1:The Mixteca Grill, Armenetti's, of course, and Greenwood General Store. Shout out to Scott Miner, planting his flag, making Woodstock an outpost for more cream business. Hey, Scott. Let's try and turn that 10 into 20 by the end of next year. There might be more opportunity in Woodstock, Illinois.
Speaker 1:Also, shout outs and flowers. Give it up for Danielle. Eight years with Cream. Thank you for the loyalty, hard work, and dedication. In January, Danielle had the highest percentage of Dollar Gold completion.
Speaker 1:So it can be done. Growth is your friend. Kyle had a ginormous and well needed order of assorted Michigan wines in January. They were sold to the up north wine tasting room in Geneva. Great job.
Speaker 1:Everyone on that Michigan team, you know who you are. And also Mike Z, he had a fatty McFady order to everyone's favorite bistro, Lou Bouchon. It was a $5,000 drop last week. They also had a nice Rosenthal producer Instagram feature. Snaps all around for that.
Speaker 1:And then gotta give it up to Ryan and Chad for four years at Cream. I remember like it was just yesterday, and here you are out in the wild thriving, selling a bunch of wine and spirits and sake. It's really rewarding. Congrats to everyone for completing January. I'm excited about what's gonna happen in February, especially as the days get longer.
Speaker 1:With the theme of Groundhog Day and the grind and repetition, I'd like to remind everyone that on Friday, Bob sends out the weekly reports, and these are job requirements to read and digest and analyze. All the information for us to be successful. You can see our inventory levels year over year, week comparison. You can see sales by supplier descending where the bread is buttered so to speak. You can see which accounts were the top accounts descending.
Speaker 1:And then also my favorite tab, the hundred and eighty day plus inventory Freaked me out this morning when I saw that we had 677 SKUs totaling over 4,000 cases. I was like, my god. Everyone is gonna need to spend more time on that tab and work those items into your presentations. We do have AIFL starting this week and a reminder that those are for three hundred day old items. The age is on that report so you can see where you need to spend your time.
Speaker 1:For me, it's the older the better. The other interesting and necessary report that Bob sends out weekly is the incentive check-in and the incentive updates. Currently, we have three. There's Wonderwork, Woody's, and the flora's sparkling. So my questions for you are where are the samples?
Speaker 1:Where are the sales? Where's my mind? A reminder to get those going because those are items that once placed, they're pretty sticky in my opinion, and they will pay dividends through the end of this year and into next year. So if you do the work now, it's gonna help you achieve dollar goals exponentially over the course of the next eighteen to twenty four months. We're at the midpoint of q one.
Speaker 1:It's the start of another cold challenging month. We've had our supplier meetings. We've set our supplier goals, which you also get on Fridays. You can see the plan and the priorities. Some of those suppliers are happy every year no matter what we do, and some are never happy no matter what we do and that's fine.
Speaker 1:That's why they call it work. So we gotta get after it, but the market visit requests that's another kind of it happens all the time especially for portfolio managers. I just wanna remind everyone that we do our very best to say no in a polite and thoughtful way, suggest an alternative spend of their travel budget whether it be in better pricing or programming for specific accounts or even incentives for reps. So we really try and limit the market visits when you see market visits on the calendar and there are several happening over q one and into q two. It's done with a lot of thought and consideration and is important.
Speaker 1:The other thing that's on repeat is the amount of articles coming out about how people are drinking less wine, young people aren't drinking anymore, they're not socializing. I I disagree with a lot of this. While it's true, people are drinking less or drinking alternatively. I do think that this is ultimately gonna be good for our business because there's going to be a lot of brands, distributors, competitors that perhaps maybe should not have been in the business in the first place that are gonna go away and the real operators and players that are doing well. It's just an opportunity for all of us to upgrade our portfolio and still continue to sell great product made by great people.
Speaker 1:I think that the emphasis needs to be taken away of treating wine as a vehicle to be an elitist or to fetishize it and to have it just be treated more like food in an everyday people care what's in their food. Why wouldn't they wanna care what's in their wine? And it's an opportunity to gather, to get out into the world and socialize and meet people and wine is that social lubricant that we need that we all need right now. To quote everyone's favorite Qigong instructor, the tallest Alsatian vineyard on Philippe Blanc. He says that we exist between I'm referring to this modern temperance movement that's going on.
Speaker 1:Philippe says that we exist between abstinence and addiction. That's so true. I think everyone has to find their level and what's right for them. We're basically mental health care professionals in terms of people not because they wanna get wasted but because we have an opportunity to provide the tools for socialization. And I think it's the gathering around the table, treating wine like food, having conversation, unplugging, putting down the phone and really making connections with people.
Speaker 1:I think we're gonna see wine be a vehicle for that as people become more social, step out into the light so to speak. The other thing that I noticed, I just wanted to make a commentary on is that while I do the show Drops of God on Apple TV and it is not true to the manga comic book strip, it does in a certain way just make wine very elitist and and trophied in this quest, this like vision quest to find something. It's a guilty pleasure. I really enjoy it, but I think that also is maybe doing a disservice to people making it more intimidating. So anything we can do to simplify it and tell the story of this beverage that has existed since Noah landed on this whatever plot of land planted a vineyard got drunk.
Speaker 1:This is the legend by the way. I I don't know if it's true. Planted a vineyard, got drunk on his vineyard, and had a barbecue. Since that has happened, wine has existed and so I like its chances going forward. As far as samples, we can pull this week that kinda tie in this idea of rinse and repeat and socialization.
Speaker 1:Obviously, Wonderwerk for all those reasons, it's on incentive geared towards a younger buyer. The wines are affordable, transparent, digestible, accessible, and they'll stick. You'll see the fruit of that over the course of the year. And then on maybe a medium to higher end version of that given the price point, but still on theme is the Big Table Farm. What a great name, Big Table Farm.
Speaker 1:Who doesn't wanna gather on a big table and have everyone share a bottle and share a glass and tell some stories and and have a sense of community whether it's with family or friends. I like that idea. It's a Jennie brand and Jennie is letting you know even from Spain that y'all need to pull some samples of her focus items, one being Albemarle. Shout out to Jennie for everything you do for the company and the genre. We will pull those samples and get those out into the market.
Speaker 1:Lastly, I'd like everyone to pull a bottle that they can bring to one of these gatherings with family and friends. So if you're headed to a lazy Susan event with your colleagues or maybe a birthday party with family friends, I'd like you to bring a bottle, pull the sample, Mark and I will pay for it, And it's something that you can plop down on the table and it could be a flex. It can be curiosity. It can be something like, I just want something uncomplicated, or it could be something like, hey, I'm not really sure about this. The last time I tasted it, it was weird.
Speaker 1:Let me bring it and see what other people think. Just that curio that you can bring and start the conversation about wine and food with your friend group, family, and friends, and we can keep things going in a positive way. So that's it for this week's samples. It's been a rough morning with knowing about the prospects of winter, but this has been cathartic for me and I like our chances. I'm really excited for the light conversation about beverage.
Speaker 1:I don't know what else to say, so I'm gonna cut out. Thanks for listening. In the meantime, happy selling. Keep picking up those checks. I haven't been able to afford licensing of music, so I'm gonna sing and take you out.