“Local wineries will benefit.” – various Luke Schmidt interviews
Really?
- Grocers have shown little support for Kentucky wines in the last 15 years in their own package stores.
- Where is Kroger’s support for Ohio wines? (Ohio is home state to Kroger.) For Indiana wines?
- Where are grocers’ support for wines from their home states?
- Currently there are 46 Kentucky wineries. Which one or two will be sold in groceries, and which ones will be forgotten if they get their way?
- We believe they are using Kentucky Wineries as a “Trojan Horse.” We suspect they will not be interested in Kentucky wines once they get what they want.
They weren’t interested before…
In May, 2007, when the grocery coalition began soliciting the support of Kentucky wineries with promises of large purchases for their stores, we conducted a survey of current sales of Kentucky wines in grocery-owned package stores. This survey of 12 grocery-owned package stores included ones owned by Kroger, Meijer, Costco, and Wal-Mart.
What we found was not surprising, but quite disappointing for the Kentucky wineries.
In 12 grocers’ package stores, we found only 22 SKUs of Kentucky wines (each size has a different SKU) combined. (That is less than 2 SKU’s per store!)
In sharp contrast, in 6 locally-owned package stores we found 564 SKUs of Kentucky wines.
This glaring lack of concern for Kentucky wineries was brought to the attention of the grocery coalition. Winery owners asked, “Why should we believe that you will support us if this legislation passes, when you don’t even support us now.”
During the 2008 legislative session, when the grocery coalition launched their media blitz and they had had 9 months to increase their stock of Kentucky wines to show support, we conducted a follow-up survey. What we found was only a minimal increase.
In 12 grocers’ package stores, the total Kentucky wine SKU’s in March, 2008 was only 115.
Yet in the same locally-owned package stores, their stock of Kentucky wines had increased to 641 during that time.
Clearly, this push by grocers is not about helping Kentucky grape growers or wineries. They have a great opportunity to promote these products now, but have not.
There is a large market for Kentucky wines and it is in the over 600 Kentucky package retailers. Many do carry Kentucky wines, and many more would be happy to carry them if asked.
