Tim Vandergrift is my hero.
I owned Wine Central from 2005 until 2013. Wine Central is a wine making on premises store serving Kelowna and the Okanagan Valley. At the time I purchased the store, it was losing market share. I implemented some creative marketing strategies and sales increased dramatically over a short period of time. In fact, we were out of space. There were carboys and primaries filling every shelf, and spilling over into the aisles. We called Tim.
Tim walked into the store, took a good long look at the production area, and told me how to increase the space available for primaries and carboys, add another row of shelving, and taught us about single carboy conveyance system. With this one visit we increased the production capacity by just over 30%. The best part was we were able to do it without increasing personnel, and in fact we found we had more time to spend with customers. Bottom line: increased production, less labour, more fun, better sales and much higher profit margins!
In my opinion, Tim Vandergrift’s winemaking knowledge and expertise are unmatched by anyone I’ve ever met. Any time we had a problem with a wine or beer, we could phone or email Tim and he would be back to us very quickly with the answer and solution. Tim spoke at a tasting event hosted by Wine Central and wowed the audience with his knowledge and ability to answer every question asked of him.
Tim is an invaluable resource for anyone in the beer and wine making business. He has the answers to every problem we ever encountered: production, shelving, supplier communications, wine knowledge, tasting notes and descriptions, and far more. I fully give Tim credit for helping me grow a very successful business and winning 34 international awards for our wines.
Katherine Heisler
We have had the pleasure of working very closely with Mr. Vandergrift on a number of occasions over the past 20 years. Tim has excelled in his role that has put him in the top of his field in the ferment on premise industry. Tim has made numerous positive contributions to the success of our business. His knowledge and expertise has helped us problem solve several times and put us back on track again.
Some of the areas Tim has aided our business is a procedures manual for new employees, Limited Edition wine tasting events and quality control issues to name just a few. Whenever we have had need of his services he aways responded with positive energy and enthusiasm and took initiative to go beyond the expected parameters of our request. His upbeat personality and engaging personal style enables him to interact effectively with our customers, staff and us.
We volunteered to write this recommendation for Tim because we are very grateful for his contributions to our business and industry and very confident that he has the intelligence, work ethic and communications skills to add value wherever he works.
Jeff & Kevin Rex
B.A. Brewmaster Ltd.
We are pleased to recommend Tim Vandergrift and Tim Vandergrift Communication and Consulting.
We have had the pleasure of working with Tim for 14 years and will continue to do so. His knowledge of the consumer produced beverage alcohol industry is second to none. Tim has an understanding from field to glass for both home winemaking and craft brewing.
Tim also has an amazing grasp of the marketing side of the industry and understands the different consumer segments and how to communicate with each of them.
Tim has been a very important part of business success since we have had interactions with him and his services and has positively affected our bottom line:
He has trained our staff on both winemaking, wine appreciation and craft brewing. Our staff have always enjoyed their sessions with Tim as he has a very friendly yet highly educational approach to teaching. The training he gives our staff means they are able to interact with customers from a position of confidence and as a result have increased store sales.
We have also had Tim do dozens of consumer events for our customers. Again Tim’s everyman approach with people breaks down the barriers and inhibitions to learning about wine. Working with Tim we have increased our Limited Edition program from original unit sales in the ‘10s’ to well into the thousands and has driven sales from this program 10 fold. Thanks to Tim our LE program is now a very important part of our annual business.
From these consumer events our customers now see Tim as a very important spokesman for our industry and view his advice and recommendations highly. This makes Tim’s ‘seal of approval’ a powerful selling tool in our stores.
Tim has even taken the time to contact customers directly for us to deal with specific problems they may have when they need reassuring.
Tim has also provided us with a great collection of articles on various wine and beer making topics. These articles are perfect for adding content to newsletters and other forms of customer communication and are great for educating customers. Educated customers are more valuable and more loyal customers and this drives sales.
Thanks to Tim’s broad based knowledge and dedication to our business we have been able to improve all levels of our business from operations, marketing, staff knowledge and consumer education. As a result Tim has helped drive our business’s growth.
With Tim you get technical knowledge, training, marketing know-how and a friend to your business.
Craig Swanston
Owner
Colin Swanston
Owner
www.mywinesense.com