Are Standing Tasting Bars Better than Seated?

(SVBWine) - “Today, our bodies are breaking down from obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, depression and the cascade of health ills and everyday malaise that come from what scientists have named sitting disease.”~ James Levine, MD, PhD

The votes are in and the reality is even with exercise and moderate wine consumption, the cumulative negative impacts of sitting behind a computer or gaming station can't be overcome by drinking more wine or with normal exercise regimens. That is really scary for people like me who work in an office. On the other hand, there is growing agreement that employees who work standing are not only more healthy, but they are more productive and creative than those who sit. That being the case, you would all of course naturally conclude that retail room sales people working in a standing bar should have a higher success rate converting visitors to buyers compared to sales people working in a seated venue. Of course you would conclude that ....

The Silicon Valley Bank/Wine Business Monthly Tasting Room Survey closed out 2 weeks ago, and we had a good result with responses from 866 wineries in the US and Canada. WBM's tasting room edition will come out in May analyzing the complete results. To the question posed above, it turns out that seated tasting rooms deliver better results compared to standing tasting rooms.

In the venue chart above we averaged out individual winery conversion/success rates and then sorted them by the type of tasting room experience. The standing experience came in with the lowest success rate at 64% or flipping that on its head, 36% of visitors to a standing bar were melon squeezers and bought nothing. Given the interest in the discussion last week surrounding tasting room success metrics, I thought it was worthwhile to dig a just a little deeper and discover what the data said about venue on those success rates.