I recently had the privilege of talking to Doug Bell, the Global Wine Co-Buyer at Whole Foods. Besides being a great guy, our conversation helped me understand more about how Whole Foods approaches their wine buying and the hands-on approach they take to bringing both quality and value to their offering. Hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.I've broken the interview out into two parts, so stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon.
The interview...
RJ: Do you do all the wine buying on your own?
DB: I share my role with a gentleman named Geof Ryan. He and I do the buying,. We split the duties because there are just too many vendors out there for one person to handle.
RJ: I find it fascinating how much you guys have to look at. How do you think about getting those wines that are unique and special to Whole Foods, but also catering to such a mainstream audience? DB: We buy from very large suppliers like Constellation Brands and Diageo. You know, the big guys. But we also deal with very, very small suppliers like Chris Condos and Richard Bruno, who are really a two-man operation that run Vinum Cellars, based out of Sonoma. A two-man operation.
We also work with Jamey Whetstone. He owns the Manifesto! Brand. That’s like a three-man operation. He and his wife pretty much run the whole show. So, when we’re looking at wines for a national program, if you look at the Summer Top Ten, for instance, we had some big players in there like Penfolds, Gabbiano – both of those are Fosters products and Fosters is a huge company – and then again, we had the Chenin Viognier from Vinum and the Manifesto! from Jamey Whetstone. We had the V-Solo Verdejo, that was made for us by a gentleman named Michael Hutchinson, who imports for Ole Imports – it’s a very small operation, a three-man operation.
When we do a program, we look for the comfort brands like the Kunoonga and we obviously throw some control label or private label products in there like the Presto. That’s ours, we made that. The Muller Bunny Riesling, that’s ours, we also made that.
RJ: When you say “we made that,” what does that mean?
DB: We blended it, we made it.
RJ: How many of your wines are like that?
DB: We’ve got about 30,000 SKUs in our system. Granted, all of those aren’t active, but we have about 90 – 100 private or control label products at any given time in our stores. RJ: I didn’t know you were actually that involved in the blending and the winemaking.
DB: Yeah, yeah…we do it all.
RJ: So, what’s your background, retail or winemaking?
DB: Retail. I’ve been doing this my whole life. It’s all I know. I started working at a packaged goods store in college on summer and holidays when I was home from school. And it just stuck.
RJ: How long have you been at Whole Foods?
DB: I’ve been with Whole Foods – they bought the company I used to work with – so I guess I’ve been with Whole Foods about 9 years.
RJ: And have you been in the wine department the whole time?
DB: Yeah.
RJ: One thing I really like about Whole Foods wine offering is the quality you bring to the table for the price, particularly given the perception of Whole Foods as an expensive store. How do you think about that?
DB: We’ve been trying to dispel that “whole paycheck” thing. You know how that really originated? There was a writer for the Washington Post and we opened a store there on P Street, which is in central DC. She and her husband went to the store when we opened it and they were just blown away, nothing like that had ever been in DC before. They went to the store and a week later her husband went there and he called his wife to ask what they needed and she said watch it, don’t spend your whole paycheck there.
It’s not that we’re so expensive, it’s just that we have so many good things to buy. We spent the last year - and if you look at any blogs, or anything on the internet - we’re trying everything we can to dispel that rumor. And if you go into our stores and you look at like items versus Safeway or Albertsons or Kroger’s, we’re about the same price.
RJ: I always seem to find a "bargain" in the wine department, more often than I do in other departments at Whole Foods. When you configure your Top Ten lists, what are you looking for in terms of what you want to deliver to the consumers – is it price, is it quality? Both?
DB: Obviously quality first. I would say value in the category second. Always quality and taste first. If it’s a $10 bottle of Shiraz, it better taste like a $10 bottle of Shiraz.
You look for variety too. Our shopper is not your Safeway shopper, although we share the same shoppers, obviously, we share shoppers with Costco and Cost Plus and Trader’s…our shoppers will try something new. They really like to try new things. But, at the same time, they also like their comfort brands.
For instance, the Biokult Gruner Veltliner, that was the third best seller in our promo this summer. Gruner! Who the hell knows what Gruner is? Our customers know. It’s kind of funny. Geof and I were just dumbfounded – third best seller…that sold more than Chianti.
RJ: I learned about Gruner through Whole Foods and I feel like you guys have pushed that harder than anyone.
DB: We look as a company – and the wine department mimics this as well – we like to create trends. Geof and I are buying for 2011. What’s going to be hot in 2011? Right now, we see this big push, nationally as well as globally, toward price wines - $3.99, $4.99, $5.99. We’ve got those in our stores for that shopper. We’ve also got shoppers who will try something new like Gruner. We think what’s gonna be hot next year. We think we already know. We already bought for next year.
My next question for Doug was what he thinks is going to be "hot" next year. Stay tuned for Part 2 of my interview...coming soon.
Gadget
Great stuff, RJ. How did you land this "get?" We've been developing a few brands we see as "Whole Foods" type labels and this interview was invaluble. Cheers!
glad it was useful. i really enjoyed talking to doug and getting more insight into what he's doing. incredible how hands-on their model is and how involved he is in the selection of the wines. it really shows in the wines they stock and put on their lists. can't wait to see the holiday top ten list.
He forgot to mention WFM Core Values - seeking out organic products. He hasn't run a USDA organic wine in top 10 yet.