3 Indicators of High Volume in Off-Premise Accounts

It’s hard, in any business, to choose strategies that promote long term growth and longevity while struggling to keep the lights on and make payroll every month. Under thinly veiled panic, we have a tendency to push our sales teams to treat our buyers as means to an end when cash is tight. Overvaluing vanity metrics like accounts sold, we scrounge for quick, small wins and placements that result in high churn and ultimately lead us right back to square one.?

While we may accept – somewhere in the distant, tightly compartmentalized, “rational part” of our brain – that not all accounts are equal and that the vast majority of volume is driven by the top ten or twenty percent of our customers, we go on behaving this way nonetheless, because action feels better than a sales cycle rivaling the Great Wall of China lengthwise.

The good news for wineries & distilleries willing to be more strategic with their sales resources is that it’s not only possible, but well within one’s power to sell all of the wine & spirits one makes by winning placements with just a handful – in some cases, one or two – of the right retailers.

With so much positive feedback to part one in this series, 3 Indicators of High Volume in On-Premise Accounts, we’ve returned to deliver the criteria and common characteristics that define the off-premise accounts driving the most volume today, and how to find them.?

Two Methods for Building Key Account Target Lists

What tools does a sales leader have at their disposal for building a well-researched key account target list in 2025?

Many are not yet aware that this first option exists. It’s now possible for any brand to connect directly with their distributor’s database for near real-time access to their brand-specific sold and unsold account universe. With direct visibility into specific account rankings and attributes like whether or not unsold account x has a cold box or counter positioning available at checkout for shooters/small format displays, beverage brands are already wielding this information to determine which accounts are (not) worth calling on in the first place.

The second method, manual research (usually online), is significantly more time consuming but no less critical for success in the market. Search engines and review sites like Yelp really brought this onto the scene, and it has since gotten easier without ever straying far from Google reviews. This method is so effective, in fact, that it’s possible to make a living full-time putting together and selling custom key account lists to large sales teams in the wine & spirits industry.

Do your customers shop there? Will your placement stick?

What really differentiates one package store from another? What are we really asking when we decide whether or not to include a retailer on our brand’s key account list?

The main determinant of success for your brand in any retailer is whether or not your customers shop there. It feels silly to “say out loud,” but it’s comically easy to lose sight of this. We see other brands having success at, say, Costco, and think “if I could only get a meeting with their buyer, we’d be set for life!” That may be true, but only if your customers routinely shop at Costco.?

The same type of person looking for a great deal on some “pretty dang good wine” for a white elephant party might not necessarily appreciate the premium price commanded by the number of hands that touched your limited-production, esoteric varietal from harvest to bottle.?

A little self-awareness goes a long way in determining which type of off-premise account is best suited to your customers. Asking your team to spend all their time calling on boutique bottle shops sounds like a great way to get fired from your new gig as National Sales Manager at Four Loco.?

The winning strategy for your brand might look completely different from market to market as state law allows, of course. Most people instinctively understand all of the above, but it’s worth formalizing here as a cautionary preface; pressure from the top-down to hit sales activity goals can quickly dilute even the most highly targeted sales team’s efforts.?

It won’t do to simply search the “ten best liquor stores in Denver” and call it a day, but it can be a good starting point. Just use 1) fit for your brand and ideal customer persona and 2) the remaining criteria in this article to narrow your selections down.?

1. A Strong Online Presence

If a package store is making an effort to generate demand online for the products they carry, you can bet that this attention to detail carries over into every area of their business:

• Has a bunch of followers and/or positive reviews on social media
• Regularly updates their instagram (or whatever channel their followers prefer) with the latest products they carry, exciting new releases, events, tastings
• A website that doesn’t look downright geriatric, lists their hours, location(s)
• Ecommerce – delivery and/or store pickup (or the ability to at least view the products the store carries)

The quickest way to tell what kind of customer experience an off-premise account offers is to search for them online – to feel out their virtual storefront. It’s a miracle, really – having even a basic, positive presence online automatically puts any package store leagues ahead of their competitors. Up-to-date websites are a staggering rarity, even in 2025.

The same way many successful wine & spirits brands link to a store locator on their website, a package store that reciprocates with visibility to your products on their website has the highest chance of catching your customers’ attention. It’s incredibly easy to drive traffic to your retail partner’s physical locations when all you need is your product’s landing page url from their site and a geotargeted, one-off email campaign to your loyal subscribers.?

2. A Loyalty Program

Another way package stores – chains & independents alike –? generate repeat business is to offer a convenient and rewarding loyalty program for their customers.

Stores that invite their customers to become subscribers and market to them with special offers and a competitive rewards system know that the biggest driver of revenue for any business is customer retention. If your customers love the experience your retail partner provides, chances are far higher that when the time comes to shop your category, your inventory is less likely to gather dust awaiting random, one-off foot traffic.

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3. They Offer Wine & Spirits Direct Deals

Wine & Spirits brands who are privy to this seldom acknowledged corner of our industry have the potential to trade their struggling startup woes for fast-scaling production headaches trying to keep up with demand overnight.

The regional and national chains driving wine & spirits direct deals drive so much volume on their wine & spirits direct brands in particular because they can enjoy such high margins on the products they sell this way.?

This means that if Bentley’s Bourbon Cream agrees to sell exclusively through (in this case, fictional) spirits direct retailer, The Chapped Flask, in the state of Texas, The Chapped Flask’s store associates are going to hound their customers with recommendations for Bently’s and light up those shelf-placements like Christmas trees with shelf talkers, stacks, and everything short of illegal fireworks.

The tradeoff is that some of these placements can be relatively difficult to land, requiring tenacity over a longer sales cycle akin to most national accounts.?

Follow Up is Key

What indicators of high volume did we leave out? Let us know in the comments. If a retailer is a good fit for you customers and has their ducks in a row online and in store, maybe even multiple locations – your efforts are far better directed in large part to that account (and accounts like it).?

Simply landing a placement is not enough, though – you’ll need to service that account to build a relationship with your buyer upon dependability and trust, preventing out of stocks and doing your part to generate your own demand to pull your product through and off their shelves.