John Cedillo III | Chief Experience Officer, Be Hospitable Consulting
The real bleed out in winery DTC isn’t membership growth—it’s attrition.
Everyone celebrates the new member. Fist bumps, high-fives, maybe even a bonus check. But here’s the truth: if you’re spending big to acquire members and losing them in under two years, you’re not building a club—you’re renting one.
Retention is the metric that separates busy wineries from profitable wineries.
Here’s what I see across tasting rooms and clubs:
- Retention is driven by people, not perks. → Free shipping and discounts don’t make someone stay. → Hospitality does. Not service, not transactions—hospitality. Service gets the glass to the table. Hospitality makes someone feel like they belong at the table.
- Attrition is often self-inflicted. → Emails with no soul. → Staff pushing signatures instead of telling stories. → Events designed for sales, not belonging.
- The math is brutal. → Acquiring a new member can cost $150–$400 → Losing them at 18 months cuts lifetime value in half → Fixing retention is often the fastest way to double ROI—without spending another dollar on ads.
The best wineries measure both sides of the equation:
- The numbers → CAC, LTV, retention rate.
- The feelings → Did the guest leave with a story they’ll retell? Did they feel seen, known, and welcomed?
And here’s the key: Retention strategy doesn’t just happen at the conference table. You need to:
- Engage your wine ambassadors, the team members telling stories and creating moments every day.
- Put Retention on your weekly meeting agenda, discuss it, create initiatives and innovate new ideas. Make it a priority.
There’s no secret formula to wine club success. It’s a balance of pulling every lever—guest experience, training, storytelling, data—just a little bit every week. Consistency compounds.
Wine clubs grow when you measure the math and honor the moments. Retention is where those two meet.
Because at the end of the day, wine isn’t what people stay for. They stay for how you made them feel while they enjoyed it.
That’s why I’m excited that this year’s DTC Wine Symposium will feature workshops diving deeper into Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Pareto’s Law. They show us that the best hospitality happens when emotion meets measurement.
Want to see how retention affects your bottom line? Try this ChatGPT prompt—it’s plug-and-play. ChatGPT Prompt for Your Metrics (copy, paste and input)
I run a wine club and want to measure the financial impact of retention. Use these inputs:
- Members (M) = [ENTER NUMBER]
- Allocations per Year (A) = [ENTER NUMBER]
- Allocation Price (P) = [ENTER $ AMOUNT]
- Monthly Attrition (x) = [ENTER DECIMAL, e.g. 0.03 for 3%]
Please calculate and explain:
- Total membership value = M × A × P
- Per-member annual value = A × P
- Retention uplift per member = (A × P) × (x × Δ) -
→ explain in plain language (extra months saved × annual value × attrition rate).
- Annual Impact for the whole club = M × (A × P) × (x × Δ)
- Monthly Impact = Annual Impact ÷ 12
- A table showing results for Δ = 1, 3, and 6 months of extra retention, with:
- Extra Months (Δ)
- Monthly Impact
- Annual Impact
- A plain-language summary such as:
“If you increase average retention by 3 months, your winery could generate an additional $___ per year. Each member is worth about $___ annually, and with ___ members, the total club value is $___.”