3 Indicators of High Volume in On-Premise Accounts
Depending on your wine or spirits brand, the cocktail of channels you depend upon to drive volume in 2025 may look different than it did five years ago. You might lean more heavily upon E-Premise and Direct to Consumer sales. Still, nothing moves cases like a placement in strategic national accounts, regional chains, and high-volume independents in the right markets.
The natural consequence of devoting more attention to emerging channels is less time to devote to traditional 3-tier sales strategy without investing in more resources. Under these constraints, it’s more important than ever to focus your team’s efforts in the market with a well-researched, highly-targeted plan of attack.
A crucial roadmap resulting from this research is a Key Account Target (KAT) list. By selecting the accounts capable of driving the most volume for your brand and focusing your sales team’s time and efforts — to the neglect of the rest of your available account universe — in those key accounts, you’re more likely to outperform the market and your competitors.
Fortunately, the common traits that characterize high volume accounts are not mysterious if you know what to look for; they’re just not necessarily intuitive either. Drawing upon our collective experience as an industry-leading provider of sales execution solutions for some of the largest wine & spirits brands in the world, here are 5 indicators of high volume in on-premise accounts to seek out when building your own key account target lists in 2025.
1. Fit (For Your Brand/Product/Customer in Particular)
While not an indicator of high volume in its own right, “fit” is every account relationship’s prerequisite for high volume. It must come first. Aside from hurting your brand equity, a mismatched placement in an otherwise high volume account could mean negligible volume and wasted resources for your winery or distillery.
An account that fits the other criteria on this list — say, a rooftop bar featuring live music — might drive a ton of volume for cocktail-friendly spirits brands, craft beer, and RTDs, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to sling your Sonoma Coast Pinot to college kids all night at $95/bottle.
2. Private Parties / Event Space
The adult beverage is the most frequently invited guest at everything from fundraising events to birthday parties, weddings, funerals, and more. It’s the reason so many get into this industry in the first place; beverages bring people together, through the best and worst of times.
If you manage to land a by the glass placement or get on the cocktail list for one of these event menus, you’re looking at pallets of reordering potential. Because these event menus are so tightly curated and offer so few options, your product has way fewer brands to compete with. That means the bourbon guy is going to order your pour every single time — he has no other choice!
Pay particular attention in your account research to the number of rooms a hotel has, as well as the square feet of meeting space available for corporate events, banquets, and the like. Getting on the room-service list or landing a banquet menu placement at the right hotel could mean the difference between selling all the wine you make or your inventory gathering dust at the distributor warehouse.
3. Outdoor Seating
Even if owners were willing to ignore fire code and capacity regulations, there’s only so much room inside a restaurant or bar to seat customers, and only so much revenue to squeeze from each guest without overserving them. That’s a little indelicate, perhaps, but this in part explains why venues with balconies, patios, and rooftop bars sell so much more than indoor-only venues.
There’s another, more experiential side to this as well, though — especially in areas with nice weather or a scenic view, tourists and locals alike tend to linger and order more drinks. Look for accounts with multiple excuses for guests to extend their stay, like yard games, live music, trivia nights, and other well-promoted, scheduled attractions.
Bonus High-Volume Indicator: A Well-Loved Social Media Following & High-Quality Web Presence
This one almost goes without saying, but an account that’s not visible online may as well not exist unless they have some niche appeal with older or local demographics or some legendary word-of-mouth cult following. When someone sees that you have a large following, this acts as social proof; it’s the same effect as walking past a crowded restaurant and thinking, “wow, that place must be good.”
Today, you can find everything you need to assemble a high quality key account target list online using Google Places/Maps/Reviews and publications like Eater for even more niche, deep dives into particular markets.While Yelp is not as highly trafficked as it used to be, using filters for the highest number of reviews or (back to Google) searching specifics like “best cocktail bar in Denver” yields a surprising wealth of results for getting started.
