What is a Platform Winery?

Wine is food manufacturing. Manufacturing is a pipeline business, moving goods through the supply chain from vineyard to winery through sales channel to customer. So far, an alternative way to produce wine has not been discovered (which for wine, means around 8,000 years of production).

But does that mean a wine business has to operate in the same linear fashion as its manufacturing process? Simply put, no, it does not.

It is easy to look around and see platforms at work. We use and participate in platforms every time a purchase is made on Amazon, a search is performed on Google, and a post is published on Facebook. Those companies exist to connect producers and consumers, bringing together two or more sides of a transaction, creating value for each side as well as the platform itself.

Like it or not, the United States wine industry is already a platform, one that is constitutionally mandated in the form of the three-tier system of distribution. Platform governance, while legally structured, is reinforced by wholesalers as gatekeepers of the marketplace. Wholesalers control the market value proposition for manufacturers (wineries), retailers (restaurants, bottle shops, cruise ships, et al), and consumers. That value translates to economic, political, and social power.

The problem with the wholesale platform is that, while useful, it is outdated, protectionist, and mostly creates value for itself. Luckily, there is a lesson to learn: If the distribution of wine is already structured as a platform, then wineries can be platforms, too.

Every winery can operate as a platform where suppliers, distributors, retailers, customers, community organizations, regulatory bodies, employees, contractors, and vendors interact and create value. The growth of a strong value network enables the winery to weather the storms of pandemics, economic depression, and climate impacts. Building the network removes wine products as the raison d’etre of wineries and instead, uses wine as a carrot to attract each cohort to the platform. Wine becomes the path into the value network, not the last item found on the end of a long line of manufacturing.

So how does a winery begin the transformation from a pipeline to a platform? The way to build a value network is to start with the most important part of the equation: Identifying the values of the winery itself and then living out those values, attracting each side of the platform to the network, reinforcing platform participation by facilitating relationships between each side.

This is how wineries will continue to grow, becoming more profitable and more sustainable. This is how wine becomes fully itself. This is the future of wine.