The on-premise side of wine analytics has traditionally been a black hole, not covered by other data services. Somm.ai changed that when they launched in 2021, now covering ~100k on-premise accounts in the US alone. The richness of data allows Somm.ai to help their clients benchmark, prospect for new accounts, and so much more. Jeremy Hart, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Somm.ai, explains how it is more manpower vs a platform to accelerate on-premise sales.

Detailed Show Notes:

Jeremy’s background: restaurants, wholesale, importing

TX became a major wine market during ‘08 Global Financial Crisis; it took the allocations from NY and CA

Somm.ai founding: end of 2019 was originally an app for people to find restaurants with wines they wanted to drink; during the pandemic (2020) pivoted to turning restaurant wine lists into retail shops (sold ~$700k of wine); did some smart menus; 2021 launched current iteration of on-premise sales analytics

• Categorizes restaurants, bars, & hotels in US (100k accounts), Canada, Europe (6 countries, Germany largest w/ 3k accounts), Singapore; data updated every 2 weeks
• Jackson Family is longest client - w/ NBA partnership, Somm.ai developed target lists around NBA stadiums to sell into
• ~70 clients of all sizes (many large suppliers, e.g. - Terlato, Vintus, Concha y Toro, wholesalers, importers)

General use cases include:

• Benchmarking vs peers (accounts, placements)
• Prospecting and lead generation (can see accounts that other distributors cover)
• Identify brand extensions
• Help with pricing
• Identifying sales pitches for national accounts

ROI

• Some clients have moved up a lot in benchmarking ranks
• Save money on travel, focused on the right markets
• Can save manpower

Pricing ~$30-70k/year avg, includes unlimited training and unlimited seats, US and Canada (other geographies are an upcharge)

Product roadmap - expanding to more geographies, which can be temporary exclusivity for early partners

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