Over the past couple of years, wine swirl events have become extremely popular in many Texas Main Street cities. Not only are they a great fundraising opportunity, they draw a lot of people downtown and encourage them to visit numerous businesses. Below, several wine swirl veterans give their advice on how to throw a successful event.

Georgetown

1.       How many tickets do sell and for how much?

We sell a total of 600 regular tickets. Tickets are $40 during the early-bird special from Dec. 1-Jan. 1. After tickets are $45. We also sell 150 VIP tickets for $125 each. 

 

2.       What is the money used for?

Façade & Sign Grant Program

 

3.       Who donates wine?

Wine can’t legally be “donated” in Texas.  I reimburse my wineries like .45/taste and collect taste tabs from participant wristbands.

 

4.       Where is the food / wine located? Inside a business or outside?

Always located inside (in the very back) of the retail stores since we wanted this to be a retail shopping event.

 

5.       How do you market your event?

Posters, save the date cards, website, Austin Monthly ad, PR, city newsletter, social media


6.       TABC Festival Permits: are these required by each winery AND the event as a whole?

Each participating winery pulls a GF permit (festival permit) so I don’t have to pull a TABC permit.


7.       What ticketing platform is best? We do online only tickets


8.       Do you give travel stipends and if so, how much? When are they distributed, and is there any paperwork associated with the travel stipends?

No, we don’t, but I’ve heard that’s a new TABC rule that you should reimburse them via their travel; Our payments are distributed after the event when we count our taste tabs and they cut us an invoice for the total amount.


9.       Has anyone tried VIP sales, and what does that entail?

Yes, we tried it for the first time last year, and we sold two tickets for $250 to individuals, or we have different levels of VIP tickets to all our sponsors; we have a separate location (second floor of courthouse) for VIPs where they have their own food and wine (larger portions and higher grades than tastes) as well as separate live music.


10.   What are the top five things you should know about a wine swirl?

We set our Swirl up as a retail shopping event, so we only allow Swirl Stops to be retail locations, no offices or services/restaurants unless they have a shopping component in their location; make sure to limit the number of tastes or pours per participant since you don’t want to overserve and folks get too intoxicated (we give ten (1) one ounce pours since that equates to basically 2-3 glasses of wine. They can purchase glasses of wine from the wineries when they pull a GF permit, but the wineries need to push the sales, we give our restaurants a $300 prize if they are selected Best Swirl Restaurant in our People’s Choice voting that evening.


Resources

For more information, please visit: https://swirl.georgetown.org/

New Braunfels

So we don’t actually have a swirl, we have a wine and music festival.  We usually have about 20 wineries that come in and offer tastings and we have live music all day along with cooking demonstration and wine and beer education seminars.  So, our event may be a little different than others.


1. How many tickets do you sell and for how much?

We (The Parks Foundation, actually) sell a commemorative glass and five tastings for $15. The Downtown Association took on adding a Craft Beer Garden this past year, selling a commemorative pint glass and four tastings for $15. 


2. What is the money you raise used for?

The wine sales (raised by The Parks Foundation ) are used for Downtown park improvements. Past projects have included a irrigation system for Main Plaza, restoration of the Plaza bandstand, etc.  They are currently (this will take several year’s proceeds) fundraising to master plan Market Plaza park, which is located just off the plaza.  DTA has not yet identified a project (they are using some proceeds for seed money for next year’s participation).  They are considering a landscaping project or a wayfind project once they have raised sufficient capital.  The original beneficiary was the Main Street partners, who used the funds for historic preservation projects.  But, the festival had gotten too large for them to manage their participation and they stepped down.  The City has in a tough spot, and the Parks Foundation stepped in to take over.  However; this has been a point of contention for our current Main Street Board.  The current board would like to initiate conversations with the Parks Foundation and Main Street Partners to see if the event can be handed back to Main Street Partners.  Primarily, they feel like the restriction of funding parks projects only does not fit the strategic mission. 


3. Who supplies the wine?

The Parks Foundation secures the wine directly from the wineries and distributors.  Their initial outlay is usually around $20,000.


4. Where is the food/wine located? Inside a business or outside?

The wine is located in tents along the center-line of San Antonio Street.  The beer is served from a large inset porch at Seekatz Opera House, with tables and umbrellas in the street for sitting. 


5. How do you market your event?

We market on billboards, in publications such as Edible Austin, on local and regional media outlets.  This past year we marketed on Pandora and got a really good response. 


6. TABC Festival Permits: are these required by each winery and the event as a whole?

The Parks Foundation pulls their own permit, as does the Downtown Association.  Additionally, The Elks Lodge pulls a permit to sell domestic beer near the main stage. 


7. What ticketing platform is best?

We recently switched to online ticketing, which worked really well.  We do still sell on site, tough.  Even with online ticketing, participants must stand in line to get wristbands (so that we can verify their age).


8. Do you give travel stipends and if so, how much? When are they distributed, and is there any paperwork associated with the stipends?

We do not.


9. Has anyone tried VIP sales and what does that entail?

We have not tried it, yet.


10. What are the top five things you should know about a wine swirl?

  • Figure out a way to engage businesses with different target markets.  We have a very nice steakhouse that usually doesn’t open until 4:00 p.m. They hate our festival because the street is blocked off in front of their business.  I am trying to convince them that there is a missed opportunity to open at noon on a modified menu geared towards festival goers.  (they have a great patio that is lost revenue when they are not open and 10,000 visitors are literally standing on the sidewalk outside their doors).  Also, we have a farmer’s market that closes one hour after our festival starts.  I would love to not have to bring in food vendors and use those who are set up at the farmer’s market instead.  But, the vendors are not willing to take the risk…yet.
  • Provide adequate water and shade and monitor for folks being over served.  We had 16 emergency calls last year.
  • Think about new ways to market your event. Pandora was huge for us.
  • Always have your talking points ready.  I run into people all the time who ask about our event.  Why do y’all promote drinking?  How come you didn’t have any German music?  Why do you let food vendors come in? They are competition for local restaurants!  My answers, “We are promoting Downtown and we certainly encourage all patrons to drink responsibly.  We train our staff to watch for people being over served.  Additionally, there are plenty of great things to do at the festival that do not include wine and beer tasting such as……”   Wurstfest really does a fantastic job of showcasing German music, don’t they!  I’m sure we could look into German acts in the future, but for this festival, we really wanted to offer some different options. “  “ We get really great feedback from our Downtown restaurants about the foot traffic and sales during the festival.  The festival attracts over 10,000 visitors, which is more than our Downtown can accommodate in such a short time span."


11. What type of ordinances or permits does your city have to allow this? 

We do not have an open container law or the issue with churches in our Downtown.  We do have some churches, but when measured “door-to-door” we have no issue.


12. What does TABC say about it? 

TABC has been pretty lenient with us on their interpretation, depending on which agent we contact.  We have figured out that their agents are given a lot of latitude to interpret their regulations, so the same question can be answered differently depending on who we contact.


13.Do your wineries also sell wine by the glass or only sealed bottles? 

Ours can only sell sealed bottles, but we sell corkscrews!


14.What kind of security do you need for this type of event?  We just use our PD. 

I vaguely recall the word “confined area” being associated with an event that serves alcohol, “It must be within a confined area”, what defines confined?  Would Street closures be confined or does there need to be walls and limited square footage?  Any other information you have along these lines would be very beneficial!! I think this depends on what type of permit you pull.  I do not think beer and wine permits have to be confined, but mixed beverage permits do. Our agent considers stanchions and velvet ropes sufficient to confine an area. 

Tyler

1. How many tickets do sell and for how much?

We sell 500 @ $50 each. We have sold out of tickets both years we have held the event – and sell-out was prior to opening.

 

2.  What is the money used for?

General budget.

 

3. Who donates wine?

There is no wine “donated” per se. Each winery brings and serves their own selection at their own table/booth.

 

4. Where is the food / wine located? Inside a business or outside?

We prefer to do this inside due to the fact that our event is the last Saturday in June. But, we also do outside booths if we have to.

 

5. How do you market your event?

Social media is our main marketing tool. We do NO paid advertisement.

 

6. TABC Festival Permits: are these required by each winery AND the event as a whole?

TABC requires that each winery get its own permit. We provide each host property with a form letter that contains the name(s) of the winery(ies) they will host, etc. They sign these letters, and we relay electronic copies of the letters as well as event maps with winery locations to the wineries. It is then up to them to secure a permit with the letter and map required by TABC. We are not required to get a permit, as we are not serving the alcohol. We DO have to secure an event organizer permit with the health department. But, since the restaurants we use as food pairings/partners to the wineries all have licensed kitchens, the health department considers it a catering event and the restaurants do not have to get permits.

 

7. What ticketing platform is best?

We use a local ticket agency for online sales. We also sell tickets out of our office.

 

8. Do you give travel stipends and if so, how much? When are they distributed, and is there any paperwork associated with the travel stipends?

We offer a $200 travel stipend to the wineries. This money is distributed upon completion of the event. Each winery has to sign up for the event with a participation form. In that form is a box to check to indicate they want the stipend. We use this as our “paper trail” for payment.

 

9. Has anyone tried VIP sales, and what does that entail?

We had a VIP area the first year, and it wasn’t very successful. We had a separate seating area, music, food, etc., but we found that people wanted to stay in the flow of the event with everyone else. This year, we did VIP services such as express check-in, wine concierge service with purchase, etc.

 

10.   What are the top five things you should know about a wine swirl?

  • Establish a firm ticket policy (I mean free ticket policy) early and STICK WITH IT. Otherwise, you will get people trying to push you to turn the event into a ticket free-for-all.
  • Start researching and purchasing your supplies two months earlier than you think you need to.
  • Be SURE to research the cost of items you’d like to get sponsored to make sure you charge enough for that sponsorship.
  • Have a water sales booth because people want a break from all of the wine.
  • Be sure to have clear site signage and lots of trash cans.