A Glass of Wine With a Side of Education
Ricky Parker, Shockoe Wine
Everything can change. Places that once held a dark history can turn into centers of education and inclusion — even a center of slave trade.
Shockoe Bottom is a neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. During the 1800s, it was the second-largest slave-trading corridor outside of New Orleans. But rather than focus on the dark side of its history, Ricky Parker set out to make “Shockoe” mean something celebratory — by starting a new brand of wine. Shockoe Wine is on a mission to educate people about African American History and bring them together through good wine. Plus, they support the community by raising money for scholarships to give to graduating high school seniors. So, how did it all get started?
In this episode of For the Better, host Ben Cash is joined by Ricky Parker, Co-founder of Shockoe Wine, to discuss how he is using wine to educate the community. Ricky talks about the mission of Shockoe Wine, how he found his way into the world of wine and spirits, and the partnerships that helped make his dream a reality.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Ricky Parker shares his journey into the world of wine and spirits, meeting his business partners, and starting Shockoe Wine
What’s the history of the Shockoe Bottom neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia?
How Ricky is giving Shockoe Bottom a more celebratory and inclusive connotation
How does Ricky balance creating a profitable business with supporting the community?
The partnerships that helped Shockoe Wine get off the ground
Why is education an essential part of Shockoe Wine’s mission?
The experiences that Shockoe Wine offers
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Episode Transcript
Ben Cash 0:06
Hi, this is For the Better, a podcast for those working to effect change within their team, organization, or communities. I'm your host, Ben Cash. Welcome to our podcast, where we talk with leaders and change makers from purpose driven organizations, and discuss the great things they're doing. This podcast is produced by Reason one, a full service digital agency helping those who do good, do better. My guest today is Ricky Parker, the Co-founder of Shockoe Wine. Hey, Ricky.
Ricky Parker 0:39
Hey, how are you doing today?
Ben Cash 0:40
All right. Thanks for joining us today.
Ricky Parker
Pleasure to be here.
Ben Cash
Well, so I learned about you through a mutual friend, Dean Browell. I was at a healthcare conference in North Carolina. And we were sort of celebrating afterwards. And and Dean came up with his bottle of wine, you you love wine, you're going to try this wine and and he was pouring us a glass. I was like, This is so good. Who made this? And he's like, my friend made it. He's got a winery in Virginia. And I'm like, I had to learn more. So we started talking about the winery and the wine and, and I was like, I have to talk to Ricky, you know, I also have a business partner who owns, who started a vineyard. They're not really producing much wine yet, but they sort of have a vineyard. So he's, I get influenced by him. And also, I lived in Virginia and the you know, in it for eight years in the near the wine country there. And so, so he's like, I'm so curious about so many things. And I've got to talk to Ricky. So. So this was inevitable.
Ricky Parker 1:49
But, yeah, I’m glad.
Ben Cash 1:50
So what's your story? I mean, you've got an interesting background, and how you came to start a winery and I just wondered if you could just take us back to tell us how you got here.
Ricky Parker 2:03
Yeah, no, I definitely could do that. First, I have to give a shout out to Dean. He's definitely our unofficial official Shockoe Wine ambassador. And so I definitely appreciate his advocacy and all all he's been doing just for the brand introducing it to new people. But for me, my background in the wine and spirits space, really kind of dates back… want to say maybe 12, maybe 12-13 years ago. Like right after I was leaving undergrad, finishing up at Virginia Union University, I entered into the, you know, entertainment field. When I was working in entertainment, it was a mixture of me being in nightlife, me work the music, I stumbled across the role, working with Moet Hennessy / Louis Vuitton as a brand ambassador, influencer for a couple of products under their folio. Initially, I started working with some Hennessy branded products, and from that grew to like a role with Belvedere Vodka. From that, grew to doing some ad hoc work with Moet Chandon and this was initially my introduction to like the wine and spirits space. So this is all around, I think, between the timeframe of like, 2009-2010 of like, we really get in my entry into the space and as I'm getting an entry into the space, in the Washington, DC area, and so is everything from a grassroots marketing perspective, you know, I had the responsibility for just working with these brands, figuring out even when it came to like new flavor offerings, like how do we bring that to market? Or how do we work with the distributor to figure out some deals where like, we can kind of get bar managers to really buy into this product or even working with bar managers figure out how do cocktails or other specials and so it was really mean learning a lot of the logistics or a lot of really went into like the behind the scenes I think we think about food and beverage, but really on this beverage side of it, just really understanding that from there. While working with LVMH, I transitioned to start working with Campari, really I was with Skyy Spirits. While working with Skyy I was primarily working on a new acquisition they had was look for called X-Rated Fusion. Okay. It was a liqueur that they acquired from Diaz VO and they were going through a rebrand and kind of figure out how to position that market. And so, like with my experience, I was saying a lot of different things from taking you know, a traditional household you know, brands like a Belvedere, then figuring out you know, how do we know position this more in the market, to even you think something like a novelty brand liqueur figuring out you know, how to position this. So, it kind of gave me a good range or understanding about just it really came down to like story or really came down to you understanding your consumer and lifestyles. I started to see even with the look for wasn't just how do we have to sell this more product, but how can this be coupled into something else? So this whole idea of cocktail partnerships or right something else that people are already leaning for is we can pair this with something that is familiar or people will be open to it? So at the foundation, a lot of this is like 12-13 years in the making where I really have the reference these early years in my career of you know doing this brand ambassador influencer work, and with that, I really loved it you know, I really had a great understanding you know, even in the programs I was in I think what I was able to just do in the DC market, it was something that I was able to like effectively help position these brands. Yeah, from there just like fast forward you know, I think like a lot of different creatives within like the marketing advertising space I went into a lot of different industries just to work in healthcare, to really working with nonprofits, to eventually ending up in higher education teaching at Virginia Union and even up at Commonwealth, to even around I'll probably say like 2017-2018 is really when I started to get another nudge just about like my mentor is part owner of Uncle Nearest premium whiskey. So there's an American whiskey brand right now is the fastest growing independent whiskey brand in American history.
Ben Cash 7:25
Oh wow.
Ricky Parker 7:27
So the story of pays homage of the brand, like pays homage to the story of Nearest Green. He was a black man that taught Jack Daniels how to distill whiskey and he was the first master distiller for Jack Daniels. Oh, wow. So when this brand launched, me just naturally just kind of already understanding or knowing this thing. Just assisting my mentor, just leading with this venture was something I was doing initially in the DC market. In that transition to when the brand got distribution in Virginia, understanding like, how can we, or how can I help you know, position the brand in such in Virginia. We think about like the Richmond, Tidewater area. And from there, it really kind of, you know, sparked a number above you know, in me, we're just kind of thinking about ownership, or just really kind of thinking about this idea of, you know, I've always wanted to have my own, you know, wine or spirit brand. And I think around like 2019, it really started like this research phase I was getting into where, earlier on in 2019 I'm starting to think about this idea of wine label was always on like my bucket list of like, you know, big, big things I want to make happen or I want to I want to get done and so right. I started doing research, you know, just about wine making, wine opportunity, you know, the Virginia wine region. Even started having some dialogue with the friends that had been food and beverage space this to get an idea of like, lright, let me just educate myself the fact that I see this as something I want to do down the line, like let me start doing the homework. Then it came down to like Dawn 2019 I had this idea to do a friends and family limited run of some wine, we had figuring out like alright, OK, I could do like a small run of something as a phrase family gift, but it was I was planning it out to kind of coincide with my 36th birthday in 2020. I started planning in 2019 for as I was doing this plan and we started going in to 2020 and COVID hit. And as COVID started here, me and two of my friends are Chris Randolph and Steve Johnson III, we started to connect. Initially, Chris was the glue between the three of us, where Steve and I both had our own relationships with Chris, but Chris felt at the beginning of the pandemic, we had a lot of mutual background, you know, within hospitality and food and beverage that, hey, you know, the three of us need to be talking, or we need to figure out you know, if there's something we could do together. And so just with the pandemic, everyone having time on their hands, like, Hey, listen, let’s just do a zoom once a week, this kind of session, you know, you know, every other week, let’s just see what ideas we have, or what are introduced to what we're saying. In one meeting, I put up what I was working on with this wine project, they have done this kind of project, getting close to kind of like really started, like, really get the ball rolling or get started with it and I was explaining it to them, they were intrigued. They were like, hold on. So are you selling the wine? And I was like, well to sell it, well that’s a whole different process. Well, I don't, I don't think I have the bandwidth to kind of do everything that's needed on the operation side to make sure it's there. So Chris, he was like, Hey, let's figure it out. Or, you know, the guys were saying you’re already in contact, you know, with somebody who knows how to, help with this or, you know, kind of assist with the production. Let's figure out what to do. And so from there, three of us, you know, we said down if I'm George Haas and CEO of Veritas, were initially conversation with Veritas, was a small, you know, friends and family custom crush project, were something we kind of use as a positioning piece to just kind of do selling the kind of slowly in space to kind of show the Hey, no, I'm interested being into the space. It's really having a conversation just about what we thought about a brand and that’s when we presented the idea of Shockoe Wine. And for us, I even when we came down to the name, we really just kind of thought about two things. The first really went into this idea of like brand equity. And so my partner, Chris, formerly owned a restaurant in Shockoe Bottom call Shockoe Whiskey and Wine. And prior to even meeting Chris meeting, or you know, having a rapport, I always just thought the branding for the restaurant was like great, I thought like, very clean, definitely was a staple, you know, for young professionals of Richmond just when it came to the weekend, we're like, I feel like the brand equity or like the life that that brand had is still existed where you know, the fact that your name has Shockoe Wine already attached, like, baby, this needs to be the thing. And as we dig deeper, it was this same between the three of us, we all had our own personal connections Shockoe. For me, I'm an alumnus of Virginia Union University, and Virginia Union was founded in the slave jail, you know, in Shockoe Bottom. This is all happened after the Civil War. So for me, it was this connotation of like, I see the story we could tell with Shockoe even for Chris with him having a restaurant in Shockoe Bottom previously, but even prior to that, his father and his grandfather both used to come and sell crops at the farmers market in Shockoe Bottom, or maybe my partner, Steve, how he's a account director for the Martin Agency and their headquarters is in Shockoe. And so like we just kind of have our outside the historical significance for Shockoe Bottom and being home.
Ben Cash 14:00
Can you actually just just to give listeners some context here. What's the story of Shockoe Bottom?
Ricky Parker 14:05
Oh, yeah, just about to get to that. So I actually, when you think about the historical context of, you know, Shockoe Bottom is this neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. But historically, during the 1800s, it was the most the second prominent slave trading corridor outside of New Orleans. And so with it, we think about Black history or African American history, like this location is very prominent in like, telling those stories or really explaining like, a lot of origin that we think about in this country. And so, for us, it was a whole thing of thinking about how do we change the connotation you know, with the story? Sometimes I think when people hear you know, Shockoe Bottom, they automatically go to this idea of slavery or what the beginning was. And for us, we wanted it to be two sided, sort of educational well, so something like, how can we allow the term Shockoe to be something celebratory? You know, how can we change this to be something that you hear the term Shockoe, now you're thinking, this idea of inclusion. So like us as a brand, like our pillars that like we really, really guide a lot of our decision making are: inclusion, education, and community. So this idea of inclusion, you know, like, one of our mottos is, “Create our own table,” and like, we’re creating our own table. And with that, you know, that's how we're just very big on this inclusive piece, to where, you know, it's not a one sided story, you know, and, you know, with Shockoe, you wanted to kind of be celebratory for everyone, where, even for me, I believe, like, American history is all tied together, you know, it's not these pockets for this one group of people, or this other group of people. But this is all of our history. And so even as we were just thinking about a lot of this stuff, I feel like we think about food and beverage, or this whole idea of wine becomes a very conversational, like thing. We're like, when you drink wine, it opens up a lot of dialogue to a lot of things you may like, normally talk about, or you might not normally be gazing into. And so those are just kind of thinking about, like, how do we position some things that normally, you know, people are afraid of, or people are kind of shying away from where I know, even now, even we think about inclusion, you think even think about like the hospitality space, we think about representation of like, you know, BIPOC individuals or, you know, people who identify, you know, as queer or, you know, non binary, where it's just like, how do we make sure like, even in these spaces, people have a voice. So what does that look like? So I think that kind of falls into this idea of community where, you know, we've constantly been on an intentional journey of really making sure people are involved where it's not one sided. And so, even on a community standpoint, I know, last Labor Day, we were able to partner with an organization called Kappa Alpha Psi Incorporated, the Richmond Alumni Chapter. And we were able to do a jazz fundraiser. We've raised $8,000, for scholarships for Richmond high school students who are going to college. And so for us, is kind of like multisided, what is it? How can we use wine as a vehicle, you know, to make impact? Yeah, yes. To this education piece? Where I think for us education is two sided, is how can we provide access to information for people where that could be even just about wine, you know, because I think a lot of times you think about wine, or even like us, starting with a red blend could be very polarizing. So someone, like I'm not a wine drinker, but right, like, if I have an education on what I'm drinking, what I'm consuming I'm more open to it, then the other side of it is just even thinking about think of is equity, you know, access, you know, like, how can we make sure, just as a brand, like the fact we're not a nonprofit, but like, how can we advocate for things that need to be happening? You know, even I right now, I know, me and my partners, we're having like a whole conversation about what more can we do to advocate for Richmond public schools? You know, and just like, from a standpoint, like we're a for-profit brand was understanding, like, how can we use our voice positioning, to mobilize people who are around other causes that may not directly, you know, benefit us, but the fact that we're in this position that we have, I think this responsibility corporately, you know, as an organization, like, you know, we kind of have to take a stand or really be committed to doing what we say we're going to do.
Ben Cash 19:18
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. So I just, you know, I think my last podcast interview, I was talking with someone, Eric Henry, in North Carolina, who was one of the first B corps in the state. Oh, wow. And, and it's something that we're in application process ourselves, and this, this notion of using your business as a force for good is something that's so important nowadays, and because I think, you know, as we see government is is, you know, very slow to change, and to change things and make an impact and, you know, I applaud you first for seeing your business as that vehicle and your wine as that vehicle to bring people to the, you know, to the table. How have you with that mindset of seeing the business is more than just, you know, selling a product? How do you balance that? Right, that's something that we struggle with is you got to build, you got to build a good product, you gotta you got to do that. Because, you know, you got to have a successful business and profit to fuel these initiatives and fuel the scholarships and things, but how have you balanced that?
Ricky Parker 20:42
I think it’s really having a great team. I guess, I've gotten a lot better with this since we've been in business, or I think over the last year of us really being in market. Like, I'm the one partner initially, I was just so full of people. Like, let's do this, let's give this money, let's just play like, I was just so I'm always focused on like the give back component. But I think starting out, I was always overly communicating about like, what is our position in this like, let's not just start and we get it poppin’ or like we're successful, and then it's something like, a year or two years from now. Now we're trying to figure out or explain to people, what our corporate you know, social responsibility, you know, positioning or plan is versus us figuring this out from the jump. But think, hey, now, I would just say, having like, having a great team, you know, I have I have one partner who he's very, he's very anal, just about like numbers. So if it doesn't make sense, number wise, like, you always hear, hey that’s great, but it’s just not adding up when we think about like the bottom line of what we're doing. I have some colleagues like that, too. I think it’s great, because in it, um, it balances everything out where I think from a standpoint, a lot of times, I even with the wine venture, like I'm vision casting, I'm like, explaining where I think it needs to go, what needs to happen. And sometimes I think one part is like, no let’s bring it back, and we got to kind of slow it down, not saying we can't do this, but we got to look at the bottom line, we're like, we're in this to make money or we're in this like, we're, we can sustain this. And this will become really our main thing, or this is the thing that we're living off of. And so I think it's a balance of those personalities in those conversations, where it's not all one thing, but I think it’s that constantly coming to that common ground, because I think everyone in your organization is always going to have isn't always going to be able to flip back and forth from like, Oh, let me be super creative, now, let me be analytical, where I think there's those moments, I think, where they both meet, or some of us were like, Oh, I'm forced to kind of have to use both sides. But I think a lot of times you have some people who’re like all I got to focus on is like, the administrative, analytical side of what we're doing. I could do that. And like, you focus on the creative or you focus on like, sales and all this, where I think, you know, having those roles or having this key position in about who's doing what I think is very good, because it I think it alleviates a lot of the ambiguity with it, where even for us with us, like being like a three, three-man team, you know, where we're, I think we're able to get a lot done, you know, just off of like how we're able to over communicate are really being honest about what we can and can't do. Yeah, we’ll level-set our, our expectations with each other, just overall about what we're doing. Because there's a very clear understanding of like, everyone's own level of effort, or whatever you want to really get, or also just everyone skill set. So I think when you have a good understanding of that, those things is that idea of like having the right people on the bus and having the and I think us, you know, even though like we don't have a lot of people on the bus, the seats we got and we kind of figured out like, Alright, how can I sit in like two or three seats? How can you sit in two or three seats? Yeah. How can we constantly have this middle ground of us, you know, having these objectives of these goals that we're working towards, but this constantly having something that’s guiding us where it's not like we're shooting from the hip.
Ben Cash 24:58
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I couldn't agree more on having the right combination of partners and people around you. Because, you know, sounds like you, you have a real vision for Shockoe. And for what you wouldn't be as a as a winery, as a community, you know, member, as you know, and as a force for good. But you also need those people who are going to ground you in reality, because you got to have a business as your platform, if you're going to do to make that impact. And if you don't have that platform, you know, it's that much more difficult. So, tip of the hat to the people that ground us out there, and like, you know, that helped make change possible and don't let us get over our skis, right. So I'm curious about the actual wine itself. So you mentioned that you partnered with Veritas for some logistical things to kind of get it going, which is so smart, right? When you're when you're trying to get off the ground with something new, to create partnerships with those who have been there before. And so I'm curious if you can tell us a little bit about getting off the ground. And that the process of making the wine from idea to that first smile, and you know, that your first customer had when they drank it, because I tell you that that stuff is so good.
Ricky Parker 26:37
Thank you, thank you, again, just for even your feedback about the wine. For us, starting out, we knew we wanted to start with a red. We knew that was a category we wanted to kind of start our positioning with, we were very leery of starting off with something like a rose. We don't want to come off too trendy, or just something that was like, just in the moment. And so with knowing we wanted to do a red, just one idea was a red blend, was really like the foundation that we were looking at. So the relationship we have with Veritas, or we have custom press relationship where we're sourcing their grapes, like these are grapes that they actually harvest and all we're sourcing it but in the process of the winemaking, we were we have had the ability to be hands-on in this and like the barrel making or to see when the selection we're using for the wine.
Ben Cash 27:40
So they're providing the support, but you're only making the decisions and we obviously been…
Ricky Parker 27:44
Yeah. Like what barrel we’re going to use or even describing like the profile was one where, for us. It wasn't too lengthy of a process. It was almost like the second barrel option, we went with what we felt like, Oh, now this, this definitely fits. And I think for us, it was a thing of, we wanted to we wanted to have an offering that really was solidified with Wine Enthusiast. And so thinking about the popularity of like Virginia wine country we want we wanted something that like why is it good to be positioned in these conversations about you know, great, a great Virginia red wine. So I was like our initial goal, thinking about like our first offer, like how can this be something where if you're a wine drinker, you're like, This is amazing wine but you're not a wine drinker, you’re like, Oh, wow, this good where that was always like our focal point starting and by working with Veritas, there's definitely been a great process of just learning the project the logistical side of the production piece, you know how works and with it it’s kind of worked out great because and we've been able to kind of be very hands on with the creative aspect. You know, we we like designing our labels with all that we're…it’s definitely like a partnership all together where own you know, is definitely hand in hand like getting everything done. So I just appreciate their support where I just think about coming to market or you think wine. One of the things I was just thinking about the limitations we had was how can we really work with somebody who was respected, you know, in this field for doing what they do, or you know, they're experts at this enormous thing for us over the last year. It's definitely been a learning process. We’re blessed as a brand you know, the whole goal is to grow even more or even this year. We have plans releasing some Moratos, Riesling, Rose, you know, a sparkling Rose, a sweet red, though, it’s really expanding, expanding our portfolio a little bit more. But with that, it’s also been a process of us really understanding the process that really goes instead of winemaking. So for, for us is even this whole thing of like, you know, working to position ourselves to have in the tasting room, or even to this whole thing of you know, even having a farm, a farm winery, you know, is a lot of different dialogues where I think the direction we've taken is allow us to the focus at this point of building the brand equity, where I feel like now we're at this place where even we're under a year, but we've made a lot of traction now for like it makes sense for us at this point to know we can position ourselves to the goal around doing doing like a round of funding or C funding. Yeah, so for a tasting room or for farm winery, where this isn't us coming out the gate where there's proof of concept, oh want to do a winery, but maybe you've got..
Ben Cash 31:23
Your wine is a is a strong anchor for that. Right. And I think it's hard to it's hard to build something on on, you know, shaky foundation. And I think if I recall, when you first released that wine, it's sold out within four months?
Ricky Parker 31:38
Yeah it sold out in four months, and we had to go to our reserve barrels after that. So it's, it's been this, this constant thing that kind of works in our favor with even the sales history, even that's now been like, three Wegman’s locations within the state of Virginia. This even this, this whole thing of us having plans now to like grow our portfolio where we kind of see equity-wise, you know, think about like brand equity, or like the worth of this, like, there's value in this this intangible where if we didn't do all this work, but we started like, Okay, before we start anything, we need to raise the money. To have a farm, we like gas, were a thing as taking this approach. This allowed us to build his brand recognition, or this brand awareness. Now, when people see that, oh, I see what you guys are doing. I see what you stand for I see is not just about the wine, but there is a giveback component, or there's this component that you're you're attaching this to history or other things and just why, like, interested in Oh, I can kind of see the value of investing, and so I think like with me, all my partners, we all see this growing as like an international brand. Right? Oh, and I'm just really excited for like, this is like one of one of the things I'm probably most proud of, you know, just like the whole idea of just having this come to fruition. And you know, just what we've been able to do just not first year, you know, just even it's a it's…
Ben Cash 33:16
It's pretty impressive. And just from the story you're telling, it feels like you have, you know, the right partners, both in your, you know, your business partners, as well as you know, your production partners. And, but what I'm impressed about, and I think why I know you're gonna be successful is just is because of that the impact you're looking to make, and the way that you care about your community is not a marketing tactic. You know, it's not a it's not a it is part of who you are. Right? And that and I think that authenticity is what consumers are expecting now. Right? And and if you if you are walking the walk, and there's a story that you're telling, and you're making an impact, and people feel like they they share your beliefs. Yes, there is no ad slogan or campaign you can make that will that will rival that. And and it's so it's so refreshing to see that you that you mean what you…that there’s meaning behind what you're doing you know, I'm excited for you. I really am. It's we're getting close to time here. But I do want to I'm curious about the educational mission that you've sort of eluded to. It sounds like there's both educational or educating people about Shockoe’s history and transforming that. But also, you know, you're you have an educational background, and I know there's an educational community education component to this. So you can share a little bit about, you know, how education plays into the mission of Shockoe Wine?
Ricky Parker 35:14
Well, I think, just from a marketing standpoint, um, one of the ways consumers are really inclined to buy products is education. And so like, a lot of times, we don't think about it like that, where I think the more you educate someone on a product, you know, they're more inclined to understand the benefits or like, why this, you know, can add value to their life. Yeah, so one of the things we've been able to do on the experience side is great, virtual and in-person tasting. So that has been a piece where we've been able to educate people just about the wine. So when we take on, take the audience through a guided tasting, and we really break down, you know, our 2019 Raven, vintage. And with that, we break down the body of how it's made up of our Petite Bourdeaux, part Merlot, part Cabernet Franc, to even the process of how, you know, it was aged in oak barrels to like, know, the type of grapes to even allow people to understand you know, petite Bourdeaux is like a signature, grape of Virginia right? Everything were like, you know, think about this one that's really great to kind of release bringing everything together really given and inspired.
Ben Cash 36:41
And can I ask you, so sorry, interrupt you. I'm curious. So you mentioned the virtual component, cuz that's one of the reasons I also reached out to you initially, was that we do some virtual events, and where we will send out bottles to people and create great content, we all get on Zoom, and we all partake and whatnot. And, and, you know, it's changing so much, and, and you're talking about how you were, you know, like, maybe creating a farm experience and people coming to the actual tasting room. And I think that's a pretty big shift. So how is virtual going to play into your strategy in the future? Is that Is it?
Ricky Parker 37:27
Oh, no, it works. So I feel like it's experience is our competitive advantage. I think over any other wine labels thing, especially in Virginia, we I think we look at wine in Virginia is more of a destination thing. Where is it bound you visiting my winery, are you driving into like the mountains to come to a destination for us is more experienced base where outside of our tasting is where like we've done tastings virtually, just like how you explain where we'll ship the bottles out of or even in person. But something else we've been doing over the last year, we've been doing these private art mixers. We've been like DC, DC and Richmond like back and forth. But like with these art mixers is given us an opportunity similar to the tastings, but it's a lot more formal of inviting the audience, allowing them to try the wine, allow them the opportunity to meet us when we had to talk to them, educate them about the product without them driving in traffic and telling them hey, if you really want to purchase, go to our website and make so
Ben Cash 38:35
Which by the way is Shockoewine.com, right? Maybe anybody's Thursday, they want to taste this awesome, awesome red, shockoewine.com are gonna vote that.
Ricky Parker 38:47
And so I think for us, like experience is kind of a thing we've taken advantage of. So I think with us having a tasting room or with us actually having like, an actual winery, it will give us more position to kind of just scale we think about the experience aspect of it. Yeah, so I think that's the great part about it. Where between me, Chris, and Steve, we all have our own collective experience when it comes to like the event planning, event management. Outside of just like this hospitality of these, like we all get this where we've kind of seen it like this has been a piece that I really makes the impact of, you know when we do an art mixer, you know, just the days after that or is is that day, it's like even after they're like what our sales looks like, right? If we do multiple tasting like how that like that's a becomes a bulk order of a bunch of wine that's moving at one time or just even to know how to become the opportunity where somebody may got a bottle in the tasting, but now what's the order another bottle just after it. So we've kind of just seen how that's something everyone's not doing. But a piece of allowing people to really have a good understanding about our brand versus I think another strategy we've had we, we've been very strategic about patrolling our supply chain. So with that, um, like a lot of our lot of our logistics we handle ourselves, like even shipping, like website orders, we handle that. Even for, like, distribution in Virginia, like, we work with a distributor, but a lot of that stuff is like we're hands on with them and like fulfilling orders. So for us, one of the things we didn't want to do, we have like a lot of relationships in Virginia, a lot of different outlets like restaurant retail, but we didn't want to grow too fast be in too many locations too fast for like, lose sight of really controlling who our audiences were the demand versus like our, let's have this more controlled, where's our focus on Wegmans, that it gives us a good piece saying, we can drive traffic to place. Or if this starts to work on their own, and they're working. And we can kind of gauge where this going versus where five different restaurants and paths of people would go but the wine is really only selling in one restaurant but it gets into this murky place where I think for us is just as having the data or us realizing like data is really helping us make calculated decisions is really helping us and so I think for us is has been very strategic in our in our planning of not moving too fast. But also you have to look at what is happening are where the people were the people that were interacting with because even one of the things we're doing now, we've been doing these art mixers in DC and Richmond and things like our we're getting some sales in New York, maybe we need to go to New York, maybe like the ground one for Atlanta or LA, so starting to think bigger on a national level as even like with shipment to allow these things, but like a lot of our initial interactions really just been in the region of us, like DC and Richmond. And so it’s like strategically, you know, just really allowing the data to guide me.
Ben Cash 42:29
Yeah. I think that's, that's really smart to do. Because like you're building your network, you're building your community. And that that community is where you can further education, efforts and sort of, you know, you got to build that community first, though, it sounds like you're doing a lot of great things to to create those connections. So we're at time here, but I do want to ask one last question here. What voices do you listen to? Or follow that that we should? Or that we can learn from?
Ricky Parker 43:10
Les Brown. Les Brown is one that I listen to a lot, like he's a phenomenal speaker. And he always challenges me just with my perspective of how I'm looking at things.
Ben Cash 43:30
Les Brown, that we're we find Les Brown.
Ricky Parker 43:35
Oh, all over, he's a renowned speaker. Like Google, stuff will come up on YouTube even has like, some audio albums, or like Apple Music, Spotify. Okay. Okay. There's, there's a good range of it, but I think the content and the subject matter, it definitely gets to this idea of awareness, or mindfulness and just really understanding like, know, what do you want or where you going? And you know, I think it kind of really checks this whole idea of not having a passive approach with life.
Ben Cash 44:18
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's a great point to bring this to a close. Ricky, thank you so much for talking with me, I've learned so much in your story is, is it's exciting because I you know, as a fellow entrepreneur, I just to see the trajectory that you're describing and the relationships you're creating and the success you're having. It's, it's really it's really great. And I wish you all the success in the future. And I'm sure we'll we'll talk again, and we're definitely going to take you up on some of those virtual events. Yeah, and so Shockoewine.com If you want to order some of Ricky's amazing wine, or if you want to learn more about Shockoe Winery and Shockoe Bottom and their story, check them out. shockoewine.com Alright, thank you so much.
Ricky Parker 45:15
Take care.
Ben Cash 45:17
All right. This has been an episode of For the Better for more information episodes or to be a guest on the podcast visit forthebetterpodcast.com Thanks all be well.