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Next Glass Announces Partnership With Total Wine & More

By Zachery Eanes, posted Jun 11, 2015
A deal between Next Glass and Total Wine & More will allow customers in some Total Wine stores to pull up personalized in-stock recommendations and discounts through the app. (Photo c/o Total Wine & More)
Next Glass, the Wilmington-based wine and beer discovery app, announced on Thursday a partnership with Total Wine & More, the largest independent retailer of wine, beer and spirits in the U.S.
 
The venture will launch at Total Wine’s five locations in the Raleigh area.
 
In addition to Next Glass’ partnership with Maryland-based Total Wine, the company also announced separate deals with Wine.com, the largest online marketplace for wine, and Drizly, the leading on-demand alcohol delivery service.
 
The three deals are part of Next Glass’ attempt to transform not only the brick-and-mortar experience of buying wine, but also in the digital arena, by combining Next Glass users’ Taste Profiles with recommendations from Total Wine, Wine.com and Drizly.
 
Those taste profiles are the result of data compilation and research done by Next Glass of the chemical makeup of a bottle of wine or beer to create an evolving score – the closer a bottle is to 100 the better it should match a user’s unique tastes – through the combination of a user’s personal ratings and scientific data.
 
Next Glass, which launched its app in November, hopes to demystify the experience of ordering a bottle of wine or beer a customer has never tried before. The company chemically tests tens of thousands of bottles of wine and beer to determine what chemical makeup best matches the user’s personal taste preferences, to eliminate the chance of ordering a drink a customer will not like, said Kurt Taylor, CEO and founder of Next Glass.
 
“We run [the wine or beer] through several different instruments to pull all sorts of different data points out of the bottle,” Taylor said. “... We get thousands of data points out of each bottle that perfectly describe what that bottle is … and based off what you told it you like and don’t like, the app will look for patterns and trends within the chemistry of those bottles and find other wine or beer that you would enjoy based off those measurements.”
 
All of the results of Next Glass’ analyses are compiled in a beer and wine genome cellar – something that Taylor said draws nearly daily interest from businesses, wineries and breweries alike.
 
Next Glass and Total Wine began discussions about a partnership over a year ago after Next Glass’ immense order was funneled up to corporate.
 
It all began with an order for 6,000 bottles of wine from Next Glass – necessary to accomplish its goal of chemically testing every wine and beer in the U.S. – that piqued the interest of Total Wine, whose officials became interested in the app and its possibilities.
 
“My first question was how many cases and of what wine,” said John Jordan, chief customer officer at Total Wine. “And they said ‘No, no, you don’t understand: We want one bottle of 6,000 wines.’ So that kind of raised our attention level that something very unusual is going on here.”
 
Total Wine, which is projected to exceed $2 billion in revenue this calendar year, will integrate the app into its store experience by allowing the app to track the inventory and assortment of individual Total Wine locations, and then show which bottles in its inventory best match up with a customer’s unique tastes.
 
The app will also allow Total Wine to provide instant promotions on bottles that best match a customer’s individual palate.
 
The taste-oriented promotions are a huge step for Next Glass into the retail end of wine and beer, and the first time someone has really done something like this, Taylor said.
 
Total Wine will measure success of the launch by tracking frequency of visits and average transaction value of customers, Jordan said. But what the retailer really hopes to accomplish by partnering with Next Glass is to attract new customers.
 
“We are very excited about the new customers who might be walking in for the first time with their smartphone and Next Glass app,” he said. “Getting a customer in the door that is the hard part.”
 
The app will also act as a silent sales tool, Jordan said, helping customers quickly identify what wines match their tastes.
 
“People don’t want to go into a store and feel overwhelmed,” Taylor said. “Total Wine’s assortment is unbelievable … but sometimes people need assistance in finding the right one for them. And for every person we can assist in finding what they are going to enjoy, that is a win for us.”
 
The launch will include a free wine tasting at all of its Raleigh-area locations on June 13 as well as a free beer tasting, promoted by Heineken, on June 20.
 
Next Glass, founded in 2012 after Taylor left a restaurant disappointed by an expensive wine a waiter recommended, now has its own laboratory and has hired 16 employees, allowing the company to test around 700 to 900 bottles a week.
 
The company would not provide exact numbers but did say the app has been downloaded several hundred thousand times.
 
The company is part of the burgeoning entrepreneurial scene that has begun to mature in Wilmington, including companies such as Live Oak Bank, nCino and N2 Publishing that have transformed tremendously over the past five years, Taylor said.
 
The company has a lot of plans for the future, including expanding into spirits, continually tweaking the app’s interface and designing products based on its data library, he said, but currently it is focused on building partnerships similar to the one it has with Total Wine.
 
“We have these tools we are building with Total Wine,” Taylor said, “and they are something we want to continue to roll out into bars, restaurants and bottle shops. We are going to be pushing to put more people on the platform and leverage the tools we already have to help people build better businesses.”
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