UPC or Lack Thereof?

Ok, retailer here. I have a question for the production crew. Why would a winery not put a UPC on their label?

Thanks in advance.

Cost.

Don’t you have a label printer?

No we do not. Do you make wine Brent?

No, but I’m a retailer and I’ve already had this discussion with several winemakers. The cost of filing for a UPC when a small producer sends very little wine to the US is often something they choose not to spend their money on, and there is also a re-filing fee if you have the need to change it each vintage. Invest $400 or so in a barcode label printer or just use Avery labels in any standard laser printer and you’re all set. Any decent POS software should have an option to make your own item number and barcode. It’s really not that hard.

Brent,
The winery in question today, though not the only one, is Cakebread. Small? How bout La Jota? I get the small guy. Cakebread and La Jota are not small unless compared to Gallo.

It seems to be an existential question. What’s the point of arguing? You need a upc for inventory control. Make one. Put it on the bottle. Problem solved. In the words of Gunny Highway, ‘Improvise, adapt, overcome.’

Thanks for the reply to a question that I did not ask and already know the answer to. “How do I get a UPC on a bottle of wine that does not have a UPC?” Got it. [cheers.gif]

I’m just guessing here, but I wonder if Cakebread, La Jota etc don’t put a UPC on their label is they feel it gives their label a ‘supermarket’ look.?

Why don’t some wineries put UPCs on their products?
As I said I hear the small company thing, but have several examples of really tiny local brewers and wineries that send product to us with UPCs either printed on the label/can or applied via label maker.

We refuse most product that comes to the back door without a UPC. In some cases we require the distributor to apply the UPCs if they want to sell the wine. That works for us. If I were manufacturing a product that is easily substitutable, like a bottle of Cabernet or a box of crackers et cetera, I would do my damnedest to make it easy for vendors to stock and sell my product.

I got the following from a distributor yesterday. “Boutique wineries, or those who want to be perceived as boutique, want their wines to be a hand sell in boutique wine shops and restaurants, not impersonally peddled by large retailers.” If this is the case, I understand the lack of replies and further discussion is not required.

I have a barcode printer with a decent POS and it’s not a big deal to print my own. As Brent said, lack of bar codes is probably because of cost for most of the producers. It probably also has to do with a lack of business and tech savvy on the part of some tiny (especially European in my experience) producers. I have a few wines which didn’t have bar codes as recently as two years ago but the producers finally came around and the more recent vintages have bar codes.

I also have a Napa Cab that’s a big steakhouse wine from a pretty big producer which can easily afford to pay for bar code registration. I was told by the sales rep that it deliberately had no bar code. No bar codes means that big retailers/grocery stores won’t carry it. However, most restaurants don’t use bar codes so a lack of bar code would not prevent restaurant placement. If there’s no retail placement then the wine is invisible on the internet and consumers can’t check prices. This wine finally went with barcodes.

I have some locally made specialty chocolates and the producer just got bar codes three years into her business. She just did not have time to figure them out or money to pay for them until recently. Now she can sell the chocolates in Whole Food and other bigger stores.

I have herd in many a marketing seminar that UPC codes (and pricing ending in $X.99) on wine devalue the brand as it is no longer seen as hand crafted, small lot, etc. I know some wineries print some labels with and some without so that big retail gets the one with and Tasting Room/Wine Club gets them without.

I have never worked for or managed a winery that used UPC codes on it labels, thats from 1,500-30,000 case producers. It never seemed to slow distribution though the main focus was restaurants not retail.

Creating your own barcode labels is not that big a deal for retailers. OTOH, I do remember my years in the apparel industry, when all the major retailers started charging suppliers for NOT pre-barcoding product (along with lots of other things) because they could thereby pass a lot of handing cost back to them. I’ll have to look at the wines at Costco next time I’m there.

What used to drive ME crazy as a wine retailer was that many wineries would barcode but wouldn’t change the code for new vintages. That would require us printing a new label for wines that already had one.

Used to? That is still the 99% case from the 200,000 UPC’s I am looking at.