Is your winery spending too much on payment processing? Is your staff spending precious time explaining charges to customers? For La Frenz Winery, this was the reality until they started using WineDirect Payments. Not only did WineDirect Payments work to significantly reduce their monthly spend on payments, it also gave their team back valuable time so they could focus on guest experience and growing their business. In this case study we’ll show you how.
La Frenz is a family owned and run estate winery on the Naramata Bench within the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada. The proprietors, Jeff and Niva were originally from the Riverina region of Australia. Jeff was one of the first University trained winemakers in the region. La Frenz is currently in their 21st year of production. They were awarded Best Small Winery of the Year from WineAlign 2017 National Wine Awards of Canada. They are focused on expanding their wine clubs, growing their online wine shop and have just unveiled a newly renovated tasting room.
La Frenz has trusted WineDirect with both their ecommerce and wine club since 2016. In an effort to get a more holistic view of their customers, they added WineDirect’s point of sale shortly after.
La Frenz had a unified platform to help them run their wine club, ecommerce and tasting room, but they were using different payment companies to support each line of business. This was expensive and required a lot of administrative work.
On top of that their staff was getting a lot of inquiries from customers from the charges that appeared on their credit card after a visit to the tasting room. Their payments company posted both the pending transaction (amount before tip), plus a second transaction for the adjusted amount (amount before tip + tip). Their customers would see this “double charge” and often call or email the winery to inquire. This was putting a strain on their tasting room staff, and causing distrust, so they knew they needed to make a change.
Enter WineDirect Payments. During an in-person discussion at the winery, a Senior Product Manager with WineDirect recognized the limitation with their current payments company and recommended implementing WineDirect Payments as a way to mitigate the “double charge” and potentially save them some money.
WineDirect Payments captures only the total transaction amount, so only one charge appears on the customer’s credit card statement. By switching, La Frenz staff saves significant time because they no longer had inquiries about a “double charge”. They could now focus on their guests, improving their customer experience. As an added bonus, they saved $2k/month with a fee that averaged 0.60% lower than their previous processor.
In addition to competitive rates, WineDirect Payments includes these exclusive features to all wineries in North America:
Take advantage of our fully-integrated payment processing solution, featuring enhanced security, exclusive features and unparalleled customer service. Plus, low rates and hardware discounts. Get started today! Request a demo here.
