Leiper's Fork Distillery: More Revenue, Fewer Tours

results

Leiper's Fork brought down costs, worked smarter, and learned critical business insights by adopting AnyRoad.

$500

per month in time saved

97

post-event net promoter score

33%

increase in average tour price

The high-end whiskey distillery saw a huge number of guests to their tours and tastings, but they were completely in the dark about who any of those 24,000 people were.

“We were using another tour booking platform,” recalls Matt King, the distillery’s General Manager. “It wasn’t fit for our purpose, was hard to use and disorganized, and offered no metrics or way of tracking who was taking our tours.”

Underwhelmed with the solution they had, King and his team were ready to try something new: AnyRoad.

King used the experiential marketing platform to focus on the following areas:

• A smoother online booking process that tells LF who their visitors are
• Measuring success and automatically asking for feedback so LF can grow and adjust

Here’s how a distillery tour used to go for Leiper’s Fork:

• Guests try to book a tour online on a different site from Leiper's Fork's, then become frustrated and give up, or push through and book.
• The tour ends, and no one at Leiper's Fork knows who attended, how they felt about it, or how it helped their business.

Why It Falls Short: The guest feels less excited about returning, thanks to a lack of personalized communication.

Beyond simply managing online bookings, King likes that his team could automatically survey tour participants about their experience. They no longer had to hunt through Google Reviews and Tripadvisor to find feedback.

“We pride ourselves on delivering a five-star experience, so getting feedback is important to us,” says King. “We don’t want people to feel like customers when they walk through our door, we want them to feel like friends and family. We want to have converted them into brand ambassadors.”

Outside of feedback, one way King and his team now measure success is through net promoter scores (NPS) that AnyRoad tracks — currently at a high 97.

King also uses AnyRoad to pay close attention to demographic info, like where people are visiting from, which helps inform where they should expand their distribution.

“The information we get from AnyRoad is helping us refine the experiences we create for our customers, our retail approach, and even our social media messaging,” says King.

Here’s how a distillery tour goes for Leiper’s Fork now:

• Guests go through Leiper Fork's site to their branded booking page, powered by AnyRoad, where they enter their name, contact info, and date of birth during checkout.
• Guests are asked to share info on their perception of Leiper’s Fork and current buying behavior during checkout.
• Leiper's Fork follows up with an automated NPS survey and feedback request with bonus personalization.

Why It Succeeds: Leiper's Fork can see who’s on their tours, see change in brand perception and buying behavior post-event, and collect actionable customer feedback.

Using AnyRoad’s insights, King and his team immediately decided to increase the price of their tours from $18 to $24.

“We were worried about pushback, but there wasn’t any,” he says. “Although we did fewer tours that first month, it wound up being our third-highest grossing month ever, and with much less work.”

Greater efficiency is a big benefit for the entire team. While King estimates saving an entire day each month compiling sales reports, Leiper’s Fork Manager April Boehler says that the distillery saves as much as $500 in labor costs each month as a result.

Freeing up labor means King has more contact with his staff, and they have more time to be in front of customers instead of their computers. LF also gained new bandwidth to explore exciting ideas, such as creating a VIP experience.

“Adopting AnyRoad is the best decision we’ve made in a long time. It’s much easier to use for us and our customers, it saves us time, and it gives us the data we need to help grow the business. We’re really excited to have found such a great partner.”

• Matt King, General Manager | Leiper’s Fork