We recently connected with Kristopher Levy and have shared our conversation below.
Kristopher, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.
Giving back in the world of wine is ingrained in the culture. One of the things I have focused on from early on is giving back to veteran focused non-profits that my people and I care about. Giving back allows us to stay humble and remember there is a greater purpose behind what we do. Especially with something like wine, everyone who had a hand in production believe it is a gift meant to be shared. From the farmer who grows the grapes to the winemaker and team marketing the wine, everyone believes in the product they produce and believe it should be shared for the maximum amount of enjoyment by others. There have been several veteran non-profits we have focused on, but to name one in particular, I’d love to talk about Fore Country, a non-profit that connects Active Duty Military special operations forces members with local business leaders around a game of golf. Supporting this organization means a lot to me as I have learned to be successful in business you need spend time around people who are in business so you can pick up the acumen and learn concepts that will serve you well.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My journey into wine started about ten years ago when I was stationed in Colorado Springs, CO for the Army. My father had business there and would come to visit once a month or so to check on the business and take his employees out to dinner. When we would go out to dinner, he would ask for the wine list from the server, to which the server would ask him if he needed assistance ordering wine for the table.
Then, without batting an eye, he’d look at the menu and order wine for the table without skipping a beat. Watching him order wine with such confidence planted a seed early on for me to want to learn more about wine. Then, in 2017, I got my first chance to take a solo trip to Italy where I set the sole intention of learning as much as I could about Italian wine. Sure, I did all the touristy things, but I made it my priority to seek out the best Italian wines and varietals, and immerse myself in the wine culture of each locale I found myself in. At that point wine become more than something I enjoyed, it became a life pursuit.
In 2020, I had the opportunity to move to California and was immediately engrossed with California wines. I just loved finding all these boutique and specialized wineries throughout the area, and just learning what each region was known for. Then the pandemic happened and we all immediately went into lockdown.
But I didn’t want my wine education to stop, so I started doing weekly virtual happy hours where I would contact a local winery or winery along the west coast, even some international, and would have them, often the owner themselves, come on and talk about their wines to really tell the story behind the wine. At first, it was just friends and family, but then it started to grow and morph into more of a wine community.
After doing that for six months, I loved the community I had built but I knew I wanted more, I wanted a business. So In August of 2020, I set out to create a wine club featuring all these wonderful boutique wineries and their wines that are fantastic, and so that way when someone would ask me “Hey Kris, what wines do you recommend?” I could just tell them to join the wine club and we will ship them to your door.
Since then, we still have our wine club, Kris’s Wine Club, and we’ve also moved into wine events, and the wine marketing and consulting space.
K. Levy Wine Co. focuses on bringing people together around food and wine. Our primary offering is our monthly wine club, Kris’s Wine Club, which every month features a new winery from the U.S. with wines that you normally will not find in a grocery store or even in a wine shop. Every month, I handpick wines from the winery, then I interview the winemaker or winery owner on my podcast, Everyday Wine, which you can listen to for free on all major podcast outlets.
The interviews really help people understand the context around the wine and the intention behind each bottle. Our wine club is different from other wine clubs you might be familiar with because I personally handpick each wine that goes out after it goes through a rigorous tasting process. Also, our wines ship direct to consumer, straight from the winery itself, so by supporting the wine club you are also supporting each of these boutique wineries directly. Finally, giving back is really important, so with every purchase, a portion of the profits and proceeds go directly to veteran and military non-profits that our members and I care about.
For other businesses, we also do corporate events, both virtual and in-person. In the past, we’ve offered wine pairing classes, wine and charcuterie classes, and blind wine tasting competitions. We’ve been used by big brands such as Tinder, Dropbox, and Blue Shield of CA. Our events are favorites of our corporate partners because they help them create new business with potential clients, or help them show appreciation for their employees with team building and off-site events.
Recently, we’ve also found ourselves consulting a lot with other wine brands. One of the things I have noticed is that my military experience has given me a unique skillset that I can apply daily to my business. Through my military experience I have learned how to lead and manage teams, how to create systems and processes so we can repeat success, and how to codified learning so we remain a learning organization. What I’ve also found is this is extremely valuable to other companies.
As I started marketing my own company, other brands that we would work with on Kris’s Wine Club took notice. Some of them would reach out to me and say “Hey Kris, I love your marketing, can you help me with mine?” And that’s how we got into business consulting.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Building a brand online parallels in a lot of ways building a brand in person. Think about it this way, if you were to walk in a room, how do people react to you? How do they respond to your physical presence and engage with you? Building an audience online is now different. Your brand and reputation is what people say about you when you’re in and not in the room, and the cool thing about social media is you get to see that conversation take place and actively contribute to it. Creating content for your audience is about being authentic, not perfect, while still putting your best foot forward. One of the tricks I’ve taught other brands for developing their audience on social media is to come up with three brand pillars. For some it may be leadership, or innovation, or even family for a family owned and run business. Whatever those three pillars are, make sure every post can be traced back to one of those three pillars and you will always be on brand on social media. Another thing I have noticed is that your posts is what attracts new followers/audience members, but your daily stories and life moments is what makes people stick around, because as you share the interplays of your business and life you are relatable on a human level.
Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?
Building multiple streams of income is both necessary and challenging. Your long term goal for your business should always be to build multiple streams of income. I think I was reading somewhere that the average millionaire has at least six streams of income. Thats probably on the low side. When you are just starting out in your business you need to focus on one stream of income and really master it. For K. Levy Wine Co., that was the wine club. Then just start listening to your current customers and potential new customers, as they will tell you what your second stream of income will be. We started to get a lot of virtual wine education and wine tasting class requests which over time became our second stream of income. Then as we began to get more attention from our current offerings other wine brands noticed which is how our third stream of income, consulting, came about.
Contact Info:
- Website: krislevy.co
- Instagram: instagram.com/therealkrislevy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealkrislevy/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristopherlevy/
- Twitter: twitter.com/therealkrislevy
Image Credits
For all photos: Esperanza Dunning