One of my pet peeves is when someone comes in, joins the club, gets free tastings and a discounted bottle or two then quits the club a few weeks later. I do have a few things in place to cut down on this including requiring a first shipment in order to start benefits. However, my staff doesn’t quite enforce this requirement, especially when the cat is away. Is there a way to not allow club discounts until a certain number of bottles are purchased or $$$ spent? Does anyone require the first shipment to go out (whether the first shipment is sold through the tasting room or they decide to wait until the first actual shipment) in order to award your employee the sign up bonus? Is that even legal?
Plenty of wineries delay the signup bonus. It’s a tradeoff of accounting vs simplicity. Either way it should be easy enough to enforce the first shipment rule by making proper enforcement a condition of the signup bonus.
I am not an HR pro, you should consult one. Rules may be different in your state, but I’m pretty sure a delayed signup bonus is okay in CA.
Of course, clamping down on your staff could have an overall negative effect on your signup rate. Keep that in mind.
Your first step should be to measure how often this actually happens. I get upset at this sort of thing too, but when I check the data, it really rarely happens (in my experience).
Run a LTV report or Shipments per Member report, or some combination of these, to see if it’s really worth fighting.
I ended up not fighting it, and I feel that increased flexibility is a bigger selling point than more rules.
This. I’ve found that when it does happen, the number of times that it seems truly nefarious is very small. And I put a flag in the customer record for future reference. 
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I like the idea of flagging the customer’s account. I haven’t had many that I felt were taking advantage, but I hope I would look at it more as a missed opportunity than a loss.
My philosophy on incentives is that it’s your tasting room staff’s job to get people to sign up, but retention is based on so many factors that are beyond their control. They should get the sign up bonus first.
[quote=“rmcguire, post:3, topic:1757”]
I feel that increased flexibility is a bigger selling point than more rules
[/quote]So true. Don’t make people start looking for the loophole either. If people taking advantage really is an issue maybe the solution is to make new club members commit just a little more up front? A required welcome package purchase? @ElJefe’s comment on making proper enforcement a condition of the bonus is likely the best idea. Of course as @rmcguire said measure it before doing anything.
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Our written policy is we revoke the club bonus from our staff members if the club member quits before their second official club shipment. We ask club members to commit to a year of club shipments, and we have a $75 cancellation fee for members who quit before receiving a year’s worth. This is easy for us to manage and the simplest way we’ve found to make sure everyone has intentions that actually make sense for our business.
I’m curious how often you have to charge that cancellation fee? Does that actually keep people in the club? I know if I could either be charged $75 for cancelling vs. paying $225 and actually getting my wine, I personally would take the wine. We do require that our guests take the first shipment immediately and then they can purchase all the wine above and beyond that they want, but our sign up sheet specifically says, your online order is not considered your “club shipment”. Agree with Jefe and mcguire that I get frustrated but it’s nominal how many people do what christies was mentioning when you dial into it.