The Wild Dog Estate, Australia: a case study in maximizing boutique winery profitability and business resilience

ABSTRACT

This case study explains how and why the Wild Dog Estate, a boutique winery in Australia, has successfully evolved and attempted to maximize its revenue streams and the profitability and the resilience of its overall business over a 17 year period. As well as growing grapes and olives, the Estate makes wines and spirits, is involved in cattle grazing and food production (pickling, bottling, charcuterie, smoking, brining), and online, cellar door and restaurant sales of its own and other artisanal wines, beers, ciders, spirits, and food, and finally, offers unique guest accommodations and winery experiences including property tours, nature walking trails, vineyard “long lunches” and weddings and other activities. The different revenue streams complement each other and smooth out year-round income peaks and troughs. More importantly, they interact synergistically to stimulate additional customer demand and significantly increase average customer spending and length of stay. Partnering with like-minded people on different business ventures under the Wild Dog umbrella has been a strong feature of the development of the estate. This has reduced business risk by bringing in specialist expertise and additional financial resources as each new business line has been established. However, it has also increased business complexity and the difficulty of maintaining a consistent and coherent overall vision for the property. Also, a lack of local government support has been a significant impediment. The Wild Dog Estate business lines and activities largely grew organically over many years, but always with an overarching vision to increase engagement and to attract a broader range of customers so that infrastructure and other investments could be amortized over a larger base. Strong arguments can be made that other boutique wineries should consider following a similar path, but they could be more deliberate in their business planning and grow faster. To prepare this case study, public information was reviewed and selected senior managers and partners in Wild Dog Estate businesses were interviewed in depth.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Boutique winery
• business growth and evolution
• hospitality business
• case study

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous assistance and support of the Wild Dog Estate for participating in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Case questions

The following are some possible questions for when using this research in a case learning situation.

• Compare and contrast large “mass market” wine producers and small “boutique” wineries.

• What is the profile of desirable food/wine tourists and how should this affect the features and business scope and practices of boutique wineries?

• Thinking about the different (actual and potential) business lines within the Wild Dog Estate, how would you prioritize their relative importance to the overall success of the business? And if you were establishing a new boutique winery, in what sequence would you invest in and launch the different business lines?

• Winemaking is a core business line on the Estate. How and why has it evolved over the years?

• Recommend how you would structure the organization and manage the Wild Dog Estate and its various sub-businesses and coordinate their activities – explain your reasoning?

• In your view, do businesses have a natural “lifespan” - explain your thinking with reference to this case?

Wild Dog Estate case study teaching notes are privately available from the authors via email from [email protected].

Notes

1. In Victoria, Australia local government revenues are largely derived from annual property taxes that are called “Council Rates”.