Bottlerock

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast. My guests today are the brain trust and owners of Bottle Rock. This is audio only. There's three guys here. Maybe a little confusing, but why don't you introduce yourselves briefly one by one maybe people can get the voice associated with the name.

My name is Dave Graham and that is my voice. Jason, your next.

Okay, Hey Bob, this is Jason Scoggins.

Well I'm justin Drigo. So nice to meet everybody.

Okay, guys, you know, toss up for twenty as they used to say on gi College Bull. What makes Bottle Rock different from every other festival? Well, where do.

We want to start? Justin, Jason, I guess we can start at kind of. We always call it our fourth partner. Well, we're partners with Live Nations, so it's actually our fifth partner, and our fifth partner is probably the most powerful partner

Okay, justin conventionally it's about the lineup at festivals, except for very elite festivals like Colla, not everybody is nap affluent or is that wrong? Is Napa a draw into itself so that you can sell tickets?

Yeah?

I think it's more of what Dave was referencing about the standard of quality that we're looking for. It doesn't necessarily have to be someone that associates with the Napa Valley brand itself. But when people think in Napa Valley, generally they're thinking about things that are done well and done the right way. And and then let's say it was a restaurant or let's say it was this food and wine, or it was a spa, or it was

If you're going to do it NAPA, you're going to do it right.

And so that's really the mindset that that Dave reference to that we've we've been after. So even if you don't reference or like have an affiliation for Napa Vallee and you don't drink wine, but.

You don't even have to, you know, you know, you don't have to resonate.

With the brand itself, but when you get there, you really, hey, this place is different, this festival is a little different. Like what does that mean to some people? Means Hey

So who comes to Bottle Rock, Jason, do you want to hit that?

Sure?

Hey, Bob, Well, I mean Yeah, Justin was about to say people of all ages.

I think that's a fair statement.

I mean, in terms of the demographic or regional demographics, it's you know, eighty percent Northern California attended festival. You know, so from Silicon Valley and San Francisco to Sacramento people are coming to Bottle Rock. And then in terms of the you know, the age profile, you know, we're looking at probably a bit of a unique festival relative to some of the what I would call write a passage festivals,

Is kind of what our demo spread is.

We kind of look at.

It as a as a bell shaped curve, and so like if you if you're looking at a bell shaped curve, probably the mean or the fat part of the curve would be in that kind of thirty two thirty five year old range, and then there are long tails and so what We'll have a lot of young people that will come, and we'll have a lot of people I'm fifty two that'll be my age and older. But the real fat part of the curve would be around that thirty two thirty thirty f five range.

And to what degree is the repeat business.

It's it's it's massive, it's it's it's it's really hard to quantify because a lot of the everything's purchased with with credit card tickets with credit cards, of course, and what that means is that one year I might just buy four tickets for myself and my family, and the next year my wife might buy, you know, the tickets

Sales, and roughly maybe half of the GA tickets are also sold without anyone knowing the lineup yet, you know, it's like one of those is the lineup important or not? The lineup is massively important still, I know you were referencing that there's other things, but it's because people expect a big lineup from.

What we're doing.

They know that we're going to invest the money and the right type of artists, and so all these tickets sell ahead of time. It's like, oh, the artists, you are not that big a part of it. It's like the artists are massively a part of it, and you know, kind of we're held to that same quality level and all these pre sale tickets and even though they're buying a ticket before they know the light up, but they're counting on us to deliver a top line up every year.

So if the higher tier tickets sell out through the loyalty program, to what degree do you feel pressure to deliver a different experience from what you've delivered previously.

I guess I could comment on that whether whether we've ever.

Got this expectation from a fan or not, or whether we just started this ourselves, which which is what we did. Was it was really a plan, and we've done this every year to change the VIP experiences significantly enough each year that if you said, oh, I've already gone plat at ball Rock Guard, you know what that is. I've already done the VIP experience. I know what that is.

Can you give me a couple of examples.

Yeah, So it's there's a there's a theme to it in these lounges and like you'll see the Platinum Lounge and the Platum Lounge might go from everyone walks into a Platum lounge, that's a that's one of the higher the highest ticket ticket type that we have, and they see it and it's like a New York speakeasy from the nineteen twenties or you or say something like that. Right, it's got to stir and feel to it. Like you could be you know, in you know, Lower Manhattan, etcetera.

But they're walking into an entirely new.

Design every year.

And we do the same thing with our via well color vip fhillas as well.

Okay, so if it's Cabo or New York, what experiences might be attached to that to make it unique on the theme?

Yeah, so I mean, for example, and I think we might have even chatted about this with you another time, Bob, Let's say, with that New York experience and that you know, kind of that speakeasy vibe and you focus some tastings on like you know, rare bourbons, you know, or it could have been more food that was more tied inspired from a New York chef. And then the next year I mentioned it's the same place, it's the same ticket, it's the same you know, overall feeling a luxury.

But if I had that more like Baja name, we're going.

To compare like a bunch of highest end tequila right in. What it really is the difference between you know, Don Julio in nineteen forty two and pass Azul and five others like and let's have you sit down and taste and pick them apart and see which one you like. It's it's not that someone needs to go to a music festival.

It tastes tequila, but.

It's kind of an unexpected thing and you know, and certainly an unexpected lower equality we're trying to bring to just you know, get people to say that's different.

Okay, let's go back to the very beginning of the fan experience. Let's assume the festival is mature, which it is. Now, do you have to do any advertising? What do you do to make people aware of the coming year?

Well, you got your typical, well kind of marketing strategy that I would say is very similar to what other festivals would do.

But then.

Throughout the year, as you're leading up to the festival, you've got announcements that you make with partners that you bring on that are at the restaurant level, that are at the food level, sorry, at the wine level, at the call it culinary stage level that everyone waits for and everyone anticipates. And so these are kind of, let's put it this way, like if we're talking about the culinary stage, everyone is waiting to see who is going

What it is.

But we release that that announcement in the form of an ad maat, and in that ad mat we you will see celebrities. You will see the very artists, many of them, many of the very artists that are playing the festival that year, and then you'll see rockstar chefs.

All all build in a way.

That is very similar to how a festival would build build its musical lineup. And so we make these large announcements, and then of course we do social media around it and creative kind of call it products to kind of promote that even though in many of those announcements we're not doing those and making those announcements to sell tickets, but instead just to deliver on what people are expecting. But again to Justin's point, it's going to be different

Okay, festival plays at the end of May. When will the first tickets be on sale for the subsequent year November of the of the of the prior year. And why November is opposed to July or February.

Right, Well, we want to give people and our loyal customers the ability to actually not have to have to wait in the queue and to worry and distress as to whether or not they're going to actually get the

Okay, so let's assume I've come before. Am I going to have constant contact with you, email, whatever, or all of a sudden I'm going to get noticed that the tickets run sale in November.

You're going to be notified in a couple of ways. You'll be notified via text assuming you signed up for SMS, and you'll be notified via email, and also social media will will make you aware that these loyalty sales are in the hopper.

Okay, so I've signed up to be reached, but is there any follow up between the end of May and November? Do I get you an email with pictures or is it relatively quiet? And to what degree are you worried about overloading the customer.

So, at the risk of being the guy that's the only guy that's talking, I'll let justin give an example. Justin, if you can give them an example of how the customer experience starts with the way in which they purchased the ticket, all the way through almost what we will call the advance of that customer, and then to the actual on site arrival and then egress and perhaps maybe use the Platinum customer experience as an example.

Yeah, I can give an example of that. I guess, Bob start.

I guess they answer one of your questions first, in terms of do we go darker? Do we content? And Hey, the festival ended in call it the end of May or early June. Are we reaching at to them in July and stuff? So other than the what you'd expect, which is kind of a pretty deep survey process to try to understand feedback, that's what happens right after the festival.

Guys actually did it.

So we get a lot of that, which is which is fun to hear, right, It's like we're listening to you, so we, you know, take the time to fill this thing out.

So we do that right after the festival.

And then you did make a comment about some what do you could you touch a customer too much? It is what we are really sensitive on that, right, So we don't send out a bunch, We don't really hit social very hard, We don't hit emails very hard in that fall time frame because we don't want people to unsubscribe frankly, right, and to get tuned.

Out of it.

And then then we ramp up, like David.

Just mentioning in that early fall time frame, to make sure before the holidays people have a chance to re engage with the brand and re engage with the ticket sale process. And then yeah, I will go into the whole the whole thing that Da've cheed up right there. But like you know, we spent a lot of time on what is that, what is that ticket purchase feeling like? If we were a customer, what would we want right?

What is that when you get it in the mail?

What does that packaging look like? And in regards to the higher end ticket sales, there's a very hands on approach to it. There's a concierge, you know, that's kind of take care you need to you know, help people travel, you know, make sure that you get you know, from the hotel in the way that you want to get from the hotel. And then you know, we're greeting you on site and there's you know, you're greeted with the glass of champagne and you're you know, showing your way

That wasn't one of the goals we had.

Again, they teed it up by saying, we're really just trying to try to put ourselves in the customer shoes, like what would we want here, right, what would you want if you bought a ticket at this price?

Right?

And we just listed it out as we were a customer. You know, in the end, it's it's it's kind of simple if you just jump in the customer shoes and try to design it that way.

So forgetting when these tickets go on sale in loyalty, how many different kinds of tickets are there?

Well, there's there's three day GA, there's single day GA, there's single day VIP, there's three day VIP, there's three day skydapp, there's three day a platinum, and then there is well, I don't know if we want to talk about that other ticket, but.

There's another merit.

And then and then of course suites, and within the suites you can and Jason can really impact that. But there are two different types of levels, the VIP and the platinum.

Oh wait, wait, wait, wait wait, let's go very simple by price. First, GA, everyone understands that you pay a price like a regular festival. You stand, you watch the acts, and you can buy food. The next level up is it's VIP. So what do I get? How much more expensive? So this year GA for let's call it the whole weekend? How much was GA for the whole weekend?

So GA, roughly, if you're talking three day, is about four hundred dollars.

Okay. So the next step up from there.

Well, then there's a single day GA, which is two hundred, and then the three day VIP is the next step up, and that would be about twelve hundred dollars, and then the single day VIP would be just under five hundred.

Okay, I pay my twelve hundred dollars. What am I getting for twelve hundred dollars? If the GA people are.

Not getting I'm going to let our VIP guy describe that.

Justin I will, and then we're gonna By the way above, you'll you'll find this out. It didn't matter what question you answer, any three of us could I answer any question that comes up. So I feel like that Jason answers one of these. I'll see this one up just because it's VIP and I'll give the answer to that.

But then, Jason, I'm going to make you talk after this. So yeah, so in general, the GA and we.

Can you Actually this comes as a surprise because of the focus on or I guess the tension that gets paid to the VIP experiences. But you know, we put a majority of our investment the last couple of few years into the GA experience. So we have a goal to say someone shouldn't feel like, oh I got a GA ticket right and then to it. But it's going to be just as clean. It's going to be the same sidelines, it's going to be all the shade and

Of of you know, being an.

Outdoor event all day in that in that VIP tent though, is something they've touched on just a little bit where we have private performances so in the artists, and the artists are obviously compensated, uh for this, but is an extra play. So if someone's on the main stage, say at four o'clock, they might do an extra performance just for the VIP guests and it's kind of an acoustics

So it's essentially it's elevated viewing.

It's better bathroom, it's the VIP lounge, it's the VIP performances, it's up close viewing.

It's preferred parking that you know, et cetera.

Okay, just to go back a step. What's capacity? How many are GA you know, how many are.

VIP Dave, You're probably looking at that, so go ahead.

Well, yeah, sure. I mean the capacity in general is is roughly around forty four thousand a day paid, and we do a mix of VIP and and GAS, you know, but we really lean towards like single day tickets. So the total number of tickets that will sell this year will be roughly seventy seven thousand tickets, and you'll roughly have call it, ten thousand VIPs at different levels per day within that, and then the rest would be ga.

Okay, why would people buy a single day as opposed to a three day Well, I think there are a lot of reasons.

One would be that maybe they're coming to the Napa Valley and they want to experience the Napa Valley in addition to Bottle Rock. So they come to Bottle Rock for one day and then they decide to do wine tasting the next day. Number two is, you know, Napa is kind of off the beaten track. Depending upon the time you leave let's say San Francisco, it can take you an hour, it can take you two and a half hours. And so if you leave at the right time, it can be quick, and it can be a fun

And so for those reasons, a.

Lot of people will will opt for the single day and we've kind of embraced that and turned kind of some of those difficulties that that customers have coming to Napa Valley because it is off the beaten path and hotel rooms can be hard to get to and expensive into a strength and and and and so if you're going to sell out and you have a fixed capacity, financially, it makes more sense for us to sell more single day than three day because you'll have a higher growth

Okay, let's go back to the VI I P experience you talked about like these acoustic performances. Would the VIP customers be notified of that or would they just have to be near where the performance takes place when.

It occurs, justin you want to hit that.

Sure, Yeah, there's a yeah, so they customers know that's part of the ticket type. Again, there's a lot of there's no one thing that sells the ticket and gets all the loyalties, so you'll hear a lot of it, whether it's changing the design or incorporate the artists experience.

So and so I just know that we're not hanging our head on any one of these things.

It's the combination that really, at least we feel will drive the long term loyalty to it.

But they're they're aware that this is.

Going to happen.

So does someone know what what artists are going to perform when they buy the ticket? No, but they know there's going to be these intimate performances and then they'll find out through the app and through email correspondence as we get really close to the festival. Sometimes the hardist we don't know exactly who's playing what timeslot because these are only short, very short sets like we mentioned twenty minutes or so thirty minute.

Sets, and so we release it up and it's.

Kind of a it's like a little bit of like a holiday present for someone to unwrap. Like they know they got a ticket and they know what's coming next week, All right, when are they going to when are they going to tell us who the private performances are, you know, and it's something and we're not selling any extra tickets because of the tickets have already been sold a long

Are excited for.

They already bought the ticket, but they just they can't wait to, you know, figure out what's also part of their experience the when the headline up is revealed.

Okay, if I have a g A ticket, I have access to the culinary stage absolutely, Okay, v I P. What's the next level up from V I P.

I'm laughing because it suggins you want to you want to answer that or you won't be sure.

I'm gonna make Jason answer a question.

Yeah, he's forcing me. This is this is Justin's world, Bob. But but to this point we all kind of overlap here.

Okay, so how many Skydeck tickets are there?

We sell a little over a thousand, and based on the programming that we do. Dave's responsible for the artist programming, based on the program we would do, you know, any one stage and the.

Sky Deck would have.

You know, half the viable audience could be anywhere at any one time, So we try to keep the audiences split up so that it always does feel roomy on each stage. So there's a great content happening on the main stage that attracts a X number of people, and the second stage would have another artist going at the same time, and that would attract a different population of Skydeck.

Okay, how much does Skydeck ticket cost?

I think we're at the two right, around two thousand dollars all in, Dave, correct me if I'm wrong.

You're looking at this particular at the price sheet, You're about right.

And for that mattered, we didn't really touch on this. We're doing the all in pricing now, Bob, for whatever it's worth. So when we say these prices, we're talking about fees and so forth.

Okay, if I paid two thousand and I'm in the sky Deck, do I get any wine or any food or just I have as part of that? Or am I just an exclusive location?

You are in an exclusive location.

You get a full hosted bar that includes a very well curated Napa Valley wine list of whites and reds, of all kinds of varietals, so cabs and pinots and Chardonnays and sat blancs, and that's all, you know, included with the ticket.

Uh.

And then we have you know, our our premium bar you know, well drinks you know from from Don Julia Tequila to Kettle One vodka uh, and a full suction of beers you know, from pacific O or you know, Cores or Loganitas. So this is all included in that ticket, unlike the VIP ticket which is no host if you will.

And is there any food involved for two thousand.

Not on the sky deck or the vip.

Okay skydeck for two thousand. What's the next level above that?

Justin take it away?

Yeah, I'm sure the platum, the plant program. We referenced it earlier with the lounge. So that's a six thousand dollars ticket, and so that seems like a lot.

And then people go to it and they did, all of a sudden they feel like.

Hey, that's pretty that's a pretty good deal compared to when I paid it. The master's comptter, why I paid at the one race, So it is all relative, and so what do you get for six thousand bucks a ticket?

So there's a lot, but I guess.

To start with like where you where you arrive or where you park. You know, a lot of people get dropped with a car service with that ticket type.

Or you park your car. Either way, you're doing.

It backstage, and so you're literally arriving essentially like adjacent to the Hardest Village and you go on a golf car, you get your glass of champagne and welcome, and you get dropped off, you know, kind of you know, escorted through the back of the house and you get dropped up right in the back of the main stage at what we call the Platinum Mound. So in the Platinum

Right.

We're not trying to get people drunk. We're just trying to actually walk them through a process and how they're each made. And we do the same thing with one. We'll have lines that these same people buying a six thousand dollars ticket, they actually can't get on the list to buy themselves, but they can come to Battle Rock and try it. So that's kind of been a fun thing. And again we're just going off of what feedback that customers are telling us in those surveys, and so we

Or you can go down to the chute and be like.

Literally in the front row, so it's kind of a guaranteed front row seat when you have that ticket type.

We also offer a similar viewing at the sound mix.

Obviously, we all know that the sound is likely the best right at the sound mix, so we do a cocktail service and a bar for this guest at the sound mix itself, so they have multiple places to view from, they have a concierge to help them with their.

Stay and their air travel and.

And et cetera, et cetera. But in general, that's a rough overview of the Platinum program.

One thing I would add is, you know, we we kind of really took for granted just how much our customers enjoy being whisked through on a golf cart the back of house. I mean, Bob, you're you're He've been in the music industry for so long and being back

It is at that.

Place where they are greeted, they meet with the concierge, They're able to store their purses or whatever they want to store in their own personal locker, and then become aware of COO, perhaps of the artists they can set up a meet and greet for, and with what other kind of programs tasting tastings, et cetera they can sign up for all right then and there, it's kind of the central hub where throughout the day, if they need to get back to to to their locker, or if

And how many of these tickets do you sell a day? It's a complicated question.

Yeah, well, because there's there's some there's some platinum suites as well, and we'll make Jason take you through what the suites mean for us.

Okay, wait, wait, let me just stop for a second. Platinum and Platinum suites are the only other tickets available. There's nothing beyond those two.

Right, there's one more.

And what is that called.

It's a Marriott Bombboy American Express suite ticket type that we actually created a branded ticket type for a sponsor. And we sell about four hundred and fifty of those a day, so about you know, thirteen fifty over the weekend of total people.

Oh okay, let's let's let's go back. I spend my six thousand. Am I ever going to have to open my wallet again?

Now? Yeah?

If you so we'll give you a special hat you know that's just bought, and we'll give you a lot or not.

But if you want if you want some if you want some merch that's.

Not part of what we're giving you for free, then that's probably the only thing there is to spend money on.

Yeah, if you're in Ga, Bob, if you if you've left the platinum environments that Justin and Dave have been articulating, you're now just you'r a general admission guest, right, and if you want a beer at that GA bar.

Over there, you got to pay for that beer, believe it or not.

Okay, So tell me about the sweets, Jason, you're up.

Yeah, I'll jump in on that one. So the suites program has has become a really meaningful and robust hospitality experience for a lot of different clientele.

It's it's grown.

Over the years to the extent of we now have thirty two individual suites each day on site. And we've created this again another double decker that we referred to earlier. This would be stage right of the main stage. So you have a double deck or structure, sixteen suites on the bottom, sixteen suites on the top. We have a whole Suites team, conciers team and suite hosts that helped

And what that means is it doesn't really mean.

A whole lot on the suite itself, other than platinum suites are prioritized closest to the stage, but when you leave the suite, you are either now a VIP guest to the festival or a Platinum guest to the festival.

But I digress.

That's kind of to tie that up with the sweets, you basically have an in sweet bar. You have a very curated sweet menu from local restaurants such as world Famous Mustards, a Note Tree. These are all Napa Restaurants. By the way, so many many restaurants are participating to help feed our sweets guests. The sweet host and our team work together months prior to the festival to curate the food menu. You can upgrade your bar to you know,

Let's see here. The customer for the suites.

Has kind of evolved into a mixture of both sponsors wanting that group hospitality experience in addition to their branded experience that they're providing for the festival guests out in Ga somewhere. And or we get a lot of winery partners who you know, are finding this to be one of the best experiences for like hosting their distributors, their sales teams.

That are spread around the country.

They bring them back to Napa Valley and throw this huge party forum at Bottle Rock and it's been a home run for our wine partners in that regard.

And then you.

Get you know, the fifty year old birthday party We've even had a wedding party in our suites. But believe it or not, these suites sell out prior to even the lineup going out, which is which is kudos to the team for creating that experience that people just basically always pick up their option to take that suite than the following year, well before the lineup. So it's been

So and tell me about the MX Experience.

Yeah, that's that's a sponsored program.

We've been working with AMX and Marriott bomb Bay excuse me, which is the you know, a member card for the Marriotte you know hotel program and they have been a partner, I think since twenty fifteen, where again this program has grown as well. It's in my opinion, it might be the best feat in the house. It's literally right off of stage rights downstage edge, and it's it's basically a double decker suite with lots of room for about four hundred and fifty people all in the same you know

But you know, I think for for.

My money and some of the people that have that have bought this ticket year over year, they say, it's the best seat in the house, and.

And uh, it's a it's a great experience overall.

Okay, do you need like an American Express card to purchase ticket?

You need a Marriott Bonvoy card that's American.

That's an American Express Uh.

Okay.

And assuming you have that card, what is the fee for that?

Dick that that ticket is actually on par with our skydeck ticket that we were talking about earlier, which is around two thousand dollars. Uh, So there's this baked in premium as part of the sponsorship benefits to having that ticket.

Okay, tell us a little bit about the venue itself.

It's really small.

Since I'm on a roll yeah, it's uh, it's uh kind of when we first started this, I would have I would have let everybody know we're in downtown Napa Valley, Napa, the City of Napa. So Napa is one of five or six cities in the County of Napa, and and it's kind of the nerve center of the Napa Valley at this point in time. It used to not be way back when Justin, Dave and I were all elementary and high school kids here.

We all grew up here. So it's in it's in downtown Napa.

It's very close to a lot of the major restaurants and hotels. Super easy to get to when you're in downtown Napa, meaning you can walk from your hotel all you can walk from the restaurant that you just had lunch at and across the street and you're in the venue. It's at the Napa Valley Expo, which when it's not bought a rock, that's the Town and Country Fair, Kingtonias and crab feeds for fundraisers and things of that nature, which is which is kind of funny.

It's got a long history here in the city of Napa. The Expo does.

It's very like Justin was just saying, it's a very small footprint, which is part of the reason why we started building these double deckers to create more real estate for hospitality and VIP type programs. It's one of the reasons that we spend all year thinking about you know, entry or ingress and thinking about how guests flow from one area of.

The venue to the other area of the venue.

It's it's why we spend all year think about where we put sponsors and how food lines Q or bar lines Q. You know, these guys can jump in anytime now, but it's it's something that you know, we wish we had more real estate. But at the same time, the venue being in downtown NAPA and being more intimate than a sprawling, you know, one hundred and twenty thousand person festival where we're forty forty four thousand cap it makes it for a more I guess, approachable venue.

So I'll stop and let Justin or Dave take a shot at that.

Okay, do the expensive tickets sell out first or the GA tickets expensive?

The expensive tickets sold out before the lineup even went out. This year, we sold them all before we even announced the lineup. The VIP plus tickets, every level we spoke about.

Yeah, okay, let's talk about the economics if you sell out? What's the gross.

Enough we were if we were I don't know, if we wanted to talk about it.

Well, you're gonna I'm gonna see it at poll Star anyway, the gross last year. I could probably look it up.

Yeah, yeah, if people tell the truth and when they report it, yeah, I don't know. I guess we're we're just because we weren't expecting that question will dance around a little bit.

But let's say it's it's it's.

Good, and then where were you going to go with that?

Let's say we said that number.

Well, okay, and I'm just breaking a festival economics are different from traditional arena economics. In a festival, traditionally, you pay a flat fee for the talent, and if you sell out, it could be very profitable for the promoter, so there's a huge outlay of cash. Okay, So the question would be, we'll start from the beginning, what percentage of the revenue goes to talent?

Yeah, well, actually one day, I guess, and trust me, we're not really dancing around this. But what we can say is Uh, and we can go go into depth on this. Yeah, So if we sell every ticket, all these premium tickets, included every one of the seventy seven thousand that Dave was mentioning, we're still roughly twelve million dollar loss in terms of that, And it's like, how could that be possible? Well, it's like, that's the amount of money we put into this show. Is it costs

Yeah, it's a difficult market to be in because you know, you've got you're dealing with with agencies that are really using comps based on you know, arena plays and stadium plays, and they're ignoring the fact that we're forty four thousand cap versus eighty thousand or one twenty and you know, without getting the specific match, we're probably looking at somewhere around twenty percent of h if you look at the total top line revenue, twenty percent of that would be what it is we spend on.

Artists and Dave, you can also fill in the gaps on that we're basically sandwich between Golden One and Sacramento, SAP in San Jose, and Chase in San Francisco, notwithstanding Outside Lands and Fox and all the Greek and all the things. So your competitive market, like if people don't know where NAPA is, we're kind of right in the middle of, you know, a really major music market.

Okay, so we got a twelve million dollars shortfull tell me about sponsorship.

Oh that's where I come in, Bob.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of different directions we could take this conversation, but to Justin's point, we are we are very dependent upon sponsorship revenue, and at.

The same time, we're very.

Cautious and careful and discipline about the type of sponsors that we would bring into the festival. Because of this whole brand promise, this whole brand identity that we talked about, we feel like it's very important that we curate sponsors as much as we curate the.

Food lineup and the wine lineup.

And that means sometimes we actually have to say no to very lucrative sponsorship deals because it's just not the right fit. And it's something you know, if you got to know us, we fight tooth and nail about I'm usually fighting for the sponsors, and Justin and Da were fighting against them, and uh and and we always end up in the middle somewhere in a good place. But you know, we we definitely need our sponsors. We love our sponsors. They actually add a ton of value to

Okay, if we got the twelve million dollars shortfall, how much does sponsorship make up. Let's just stay close to that, close.

To that, Yeah, we kind of make it kind of.

Okay with sponsorship, you break even talking about the sponsors. How many are local sponsors as opposed to national or international sponsors.

Well, local, being Napa Valley, we have probably you know, fifteen to twenty wineries that are all activating on site, pouring their wines, providing you know, tastings and great local Napa Valley experiences.

You know many I'll digress for a second.

Many of our wineries are in GA and they're in these twenty x twenty tents that you've seen at every festival, and they curate these beautiful lounges and these kind of tasting rooms at Bottle Rock. That makes GA guests feel like they're in a VIP experience that you wouldn't find at any other festival in the world. I could I could say that with confidence in terms of Bay Area sponsors.

Let's assume my tech company in Silicon Valley who has not made a deal with you previously, what is your pitch going to be to me? I have an unlimited budget. It's just a matter whether I want to spend it. Well, I mean, oh, go ahead, no, go ahead, day No.

I was just going to say, like I was just thinking back to the pitch, like like Cooley Godward Right, which is a sponsor of one of our suites and actually has two suites every year at the festival, And really what they were looking for is they wanted to be able to engage with some of their best clients

Okay. Traditionally, in sponsorship in traditional venues, and there's been a long history, it's going up down. People want signage and access to what de we are those elements of sponsorship at Bottle Rock.

Well, let's see here.

Signage is something that we are very I guess we try to keep at a minimum. You know, there's lots of other sporting events or events that takes sponsorship that that let signage kind of go hey wire, if that's the right term. Bottle Rock we definitely, you know, work with our sponsors to make sure that they fit within the brand guidelines of the overall festival.

Uh.

And it's not just a logo slap everywhere.

In fact, that's kind of a trend that's going you know away, like the logo slaps. No sponsors really looking for that anymore. They're really looking for through integration, how they can add value to the overall festival experience.

It's in the fan experience.

You know.

We do things, we build things ourselves that that we allow sponsors to sponsor, such as like a silent disco, really fun activation. People are wearing headphones, uh and they're listening to a DJ, but nobody from the outside can hear what those those guests are listening to and they're all dancing and having a great time.

So you know, that would be an example.

We we do a club, an actual club, indoor club where we have DJs playing live sets, and you know, we'll put a sponsor integrated into the club and for drinks with that sponsor's you know, alcohol for example, and and it's kind of like the club takeover by a vodka company. We actually have a spa that we would allow a sponsor to you know, be the title sponsor of the spa, and usually that's ah, you know, some sort of makeup or uh spa related type sponsor that

They want to like be the.

Name and title of an experience, and that's that's really what we've gotten good at selling. The second question is the access we You know, it depends on the fees. It depends on how many tickets they are looking for relative to the overall the overall sponsorship fee as well. Our VIP tickets sell out and every sponsor wants as many as they can get, and.

We have to kind of play that tug war.

Well, let me be more specific. Okay, Stevie Nicks is a headliner this year. If I'm a sponsor, can I meet Stevie Nicks?

Unlikely? But there are some spots.

There are some bands, and this is where Dave's world in mind collide. There are some bands artists that are willing to participate and do meet and greets, sometimes for an appearance fee, sometimes not. But you know, the higher up you go in the food chain of artists, as you probably know, it's harder to get there, get their attention.

Well, what I.

Would say is relative to access, one thing that we're really sticklers on and strict with is back of house access. So one thing that you'll notice when you come, Bob, is that the people that are back to the house for the most part of the people that should be back of house. And so whether you know you are a million dollar sponsor or a twenty thousand dollars sponsor, you're not going back to house. That that is for artists, that is for industry, and that is for staff.

That the appropriate staff.

As it relates to the meeting greets, really that is negotiated in the offer for the artists and they're basically four pieces that we negotiate relative to customer experiences with the artists as part of the offer process. And that that consists of the meet and greet. That consists of the v P performance. That that consists of the the GA jam Pad acoustic set, and then finally the culinary

Well, you know, one example would be we had a sponsor a few years ago that was willing to spend a quarter of a million dollars with us, but they served there it was a drink sponsor. They were serving their their beverages in a plastic, single use container. We have, you know, kind of graduated or evolved our sustainability program to the extent that we have eliminated all single use

Okay, on that.

I guess, just on that note, just think of where we we.

Have all these debates all the time, especially when it comes to turning away really big checks and just thinking

Right?

So there's been a lot of battles and just mentioned that over time, and it's tough to turn down.

Huge dollar amounts, but it's always.

With the long term view to think of like, how is this thing going to be special ten years from now?

How do we not screw it up.

And at the same time, Justin the sponsor, beget other sponsors. This is something you always say, right like, if you have.

Rolex as a sponsor and you're trying to get other brands like Rolex, you better you better stay true to that because if you if you go to a different lower level watch brand, Uh, Rolex might go away real quick because they see, oh, that's not who I want to be associated with.

And that's you know, you say it better than I do.

But that's that's definitely been another thought as to how we think about these sponsors.

I remember when we win when we turned down a half million dollars because we wouldn't put a car in the middle of our VIP food court or adjacent to it. And after this a little bit of a debate because it was a great car brand, so one could argue that that brand was in line with the customer it was going to be in in the VIP area, but still it was a car in that area and we turned it down.

Yeah, Okay, sponsorship brings you to even what are the other revenue streams?

Justin's our CFO.

Go ahead, We're gonna all touch on food. Yeah, yeah, no, it's like touch on the food. I mean, the food in.

One world is big in Northern California and the Bay Area, so we we try to go all in on that, like we've all mentioned. So that's a that's an important part of the economics as well, which I know is the question you're asking.

So we do have a very high per cap on.

Our food and beverage spend as measured against you know, pretty much everybody we can pace ourselves against, and which includes you know, we try to look at events outside of the music business as well, golf tournaments and you know, the US Open Masters, you know, it's at a Kentucky Derby.

You know, we're trying to understand.

Per caps at all events and what people do to uh, you know, essentially give that high end customer what they're looking for. So it's a big food and beverage program. It's really complicated.

We do.

I believe it's like ninety five different wines by the glass throughout the festiv which just sounds stupid if you run a restaurant.

Here, like you guys are crazy, what are they thinking?

Because it's it's complicated to run it that way, But it goes back to like, hey, if you're a customer, what would you what would you want? You know, you'd want more variety, more choices everywhere you went. So our concessionaire at times that we've partnered with, we've partnered with a couple of them over the years, but they all think we're crazy and it's really inefficient.

What do you guys think?

And you know, offering that many different food options and why are you making this so complicated?

But it's resulted in, like I.

Said, what we hear are the highest you know, food and beverage per caps of anyone in the country. And so it still goes back to like we're trying to just give a customer what a customer wants, and a lot of times that's really good quality and a lot of variety.

So other than food and bevery any other revenue.

Streams merch merch.

How about parking?

Parking is a loss and all the day talk on merch if you have any merch questions on it, But parking is But we don't own any parking lots, right, So you're at a you know, stadium or arena and it's got a big paid parking lot and you can monetize that.

And in our case, we don't have any party.

So we're out privately renting lots to try to put on sale and then try to staff that, and had lighting in our bathrooms and you know, the highway signs and all the things that takes to run a parking operation. So parking is a is a loss a loss leader. It's something to provide to make sure customers can get close, but it's definitely not a money maker for us.

Okay, Dave, you're going to talk about merch.

Oh, all that I would say about merch is that we do very well, and we we do not the merch design, the merch look, the merch cut is is custom. Every single year, the product costs us a lot more than what we would like to spend, but every year we choose to go down the path of going for

And is there any other income that we haven't covered?

Lockers and hilarious, Yeah there is small stuff, yeah, super small stuff.

Lockers and yeah.

Oh okay, okay, let's go back to the beginning. You guys were not in this business. You grew up together. I want to hear what you guys did before you entered this business. So let's start off with you, Jason, what were you doing before you were involved in bottling?

Well, let's see, I was involved early on. My first career was as Dave's lackey. He hired me out of college as his sales manager or dot com startup in the in the automotive internet advertising space, and you know,

Golf not so well.

And while I was back in Napa is when Bottle Rock one point zero happened. And we'll get into that in a second, But so I heard about bottle Rock one point Oh, I knew the guys that started it, and I threw my hat in the ring and said, hey, that sounds really interesting.

I'm not working right now. Let me see if I can help you guys.

So I'll leave a cliffhanger and we'll get back to that and let Dave and Justin answer the question.

Okay, since you work with Dave. Dave, what were you doing before Bottle?

I had a software development company with a little venture capital arm to it.

We focused on.

Startups, building kind of high end back end technology for them. Jason's Company, interestingly enough, was one of our first clients and our company, that company, which I sold thirteen years later, I think is still working for Jason's company. Building At the time, I think we were focused on configuration technology so they you know, if you ever go to research.

A car online and to drop down make model trim.

We would make that kind of disparate data that was out there into a configurator and allow people to easily build and research cars. We built that for Jason and his company, and we did that for many other companies. And yeah, and if we saw a company doing well, we would do some work for equity or maybe throw the twenty five too hundred grand at a good valuation and roll the Dice, and I was selling that company at the time that Bottle Rock one point zero was happening.

Justin.

Sure.

Yeah, I.

Ended up uh out of a business school. I ended up going to work for IBM. You know, it was at the time. It was an interesting time in the IBM world, and you know, kind of early was now called AI but there and the computer learning and what they called the Watson, the Watson Project. And so I left there and ended up in Orange County and then in Portland, Oregon. And then I left IBM and the sort of like a business job at IBM. I wasn't

For a while.

It was a company called Breakaway Solutions actually based out of Boston, but we were in a technology development at the time in the dot com boom era. Stayed in San Francisco, got married, ended up moving back with idea I moved to Dallas and then New York City.

And from New York I I.

Traveled all around the world and had a big team in India and do a lot of work in Europe and such. And I focused a lot on the retail segment, which at the time was like, you know, deep into retail and kind of retail strategies and a lot about like what what what Why would I Why would a retail store in the same place that it was yesterday? But if you redesigned the look and feel of it, why did why did the sales go out?

You know, it's like it's the same product at the same price in the same location, but you change the experience. So I didn't have any real formal experience into what translated into Bottle Rock later. But when I look.

Back on it, it was like, hey, a lot of.

That stuff that that I did for years out of New York really resonated with a future later.

So right now, to get back to Napa.

As you heard from the other two guys who all grew up in Napa, and the other two guys ended.

Up back in Napa.

I ended up having a chance to partner with a family who had started a luxury wine brand in Napa. I had amazing vineyard land, just.

Got done building a winery, had put a.

Lot of years of work into getting that thing rolling, and they were looking for a president to come, you know, partner with them on where the future would would go. And as random as it seemed, would me be in the kind of the New York and kind of global, you know business scene. To jump off that track and move to run a winery in Napa took a lot of people by surprise, but it was something I had

That's that's what it was a chance to do something really.

Cool, be back home, be back in Napa, raise my kids back in Napa Valley. So that happened, and then three years later that wine brand went from where it was at the time, and I told you it was set up for success, but it ended up being a sold out wine brand and not have to say there was nothing to do there anymore.

But I found it like a little low to stay.

Wait a minute here, we.

Either got to buy more than new Land, we got to release new wines. And then at that point, this little rock thing came along and Jason and Dave were sniffing around at it, and I kind of leave the same cliffhanger lated.

And so in terms of how we transitioned from our old career to what we're doing now.

Okay, Jason, tell us about a bottle rock one point zero and how you guys ultimately get involved.

Well, let's see. Yeah, like I said, it kind of came out of the blue for everybody, even in the industry.

If I recall, you know, these kind of guy upstarts and NAPAs started. It cobbled a team together use the Expo and Downtown Apple we've already referred to. And you know I got involved literally as an unpaid volunteer.

I just said, let me help you guys. This sounds great. I just want a bigger seat at the table next year.

And you know, these guys ended up getting in some serious financial trouble, weren't able to pay some of their some of their debts to artists and union and the city and so forth, and That's when I got a little bit more involved, thinking, Wow, this thing was such a front end consumer success.

Right.

Like Dave said, he went justin when everyone left the festival, going wow, that was an amazing experience that first of It's kind of downtown Napa, and they had a great lineup and so forth and so on.

So I'm thinking this is a home run.

I just I need to help bridge these guys to get him to the next festival. And you know, it was probably the best worst investment I ever made, Let's put it that way. I gave him some money and got myself married with these guys, and there was no saving it from from their perspective. And and that's when Dave and Justin and I kind of jumped in and said.

Hey, we're all entrepreneurs. We all live in Napa.

We love the we love what Bottle Rocks stood for, the food, the wine, the weather, the culture of Napa Valley. We all kind of are in a place in our lives where we could take a take another shot at something.

Even though we didn't know anything.

About the music business or throwing a festival or a large event whatsoever. You know, we all kind of were confident and naive enough to do it. And and so yeah, next thing, you know, Dave, Justin and I are are the Uh we bought bought the assets. You know, they were about to go into bankruptcy. Dave, Justin and I navigated a whole pre bankruptcy scenario. UH got our got our MBAs on bankruptcy and how that whole process works, which we won't go into. But uh, you know learned

Okay, we've spoken previously, and you made good on the debts of Bottle Rock one point zero and you lost a ton of money the first year you had it yourself. How much money are we talking about? How much money to pay the debts? And how much money did you guys lose?

Well, there was there was roughly a ten million dollars loss that the company experienced the original company, and there was about eight million or so that was kind of really owed to creditors.

And so we though.

We bought the assets, and we did an asset purchase which would say to you legally, we don't have the obligation of responsibility to pay down any debt. It's hard to describe to a creditor if you bought let's say, the bottle Rock brand, and they're owed money by what they considered to be bottle Rock, it's hard to say to them, well, we didn't create the debt, We don't know you any money. We did say that a lot of the time, but it really went in one ear

That was on top of all the money we spent with paying off all the debt. So yeah, I go, everything was fine, Like we took money that was supposed to be to pay for the festival and paid off the creditors and the deck with that same money, and then and then then we lost.

Yeah, yeah, Okay, your three guys, did you three personally take the hit or were there other investors? It was a mix of both.

We personally took big hits, but we did have some some outside investment as well.

And what was your pitch to the outside investors. Well, when you.

Looked at Bottle Rock from a customer facing perspective, you could see that there was demand, right, So one of the challenges and we were looking at this as a startup. One of the challenges, the biggest challenge when you have a startup is to figure out if, in fact your theory will generate sales, right, and we the one thing that we did have going for us was that we could see that people were willing to buy what it

So, okay, you have this demand. How much money did you raise?

Wow, I won't get into that, but it was in the millions, and I think you kind of understand this festival space. You don't just get in with a few bucks. Notwithstanding the fact that when we started to book bands are subjects where our assumption was, oh, yeah, it'll be

Yeah, the concept with the first year that we tried this was I'm not sure that.

The goal really changed.

It like if you were an outside investor and we put a lot of our own money into it. It was that we had a plan and we knew we had to differentiate this experience, and if we differentiate this experience, people will pay for that.

And we almost never got a chance to ask you because we took that same money, you know, investors in our own and used it to pay off all the debt instead of actually funding the experience.

So you get into year two, we're like, well, then what do you tell investors you know? Or what do we tell our to our wives is probably a better that's probably a better example. What do we tell our wife is like, we just needed a chance to run our own play, and we didn't have a chance to

Yeah, And I think the happily ever after really started in twenty sixteen. Right, we did, We did well in fifteen, but in fifteen it was how would I put it, It was probably thirty forty percent of our plan as it related to the customer experience. In sixteen was when we really were able to lean in, trust our guts and deliver on what we thought people would really want.

Okay, so if you lost the money in fourteen, in fifteen, were you in the red or the black? Fifteen we made seven figures Okay, so let's go back to fourteen fourteenth, the first year that you guys were in control. What did you learn after fourteen?

Well didn't we? I mean talking about the artist side first day. Gosh, yeah, that's a learning on its own that was brutal.

You know, like the protocols that exist within the music space, in particular as it relates to artists and confirmations and advance, et cetera. You know, there's no amount of business background or business schooling that you can go through that's going to teach you how all that works. And we got our asses handed to us in twenty fourteen in that regard.

Wrong. The notion of.

History and how that plays into your ability or inability to work with an artist, The confirmation process and the word confirmation and confirmed, and the power that comes behind that, like things along those lines.

We had no clue about.

And the butting of heads that we had with agents was super tough, and we were on our heels of course, because we had no credibility in the space, we had no experience in the space, we had no history or relationships in the space, and we bought a shitty brand, and as far as the agents were concerned, if we bought it, we owned it. And so until they knew that we had taken care of the debt, they didn't want to work with us either. So we can go

Massive. Okay, that's twenty fourteen. Has it been a continuing learning experience or do you get to a certain point and say I got this.

Never, It's always a continued learning experience. And we are.

Man.

The more we can understand about pouring, the more that we can understand about production, the more that we can understand about macro influences in the music space, the better off we are. And you know, we're just beginning to learn as far as we're concerned how it all works. We're avoiding the pitfalls very quickly, much more quickly, i

How did you make a deal with Live Nation? When did that happen? What does Live Nation deliver for you?

Is the end of twenty sixteen, and we'd met some people from Live Nation, we met some people from the other you know, several other big players in the music business who I think I thought maybe ball Rock was a joke, knew it, lost time, money, then saw us struggle our first.

Year, and then when we had a different level.

Of success in twenty fifteen, again we didn't have a huge success, but at least it proved viable. And then with twenty sixteen in the spring, like they said, we made some you know, somewhat.

Monumental changes that kind of.

Proved this to the real thing to her to day.

So we had a lot of indown interest in partnering with us, and some of it was not very interesting to us, frankly, and then when the Live Nation folks approached us, it definitely peaked our years.

Up really at the time nothing to do with that. Live Nation was.

Really big, and you know they have a lot of money or whatever.

It was more around the area, and I think, well, it loves for us. They completely stuck this ever since that first conversation, which is that they know the music business really well.

They know touring, and they know.

Arenas, and they know pretty much every aspect you could mention. But their approach to festivals wasn't.

About we know everything, We're.

Here to go take it over.

It was actually very much the opposite that they had said, Hey, we've tried some.

Of our own things about what we found.

With festivals is that we're looking for, you know, really good people who understand how to create a differentiated festival experience.

And so when we.

Find out, we want to keep those folks because that's really the core and we're not going to try to change it and take it over. We So, would you guys want to talk because our plan would be to have you essocially partner with you to make you more successful. It wouldn't be to come in and run bottle Rock.

We want you.

Guys to run Bottle Rock.

And started the conversation again with others.

That were that were poking around that we didn't have.

An interest in.

That was probably a thing that really brought us all to the table initially. David Jason comment more.

Yeah, No, I think Justin you nailed it. And what's really so special about the relationship as you look back at, you know, the end of twenty sixteen, we were really working with Jordan Zachary a bit, feeling it out, seeing how it could work, et cetera.

And then we met with with Michael Rappino. And when you.

Look back at that meeting, every commitment that he said or made as to how it would work and how he would let us do our thing and just be there as support when and if we needed them or him, they he delivered on Like how often are you able to say that about anything or any relationship, right, whether it's with your spouse, your best friends, your business relationships, whatever, like you never can And we can honestly say that every single thing that they said that they would do,

They wouldn't do they didn't do.

And that was just just it's been fantastic so it's been a great relationship.

Okay, as far as a business transaction, they paid cash for a certain ownership percentage in the enterprise. Correct. Okay. In terms of booking talent, does Live Nation help you with that?

Only if we need it, and that exists at all levels. So we do our thing, and you know, if we need to perhaps see if it's possible for us to jump on the tail end of a tour that Live Nation has, we can call up anyone in Live Nation touring and say, hey, any chance that we can be a part of this or you know who's really the decision maker, et cetera.

We can you know, work, but do that with the agent as well.

And the agents are they understand that we're part of Live Nation and we work together and everything's in full transparency.

We have.

You know, for the most part, we kind of just do our own thing, but we also share information, talk, learn and work with the other Live Nation festivals. C three's been great to uh, to to work with too, to bounce questions off of.

Uh.

You know, Charlie and Charles have been around forever and and they're always available to us when we have questions. When you know, we started this new festival, the Latino festival called Launda. We were we were able to go to to Live Nation touring to help have them help us make introductions, to really help us understand the the kind of artists market as it relates to northern California and how things work. So when we need them, they're there.

Now, you guys all have experience in business. Is one of you the financial expert in terms of budgeting? How does that ultimately work?

Yes, and so the way our partnership works, and it's a true partnership, So let me let me let me emphasize that. And number two is that if any one of us had not been a part of the creation of this this company, we wouldn't be here today. So like I, you know, I sincerely mean that if Jason wasn't here, we wouldn't do you know, Justin and I wouldn't be able to do it.

What what what we've all been able to do.

For example, we run a partnership in the way we call it one two three. That means that that we're someone is in charge of a given area, a given part of the company. But it that each of us are also involved in that area. We just don't own it and we don't have let's say, the final call in that that in that area. So let's use you said finance. So in finance, Justin would be one. I might be two, just Jason would be three. In sponsorship, Jason would be one, Justin would be two. I would

Okay, you're set for me, When do you start working on twenty twenty five? Already have so when did you start?

We put our first offer in for twenty twenty five a week and a half ago.

Okay, so do you have it all penciled out? Let's just make the numbers even. We're talking one hundred million dollars. We have thirty million for talent, we have thirty million for food. We got sponsorship. Do you have actual numbers locked in into someone creating those numbers and looking over those numbers? Absolutely? Absolutely?

And who is that the three of us? But Justin runs point and we have kind of a director of finance that works in house, that is always running the models, and then on a weekly basis, we're looking at expenses and revenues and projections to make sure that we're on point and the plan.

Okay, so let's assume you're buying talent, you're buying a lot of acts, and you have budgeted let's just say thirty million, and then all of a sudden you say, no, really, if I could spend thirty five, it's really going to be great. We will everybody say, they say, well, the budget was thirty screw you, No, no it.

It really comes back down to to opportunity cost in that given year, and if more money needs to be spent, we'll do it on the basis of opportunity costs. Because you look at what your next alternative is, and if that alternative is going to screw up what that forecasting model is for box office, you really don't have a choice. The question is really are you make What is your judgment relative to that opportunity cost being big? And so

Yeah, and it's it's it's really the U.

I guess something we haven't touched on a lot is the the business model or approach is it's always at least one or maybe two festivals out.

So I guess what I mean by that.

It's like like and we get this a lot, like, hey, let's let's say like, hey, all the VIP tickets sold out, there's seven VIP levels, they all sold out. And then so then what do you do? They're already sold out. So why would you spend a bunch of money on vi P and dreaming up all these new things for a VP. The ticket's already sold, money's in the pay it's for the next year, right, And so to your question on the artists, it's like you argue about tay does it do you pay an extra x nunt of

Trouble still on it the next year.

Yeah, And so we're kind of leaning into that, and again.

We're always kind of leveling up to say it's going to be worth it in the long run to spend more money.

Now, even though it comes right off the bottom line for that one year.

And if that's all you're doing is running one show for one year, that's what you do. You maximize profits. But we've never thought of it that way. We've always thought of it as a long horizon, like how is this thing going to be relevant, how's this thing going to be special ten years from now?

And let's not screw it up, Bob.

What they're not telling you, Bob, is that they look to me and go, what can we do in sponsorship to make the offset.

That's right, the real answer.

Okay, and then you know some of these things are more controllable than other like food and experience. Do you have hard numbers and you say this is what we can spend or how does that work?

Yeah, those those numbers don't really change much. Meaning like there's I mean, there's an artist.

The price that we just talked about, like, hey, you know so and so were gonna have to pay.

Them to do a one off and you know.

Fly day from Europe to make this show, and it's going to be a huge premium. We don't typically have that, Like I said, even if we change the Platinum experience and VIP and we invest heavy in the GA with all new turf and new shades, it's a pretty finite planning process. It's one of the things they've touched on to say, you know, we do a few shows right here in NAPA, we do other events, and now we're doing these two festivals.

You know, other companies do twenty festivals, right.

But the advantage to to what we're doing is really being able to get into.

The details of every little every little thing. So we we'd like.

To think that adds to a more special experience, but it also leads.

To no surprises.

Right.

We know exactly what everything's going.

To cost, pretty much.

Down to the penny.

You don't know what food and beverage spend will be. But we've got enough years under our belt that you know, we don't end up forecasting some crazy record food and beverage seals every year and then get surprised by it.

Right. We pretty much hit our numbers every year the last seven years.

Okay, just to amplify what exactly is the culinary stage.

The culinary stage is an added experience for all customers. It's nothing you have to pay for and it comes after you know, we we we've sold our tickets. The line the lineup does where we actually pair celebrity chefs with many of the very artists that we have in the lineup and uh celebrities and athletes in and on a stage where they are doing cooking demos, but in

And let's say we would get.

The bassist or Metallica, the basis for Green Day and the basis for Dave Matthews Band, all on the same stage with Jose Andres. We would make them actual functioning bass guitars out of pizza paddles while Jose and Race makes pizza and some other kind of favorite meal of theirs. So really entertaining, really like avant garde fun programming, and we get the biggest artists that play our festival to actually beyond it, believe it or not. And then of

Okay, if I have a GA ticket, am I going to be buying any generic food? Or is all food specialized, localized, unique to this festival?

Okay, yeah, it's all basically locally grown and or curated, I should probably say. In other words, we don't have a general food program. Every single food item that's sold is brought to you by a specific restaurant that we hand touched and brought in and set up, helped set up. So there's you know, seventy different food vendors throughout the venue and they're all operating as independent, small pop up restaurants.

I mentioned a not tree earlier. So we don't you.

Had actually a question about expenses. We don't spend any money on buying the food for this festival. The restaurants come in and take on that risk and we share a percentage repshare split with those restaurants after the fact. So the restaurants kind of do the heavy lifting. And Justin said it a while ago. We're giving our guests, the fans of the festival, this really wide variety of options, and you.

Know, it's kind of what people come to Napa Valley for in a sense.

Right, you come to Napa Valley for a long weekend, You're going to go to three or four wineries. You're going to go to uh maybe one or two day spas, you're going to go to, you know, three or four dinners out at different restaurants, And so people come to

Okay, uh, there was a comment earlier that you guys were involved in other events then Bottle Rock and your Latino Festival. What are those events?

Well, we do middle buying for for organizations, companies, etc. That want to have private events. We do buying for a PGA event that takes place in Napa every single year. We do some hard ticket shows locally here in Napa and then co pro's you know, during the festival throughout the Bay area. So that's kind of what someone might have been referring to.

Yeah, and we've done small festivals at wineries and Sinoma and and you know, well, as things pop up that that meat, you know, out alignment with what we're trying to do, call it brown wise, called quality wise, then we'll dive into it. But we'd rather do fewer things than do it really well versus just trying to add more and more things.

To the point, Okay, to what degree is Bottle Rock localized to Napa? Where could it be replicable replicated elsewhere? You know, there are certain Lollapalooza acl those are city festivals. Coachella is a destination festival. East Coast festivals. You always have issues of weather, but I'm not aware of anybody doing a festival at this scale that is upscale both in food and experience have you guys thought about expanding to another area thought about it?

We've been approached on it a ton of times. Yeah, and all three of us could answer this one. Maybe I'll chime in. But there's certain things that we do that are transferable. Like we said, if we just focused on on like a quality standard to everything that it goes from, Like is there dust in the air naut and do you pay double for trash service to make sure there's nothing on the ground. I mean you could

And we were doing it. A couple of things.

One is, do we have all those contacts, we can go run a festival there. You can everybody can roll out of stage and book artists and there'd be a viable venue and do the operation side of it. But to make it differentiated in our opinion, needed to go really deep and really really detailed, because we're into every every square inch and make it making it special.

And then the other thing is a lot of high end areas.

Right if you said pay Sun Valley's nice, and so is Aspen and so as I can mentioned the Hampton's and all those there's there's not hotels for forty thousand people in those areas, right, It's it becomes an issue with how to get people too in and out of

Or it's we don't think we personally.

Have the contacts and the team in that geography to make it really detailed and really special.

What about like Coachello where they went to two weekends. Is that something you guys are thinking about, Well, we.

Just went to two weekends, but that's with by adding an additional festival the weekend night or so similar to lat Yeah sorry, Jason, yes, similar to kind of Coachella adding stagecoach Bottle Rock is added launda okay.

But is there enough demand you only have forty four thousand tickets that you could do it another weekend, Well we have.

Seventy seven thousand tickets. But it's it's it's questionable, and it it really is.

A lot of work on the wineries themselves and the restaurants themselves. They are there, they have limited resources and limited staff, and they're bringing all of that for much of that staff to Bottle Rock for that weekend. And it's not just that weekend that they show up, as you know, it's it's it's all of the planning and

But for the most part, we will have a.

Whole different crew of restaurants all Latino at at Luanda, and the food and beverage, the beverage program will be very different than what we we we have at Otto Rock.

Just to go into that a little bit, that's two days instead of three, and how a're ticket sales?

Yes, two days instead of three and ticket sales went really well. We anticipate being at a sellout either by May or end of May. So we didn't know what it was going to go, and we should be sold out this year in our first year.

We're all three guys knowing what you know now, if we went back to the beginning, would you do this?

We say that all the time, and everyone that said we were crazy was right. So let's just put that out there and all of the reasons they said that we were crazy, they were right. That said, knowing what I know now, I would do it again. It's been a remarkable experience personally, professionally, we built a really fantastic team. It is a close knit team, with the exception of the first year when we didn't know what we needed

So I would do it all over again.

Absolutely.

How about the other two here?

Yeah, I feel like in the hindsight given what Dave just mentioned, which I agree with all of it, it would be hard to say you wouldn't do it again, right, because it's been such a special part of our lives.

It didn't start that way at all.

It started as one of the most stressful things, including you know, wives asking what and the hell were you guys thinking?

What is going on here?

But it obviously turned out the way it did, so we could say, hey, this is all amazing, everybody should do this, But it's just the opposite.

Right.

What Dave described is.

Accurate because it's really really unique and it's special, and like I said, our the fact that our employees like no one ever leaves. Everyone's like with us to stay as soon as they become part of the team. That's pretty great. And then the next person comes along and this happens all the time. Oh hey, I was thinking about doing my own festival in this What do you guys think? And where I I don't know about that.

And do it again all over the place.

Right.

It takes a special combination of everything that you just heard and the festival business is really hard, right, It's really hard to get all of those pieces and parts to work in sync and have everything lined up. So it's it's not like, hey, this is a home run, everybody should do it. It's it's kind of the opposite

Jason, okay, Jason.

Yeah, these, I mean these I always the order of the way we talk Bob is, Dave goes first, Justin goes second, and I always go third, and I usually speak the least because they take all the good all the good fruit off the tree.

But yeah, I couldn't disagree with I couldn't agree with them more. Although we do disagree.

Plenty, I couldn't agree with them more. It's been an extraordinary life experience, you know, Dave said. Personally and professionally, there's there's you know, we've all been in other careers. Yeah, I'm fifty two and so I've been around the block a couple of times. There's nothing that I've ever experienced or know anybody that's not in the festival business that that that goes through the experiences that the highs, the lows, the gut punches, the exhilaration of putting on a festival.

At the end of the festival, when it's over.

Monday morning, you wake up and you're just so thankful it's it's all over, but also just so proud and excited that you guys pulled it off again, and you know, there's nothing else that I know of like that out there.

So I always I'm the first guy. They always threatened that I'm out of here. You know, I'm going to be the first to quit this thing.

Jokingly, but but you know, it's like in my veins, it's in my blood.

I don't I don't think that's really the truth. And yeah, I guess I would.

I would do it over again myself, even though, like I said, it almost killed us the first couple of years.

Okay, I'm sure there's an exhamtiety in presenting the actual festivals over the weekends that occur. But you also talked about investing this year for dividends next year, for expectations next year. To what degree are you have an ongoing anxiety that this thing could fall apart or if you don't pay attention twenty four to seven, something go wrong. Is that in your heads where you say, oh, this is a smooth sailing ship. We've got it.

Always it's always the anxiety is always in our in our on front very nice so to speak, I mean it, gosh, you know what, you know, what I'm thinking about right now is when we do our annual tabletop exercises for law enforcement and with law enforcement, and when you're sitting there with with FBI and Homeland Security and local police and fire and sheriffs, et cetera, and then you're going through scenarios of what you would do in this situation

But man, it it it.

It definitely it stays with us, and it stays with us year round because it's a big responsibility and it's within our community and you just want things to go well. And we're not even talking about the finances here right now. We're talking about the you know, the safety and the customer experience component first and foremost, and and then there's the anxiety of the of the finances. Right, So so yeah, it's it's a lot.

Yeah, and it's a it's a fragile thing.

Like I obviously all three of us agree with what Dave said in that terms of that guest experience and the and just the safety aspect is what could what could ruin it faster than anything else. So we've got a huge emphasis on that. But then on the way that anxiety carries over to everything. I mean, Jason knows this from what he was joking around about where I was fighting over sponsors, and I'll be the first to over exaggerate something to say, if we take that sponsor,

And then we went to the same thing.

If we raise prices, that's what everyone else is doing, and everyone hates it. Well, as soon as we start, do you know, making this thing too expensive, that's the beginning of the end, you know. And so it's like this constant anxiety around not overpricing it, getting the security right, you know, making sure the experience is right again, investing in bands, even if the you know, in the culinary stage and things, even when the tickets are sold out.

Okay, to wrap it up, let's start with Jason. A peak experience from the actual festival. Since you guys have been doing it.

Peak experience from the actual festival, well, I mean there's just so many I just touched on to me of one of the best experiences I have every year is like I said, you know, hundreds of people all coming together to kind of the production and the crew, if you will, coming together to build build what I hope you'll get to see this year, Bob, is in my opinion, one of the one of the most premium quality experiences.

Of a festival that that that's out there.

I try to say that as humbly as I can, but but I'm I'm pretty proud of what we do, you know, I mean, there's just so many the ability to you know, do this with Dave and justin every year we kind of have a group hug at the at the end on Sunday night, we have our first drink in maybe two three months because we all kind of abstained through the festival. Those will always be some of my favorite memories. Uh And and you.

Know my family.

I have a young now, a twelve year old and a ten year old, and you know, for them to now start to really get what's going on here and want to come and and be able to spend a little time in the sound mix with them is like for them that'll be an extraordinary experience that they'll never forget that. I'm glad I can be a part of so family and friends, I guess.

Justin yeah, I mean there's there's there's a ton of things I can think of, And there's a lot on the artist side too, like what was special memory and all that. There's almost there's too many of those. So I was thinking, I'm not going to I'm not going to name a name an artist experience, but outside of that,

I'm just a guy.

And then when people start talking to you about the festival and they say, you know, this is my favorite thing of the entire year, Like this is when my friends and I get together and it happens around town and NAPO, they don't.

Know who you are.

There's like, oh my god, I can't wait for Battle Rock. It's literally what I live for all year round, you know. And then I still don't introduce myself. I don't say anything. I just kind of just like inside your kind of smiling, like you know what that's worth it?

Like all this kind of stress.

That we go through all the year and all the on site build and how we're into every last detail and everyone's snipping at each other. It's like when you're making that many people you know, happy and creating memories for it. I know that sounds kind of corny, but it's it's the truth. It's uh, it makes it worth it.

Dave.

The two things I would say, one is what Jason said, which is the Justin and Jason and I at the end of the festival, after egress has been declared.

You know, successful for.

The third night, and we hug it out like that's a that's a moment I always look forward to, Like we just don't hear anyone around us, you know, it's just the three of us going, fuck, we did it, our team did it.

That's really rewarding.

I think one of the best experiences was just actually last year when the Peppers were playing and the let's say the shoot was locked down.

They weren't letting anyone go through.

And Jose Andrace, who loves the Peppers, is like asking me to help him get out, and I'm like, why do you want to go And He's just like, I got to get out, let me.

Just help me. And I'm like all right, So, you know, I talked.

To security and they let Jose leave like halfway through the set, and then Justin and I and Jason, Jason and Justin come back into our little compound area aig risk goes well, so we hug it out and Jose Andres is walking in with this massive pie and he had left, you know, a show that he really wanted to be at, just so he could make Justin and Jason and myself his favorite Paiea, because that's who he is, and it was just, it was just it was so meaningful.

Okay, gentlemen, I think we've come to the end of the feeling we've known. I wanted to do this because you know, festivals are a dime a dozen. But when you guys talked when I heard you previously, I said, fuck, I want to go to that, which is almost never the case. You guys have certainly created something special. So once again, I want to thank you for taking time to speak with my audience. Until next time. This is Bob left Stets