Winery Compensation Strategies: Wine Club, DTC Sales & Tasting Room Managers
Making great wine is only part of running a successful winery. Even the most exceptional vintages will not sell themselves. To grow your business, you need a strong team of people who know how to connect with customers, build relationships, and drive sales. You cannot do it all on your own. Having the right people in place is essential, and keeping them motivated and engaged is just as important.
That is why designing competitive compensation packages and smart incentive plans is critical for winery owners. This post looks at what we are seeing across the industry when it comes to compensation for Wine Club Managers, DTC Sales Managers, and Tasting Room Managers. We will explore base pay, incentive structures, and strategies for rewarding your key players in ways that support both employee satisfaction and winery growth.
Why compensation strategy matters
Your team drives your direct-to-consumer success. Managers lead the experiences that turn visitors into loyal customers and one-time buyers into wine club members. They are on the front lines building relationships, growing club memberships, and generating repeat sales.
Because these roles are directly tied to revenue, your compensation strategy must attract strong talent and encourage them to perform at a high level. A thoughtful structure for base pay and performance incentives helps align their success with the success of the winery and ensures you can retain the people who make growth possible.
Base pay + performance incentives
Compensation for these positions is often structured as base pay plus performance incentives. We are seeing base pay for these roles around $55,000-$70,000 per year, or the equivalent of about $26 to $35 per hour. When performance incentives are added, compensation often reaches up to $90,000 per year.
Keep in mind that these ranges vary based on winery size, location, and responsibilities. Smaller operations may start lower, while larger wineries with high DTC volume tend to offer more competitive pay.
Finding the right metrics
An effective incentive plan starts with selecting the right metrics—clear, measurable targets that define success. There are two main types to balance: lagging metrics and leading metrics.
Lagging metrics measure the results you want to achieve—things like total wine club revenue, member retention rates, or overall tasting room sales. They show whether your strategies worked, but only after the fact.
Leading metrics, on the other hand, track the actions that drive those results. Examples include follow-up calls completed, guests invited to join the club, or thank-you cards sent.
Put simply: lagging metrics measure outcomes; leading metrics measure the behaviors that make those outcomes happen. The most effective incentive plans use a thoughtful mix of both, rewarding proactive activities while tying compensation to the measurable results that matter most.
Focus on metrics employees can actually influence
When setting up performance incentives, it’s best to keep the structure simple and tied to metrics employees can directly influence. Complex formulas based on costs, overhead, or overall profitability often lead to confusion and frustration since those numbers are outside their control.
In most cases, tying incentives to revenue works best. It’s a clear metric that employees can easily understand and impact. If the employee has direct control over discounts or pricing, you might choose to base incentives on net revenue (revenue after discounts) instead of total gross revenue, so the results stay aligned with the decisions they make.
The goal is to keep the focus on what they can influence, not on broader financial outcomes they don’t manage. A straightforward, controllable metric builds fairness, motivates performance, and avoids unnecessary complexity.
Track more than just revenue
In addition to revenue, consider two to three additional key metrics to build a balanced, effective plan. For wine club managers, incentives are often tied to both club member retention and new club sign-ups, since recurring wine club revenue is critical to a winery’s long-term health.
Since wine clubs are so key to winery health, tasting room managers may also be rewarded for driving new club memberships that originate in the tasting room. They may also be rewarded for average order value or visitor satisfaction scores, based on surveys or online reviews.
For event managers, bonuses might be based on net revenue from events after expenses, attendance vs capacity, the number of bookings, or new club signups resulting from the event.
In many cases, it makes sense to track two or three key metrics per role and assign different weights to each. For example, a wine club manager’s bonus could be structured so that 50% is tied to retention, 30% to new sign-ups, and 20% to overall club revenue.
Structuring your incentive plan
After deciding on metrics, the next step is determining how to reward success—whether through flat bonuses, percentages, tiered payouts, or a mix of these.
Flat bonuses, such as $500 for hitting a sales target, are simple, predictable, and easy for employees to understand. However, they can feel less motivating for top performers since the reward doesn’t scale with higher results.
Percentage-based incentives, on the other hand, directly tie rewards to performance, allowing earnings to grow as revenue grows. For example, paying 3% of tasting room sales encourages managers to keep pushing beyond the minimum goal.
That said, percentage structures can get tricky if discounts, returns, or multi-channel sales come into play, so clarity on what counts toward the calculation is essential. Many wineries find success combining the two: For example: $500 for hitting the baseline + 3% on revenue above the goal. This approach rewards steady performance while giving top performers room to earn more.
You also might want to try a plan that uses defined performance tiers. For example: hitting the baseline earns a fixed bonus, reaching the goal unlocks a larger payout, and achieving the stretch target delivers the highest reward. Meeting baseline targets might add 5% to annual compensation, while hitting stretch-level performance could increase bonuses to as much as 30% of base pay.
Mistakes to avoid with winery incentive plans
Designing effective incentive plans can transform performance—but the wrong structure can backfire. Here are the some common pitfalls winery owners should watch out for:
Your plan might be sending the wrong message. Incentives communicate what you value. If all rewards are tied to revenue, managers may neglect customer experience, staff development, or brand reputation. Balance financial targets with a qualitative component, like guest feedback or Net Promoter Scores.
Your plan might be driving short-term behavior. If metrics aren’t chosen carefully, you can unintentionally reward short-term wins at the expense of long-term health. For example, if you pay tasting room managers solely on wine club sign-ups, they might push memberships aggressively, even to guests unlikely to stay, leading to high churn rates later. A better approach would be to balance metrics (e.g., weight both new sign-ups and retention) to encourage sustainable growth.
Your plan might be creating competition instead of collaboration. If one manager earns bonuses based on total wine club growth, but other tasting room staff help drive those sign-ups, resentment can build. Where possible, try to offer team-based incentives in addition to individual ones. Be transparent about how bonuses are earned to prevent misunderstandings.
Your plan might be too complicated for employees to understand. Incentives work only when employees can clearly connect their actions to the result. If managers need a spreadsheet to understand their bonus, it’s too complex. Stick to two or three key metrics and keep calculations simple to avoid confusion and disputes.
Your plan might be too complicated to administer. A plan that looks great on paper can become a nightmare if it’s too hard to track. The more metrics, exclusions, and special cases you add, the more disputes you’ll get. Simpler plans build trust—people understand what’s expected and how they get paid. Simple plans also save admin time!
You might be paying on the wrong cadence. Sometimes the when matters as much as the what. Annual bonuses are simple but can feel disconnected from daily work. Monthly bonuses can work, but they may begin to feel like part of regular base compensation. The sweet spot is often quarterly payouts. Quarterly payouts can keep motivation high and encourage consistent performance, but still feel like a treat.
You might be stuck in a rut. Over time, employees normalize their bonuses—what was motivating in year one becomes expected by year three. To combat this, make sure you discuss and adjust targets annually. Refresh incentives to keep people engaged. For high performers, build in stretch goals so they have something to chase.
Test your plan before you launch
If you’re unsure about whether your incentive plan will drive the right results, consider running a shadow plan before rolling it out. Track performance as if the plan were in place—calculate bonuses, monitor metrics, and evaluate outcomes—but don’t share it with your team yet.
After a few quarters, review the data to compare what results would have looked like with the plan versus without it. If you’re happy with the alignment, payouts, and overall impact, you can launch the plan confidently. This approach reduces risk, surfaces potential problems early, and helps ensure that when you go live, your incentives actually drive the behaviors and outcomes you want.
Final thoughts
Jack Stack, author of The Great Game of Business, emphasizes a powerful philosophy when it comes to incentives: keep them simple, transparent, and focused on results employees can control. When team members clearly understand how their actions drive business outcomes, they become more motivated, engaged, and invested in the winery’s success. For wineries, that means rewarding staff for metrics they directly influence—like wine club growth, tasting room conversion rates, and event bookings—while avoiding overly complex formulas tied to costs or overhead they can’t manage. This approach fosters alignment, accountability, and a sense of shared ownership.
Your wine club, tasting room, and events teams sit at the core of your direct-to-consumer strategy. Structuring competitive compensation packages that balance base pay with performance incentives not only attracts and retains strong leaders but also ensures their success is tied to the success of your business. Wineries that connect compensation to clear, measurable results consistently see stronger performance, deeper customer relationships, and healthier long-term growth.