When Debbie Sutton dreamt up WineFriend, it was as a solution to the problems she’d encountered in her previous life as a boutique wine label founder. “As small producer it’s so so hard to make headway,” says Sutton. “The big retailers and the wine buyers hold all the power, and you have none.  And then there are the consumers, who often get into a rut of buying the same wines week after week or sticking to a rotation of three to four brands. They’re trained, by the supermarket model, to only buy on promotion.”

Wine is a huge category in the New Zealand supermarket space. “There are roughly 48,000 items in the store and 1500, or more, will be bottles of wine. It’s the number two category, after breakfast cereal.”

Sutton thought she could do better, offering choice, and a space for smaller producers to grow awareness and build loyalty. So, she went to My Food Bag, the (at that time brand new) meal kit subscription service and asked who had developed their proprietary website. She wanted one, only for wine.

And she wanted it to be really clever. Enter Bacchus – named for the Greek god of wine but also because it’s cute wordplay on the site’s back end. And part of what makes Bacchus so great is his algorithm that tailors each order to the customer’s taste in wine.

WineFriend’s highly personalised model delivers wine based on preferences.

When you join WineFriend, you take an initial online “taste test” which asks questions that delve deep into your likes and dislikes – things such as how you take your coffee, and if you add salt, hot sauce or chutney to your meals. The answers give Bacchus a baseline, and helps sort out a wine order for you. But it’s your response to the wines in that order that inform the next order, and that one the next and so on.

“We are really the only wine retailer that encourages two-way communication with our customers,” says Sutton. “Customers can quickly review the wines they’ve tasted and at midnight every night we get an email digest of everything that comes in from the past 24 hours. That’s how we can really measure the pulse of our customers.”

Bacchus knows which wines are in play at any given time – 75 of them, chosen by wine writer and Chief Tasting Officer Yvonne Lorkin. ”Yvonne and our wine buying team choose a mix of varietals and wine brands and pop them all into categories – it’s like a big library of wine! And once your payment flicks through, the algorithm then picks the best wines for your tastes. It takes information such as what you’ve really loved before and if that particular wine is back in stock, it might come back to you in your order with a little love heart sticker on it. It’s a really nice way of showing people we are listening to them.”

With Bacchus holding almost 90,000 wine reviews from customers, Sutton and her team are able to gather insights on what’s happening in the wine-drinking world too – what’s hot, what’s trending, and what’s tired. “So we know right now that rose is big all year round, and prosecco has really taken off. But our stats also tell us that our customers are a lot more adventurous than regular supermarket wine buyers. They are willing to try new things.”

And that’s what’s really exciting to Sutton. “There is no other wine subscription service in New Zealand doing quite what we do. Nobody else can back up the claim of personalisation. We have an average of 27 months’ customer retention which is great for a subscription-based business. People stay with us because they love the wines and appreciate the customer service. And we really love hearing from them.” In fact, a favourite activity in the WineFriend office is reading customer feedback out loud to each other. “Sometimes, we’ll pop what we call a ‘wild card wine’ in with the order – something that’s a little way out of the customer’s known comfort zone. So many love the wild card, though, and reach out wanting more!”

Sutton says as with any tech based business, she’s always looking at what’s coming over the horizon.  Bacchus has had three major iterations so far, and there will be more. “If we’re not working on enhancements, we’re thinking about them. With software you’re never finished. “

But right now, it’s time to stop, and to celebrate turning five. “We’ll be having a drink for sure.”