Hey everyone, I'm Sheila Jenkinson and you are listening to the Growing Small Town Nebraska Podcast where my co host, Marcie Sextro, and I ask community leaders and business owners about their efforts in revitalizing the Cornhusker State. If you love your small town and you're looking for ways to make it even better; or maybe you're interested in what this revitalization movement may mean for you and your family, join us as we talk with small town Nebraskans making our state the definition of "The Good Life."
Hello, everyone. I'm Marcy Sextro. We are coming to you from the Intersect Co-working and Incubator podcast booth here in downtown Norfolk. Intersect is a co-working community that gives workers the spaces and tools they need to succeed. Join a like-minded community of founders, remote workers, startups, and freelancers with 24/7 access to a dedicated office or private desk. They have extremely fast internet and as much coffee as your heart desires. Intersect is your place to collaborate with others and get things done. Find out more on their website intersectcoworking.com or follow them on Facebook or Instagram.
GROW Nebraska helps Nebraska entrepreneurs have access to the global marketplace. Started in 1998, GROW Nebraska is an educational nonprofit that strives to help Nebraska entrepreneurs increase online visibility through social media and other platforms. They help these businesses get connections to move their business forward. They also provide free training to the public every third and fourth Thursday and Google training on the first Wednesday of the month. Find out more at grownebraska.org
Good morning, Marcy.
Good morning, Sheila,
Ready for another podcast?
I am.
All right. Well, we have an exciting one today. But first, we want to tell everybody about what's coming up.
Yes, we have our open house (will be) May 10th. And, we are welcoming everybody to join us for that, because it's gonna be a great time!
It is! We're going to start things off at Intersect Co-working Office Space. And that starts at nine o'clock, presenting for 1 Million Cups. Then we move to our Norfolk Area Chamber of Commerce Ribbon Cutting (same location). All of it is taking place right here. And then it's our Open House. (It) is going to run until one o'clock. So, you can come at any time during those events.
Yeah. And if you're not able to attend 1 Million Cups, that presentation will be Facebook Live. So that's a wonderful time, too. But we really hope that we can see you in person. And we would love to be able to chat with you and find out what are the best parts of the podcasts that you enjoy.
Yeah. And give us your ideas and all kinds of things and enjoy some food.
Yes, we're going to be having lots of wonderful food and a great time. So we hope that you will join us. And today we are excited about being able to have a podcast that's a little bit more towards the tourism side in Nebraska. And so we will be chatting about the new wine passport that's been out just a couple of years now. And so let's get into that.
So, many of you have heard of the Nebraska passport. But at the MarkeTech conference, we discovered that Nebraska has a second passport experience. And with us today is Kylie, the marketing director for the Nebraska Winery and Grape Growers Association. And the toast Nebraska Wine Festival. Welcome, Kylie, to the podcast. So nice to have you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, it's great to have you. Of course, I was drawn right away to the wine passport, because wine is well, it's kind of my drink of choice if I have a choice. So, we're super excited to hear about this today!
Yeah. So many listeners may not know that Nebraska has like an array of vineyards across the state. So, how many vineyards are there exactly in Nebraska.
Vineyard acres is kind of how we measure best. And so, on the Wine America, so the national group, their economic survey is completed. There's 22 vineyard acres in Nebraska right now. And then 29 slated wineries. The Nebraska wine passport has tasting rooms as well. And so that kind of adds in to that count a little bit. So right now on our passport program, I think there is 34 stops currently.
With that amount of vineyards, it definitely has an impact on the state, economically. So can you share some numbers with us from your impact statement about what kind of economic impact it truly has?
Yeah, so again, according to that Wine America (so this is the national group that had all the states) their economic impact survey...federal taxes for the state of Nebraska in the wine industry is about 45 million; state and local taxes generate about 27 million a year. So overall total impact is about 1.2 billion, just the wine industry in Nebraska. So who knew?
Wow!
Wow. I did not know that and it blows me away.
I really thought...
Yeah
...it was interesting to just the amount of wages that you pay, you know, that is through vineyards within the state.
Yeah. So there's a wide variety of jobs within the wine industry. So anything from more of the agricultural side, where you kind of see crop farming in the viticulture side, all the way through the consumer end point, where you work in a tasting room and you're interacting with consumers and you're talking about wine, maybe you have a gift shop, you're selling merchandise, you're running a small tasting room, that's maybe in a downtown tourism area, we've seen a lot of those really get revitalized in rural Nebraska lately. So it's really great to see the wineries not only have a rural agricultural impact, but a tourism impact as well. And so they did measure that on the economic survey and tourists specific expenditures related to Nebraska wine industry, were about 4.7 million. So there's just a huge amount of impact on these small communities where these wineries are kind of popping up. And people are getting out in rural Nebraska and realizing there's just a lot more to see than you thought.
Yeah, and almost 14,000 tourists visits. Which tourism is such a huge thing. And we know from being at the MarkeTech conference, how much they're working on being able to increase the tourism in the state of Nebraska. So wineries are a big part of that as well.
Absolutely. And that is my kind of key role as the marketing director for the Nebraska winery and grape growers association is...my job is to sell wine without having any wine to sell. And so I don't have a liquor license, I can't give you a bottle of wine or anything like that from my office. But my job is to track and capture and analyze the data from those 14,000 tourist visits from the people utilizing the Nebraska wine passport to people visiting the Toast Nebraska Wine Festival kind of capturing and learning about Nebraska and Midwest and national consumers that are visiting our state or living in our state and seeing how we can leverage that to benefit the industry and its growth.
Can you tell me a little bit about a vineyard experience from a someone who does enjoy wine and also for someone who does not.
So I think the winery experience is such a good kind of route for a couple that maybe has different preferences according to like, what they drink and things like that. I love wine. I'll try anything. If there's a big flight in any kind of capacity...an iced coffee flight, a beer flight, a wine flight, anything like that...a donut flight. I'm there for it. I want to taste a little bit of everything.
A donut flight...I did not know that was a thing.
I don't think it is yet, but maybe it should be.
Hey, yeah!
My husband absolutely does not like wine. And he is just like a beer guy. But he'll go to the wineries for exactly kind of the experience you guys are talking about. He loves learning about small businesses, he loves going in, looking at manufacturing facilities, we did kind of one of the bigger beer tours in Colorado one time, and he just loves looking at all the tanks and the pipes and how they make it in the processing aspects of it. So there's a huge amount of learning and tours and things you can dive into without even taking a sip of wine. If you're interested in small businesses and rural businesses and agriculture and things like that. If you're not into production methods, manufacturing, you're not a "how it's made" watcher, there's tons of other things to do as well. A lot of our wineries host tons of different events throughout the year, like wine bingo, music bingo, murder mystery night, craft workshops. Live music nights are so popular through the summer (that) there's always something for everybody. And it's just a great opportunity to get outside and kind of take in Nebraska views and sunset. A lot of them have nice walking trails. Seward, Nebraska, has a really great walking trail that you can kind of do the loop around, they host like 5k runs and things like that. So it's just a good opportunity to kind of take in that rural Nebraska lifestyle, kind of be out on an acreage, and see that great wildlife and views and things like that.
Well, that sounds amazing...
Lots of food and drink too...so good.
We met you guys at MarkeTech, and I came over well...Marcy brought me the wine passport. And then I came and visited the booth and went back to Marcie. I'm like, "Can we talk to the wine passport people?" So I have my wine passport, but I have never done this before. So, for someone like me who really wants to participate, that maybe needs you to hold my hand here a little bit and walk me through it. How does it work?
Well, first of all, it's super easy to get started, because it's absolutely completely free. So you first need to get your hands on one, and that's great that we accomplished that at market tech. But if you're somebody listening and you don't have a wine passport, the easiest way to just get it done is to go to Nebraskawinepassport.com And there's a link that says give me a passport. We have two options this year. The digital option is actually new for 2023. So it's a web app. So that means you don't have to download anything on your phone or update or keep track of anything. It's just a web page, it takes you to where you log in, and everything is handled digitally. If you're not a digital person, which is absolutely totally fine, you can request a physical passport. And it kind of looks like if you have a travel passport, it's about that same size, and we'll mail it to your house and you'll get it. You can request one for yourself and your friends and family. We'll mail them in a bunch. And then you'll have a physical passport, you can utilize and it's nice and small and compact, you can keep it in your purse. So once you get your hands on the passport, the next kind of step is most people just stare at it. And realize I didn't know how many Nebraska wineries there were in the state. So that's usually kind of the shock value a little bit of they're like, Wow, this is a great little directory. The next step is just to kind of figure out where you want to go first and pick a winery that's maybe closest to you or on along the way on a trip that you might be taking soon. We went out to Mac's Creek when we went out to MarkeTech, and they kind of hosted that event out there...Junto Wineries...there's a huge wine network kind of between Lincoln and Omaha as well that a lot of wineries have sprung up under. Niobrara Valley out in Valentine has so, so, so many cool things happening Papa Moon in Scottsbluff is kind of one of the under radar (under the radar) ones because they're more out towards Colorado. But they have such an awesome facility. And so you just can kind of explore through the passport and kind of find which winery kind of speaks to you the most or which one you're going to kind of be the closest to, to find your first trip.
So how did the wine passport get started?
So I've been on board since 20, November of 2019. So I've done the 2020 2021 2022 and this will be my fourth year doing the 2023 passport. It kind of just got started as a way for the wineries to kind of have that collective awareness of saying we're all here and we're all working together. And each experience is similar in some ways but really unique and others. So they kind of worked together as a collective to leverage the industry marketing, and kind of showcase all that the state has to offer in one convenient kind of path. The wineries use that as a tool to generate traffic to their tasting rooms and connect with people that are enjoying other wineries. So the more one winery utilizes the passport program, the more it feeds and grows into the other wineries benefit, as well. They love utilizing it, it's a good little indicator of like, wow, this is a really ideal consumer who loves Nebraska wine. And so it's kind of a good indicator on that aspect as well, we disperse out 40,000 passports a year. And that may seem like a big number, it's really a directory. So people can kind of have that awareness, there's definitely no pressure to complete the whole thing at once. But if you do, you can collect all the stamps, and you get entered into some great drawings, you get a t shirt at the end of the year. And we usually have about 1100 people fully complete all of the stops and send it in, which is quite a task. So I'm proud of each and every one of them.
Are you seeing that increase every year then? Are more and more people fulfilling the passport?
Yes, it's actually really increased since we've kind of pivoted the program and had just a lot more kind of effort and focus around some of the strategies we are utilizing to kind of put it out into the world. And so the first year when we collected them, I think we had about 126 fully completed passports. And so we've seen it really increase.
That's a big jump!
So yeah, we're in (about 11) I think I did 1100 T shirts this year. So...
Wow, that's crazy. So Kylie, I have something funny to tell you about wine tasting. The first one that I ever went to was in Norfolk at Jim's Fine Wines. I said to my husband, "Hey, they're they're doing this wine tasting thing." And we had never done this before. And I'm like, "Let's stop by; it should just take a few minutes." Well, that's not how that works. So I had envisioned (for you just) you know, you just sipped a little bit, but yeah, it's a whole process. Well we were there...two hours later, we missed something else we were supposed to go to, but we met some great people. It's quite the experience.
As long as you're open to trying anything. I think it's always a fun experience. My husband, he's a tough crowd, but he always goes and he's always up for at least taking a sip to see if he likes it.
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So you have an event coming up in Omaha...Toast Wine Festival. Tell us all about that.
So the Toast Wine Festival is the largest gathering of Nebraska wineries in the state of Nebraska. It's one of the best wine festivals that you can access in the Midwest. And we put that together. The wineries themselves posted to the association. And so we have about 17 wineries that attend each year. Tickets range between 35 and 45 dollars...and you get a full access pass to do unlimited tastings from 17 different wineries throughout the full day. There's live music, there's food trucks, there's tons of shopping, the crowd favorite is wine bingo, everybody loves wine bingo. So it's just a really good opportunity if you're a person that loves wine, or especially if you're a person who was not sure about wine, to just have a really convenient spot to try a lot of a lot of different wine opportunities. And it's really a cost effective way to just access all these Nebraska wineries in one spot.
Well, I can't wait! I'm going to start hinting right now to my husband that maybe that would be a good Mother's Day gift.
The toast and rock the wine festival is just all on my mind everyday. 24/7. So that's the number one thing I would say. Take advantage right now. It's coming up. This is the perfect time to make plans with friends and family. And you can go to toastwinefest.com to get tickets. It's Mother's Day weekend (what) what better Mother's Day gift, like you said, to just give to your mom saying, "Here's a whole day of wine... just wide open for you." So we'll pray for good weather. And it's May 12. And the 13th. Friday is a great, great, great day to attend. It's usually a little cooler, because it goes a little bit later in the evening. And none of the wine is sold out. So if you wait till Saturday, you can have a full day, but the best sellers go quick. So I'd say get a ticket for Friday.
Good insight. So Kaylee, we always have one question that we like to ask: What do you love about small town, Nebraska.
So I'm from a small small town of about 200. And I currently reside in Milford, Nebraska, which is about 3000. And my wine is not my full job. But I run a small business within a small town, I work with a lot of rural agricultural based groups. And I work on some community projects as well. And I love small town, Nebraska, because you just really get to connect with people, and work with people and see the impact of your work directly in people's lives. And I think there's just something to say about working with people that you see face to face every day. It's just really encouraging. And you just experienced a lot more of that community impact people talk about with their groups. And I've seen that across the board with a lot of these entrepreneurs and innovators with these wineries. They've grown and had a dream and kind of grown a business from nothing, and it's really permeated and impacted all their communities in a really positive way.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Kylie.
Thank you guys for having me.
What a lot of fun that was to talk about the wine passport and hear all of the great things going on with that. It's going to be a lot of fun for me...I don't know.
Well, I think all the tourism things that are going on in Nebraska. It's just fun to see all the different ideas that people come up with. And there are many opportunities for you and your family to be able to get out there and experience Nebraska.
Yeah, and people coming together, businesses coming together, working together to build such fun and exciting things for people to do and see in Nebraska.
Coming up we have our open house...
It will be maintained at the intersect co working space. So you are welcome to join us and we hope to see you there.
Stanton State Bank has been growing small town Nebraska through big and small business and personal loans for over 140 years. At Stanton State Bank you'll find old fashioned, friendly service, plus the technology to bring you the latest in banking. They have two convenient locations at 924 Ivy Street in Stanton and 1021 Riverside Boulevard in Norfolk. Visit Stanton State Bank today for all your banking needs. Member FDIC.
A big thank you to our incredible sponsors Stanton State Bank, GROW Nebraska, Intersect Co-working and Incubator, Suds and Stuff, Cowboy Construction, Legendary Graphics, Sharply Stated by Sheila, ASQ Promotional Products, the Elkhorn Valley Museum, the Norfolk Community Theatre, Circle S Creations, and the Cuming County Visitors Bureau. Check out these exceptional small businesses on our website growingsmalltownne.com, where you can also find podcast sponsor information. Or email us with any questions at growingsmall townne@gmail.com.
The Growing Small Town Nebraska podcast can be found on Apple, Spotify, and Google podcasts. New episodes come out every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Join us again next time as we talk with business and community leaders who are working to revitalize the Cornhusker State. Thanks for listening!
