Interview with Giuseppe Luca Peschechera, CEO of eBacco, the online platform that helps restaurants, bars, wine bars, hotels and other Horeca professionals by offering consultancy and personalised analysis on the world of wine and a direct supply of wine from the producer.
Wine has been an integral part of our culture for centuries and, according to the latest figures, drinking good wine is a passion for 9 out of 10 Italians. If you own a Horeca business, it is of fundamental importance to have, among your partners, a team that can help you enhance a product, wine, which could be the key to new customers and new sources of income. That’s why today I want to talk to you about eBacco.
What is ebacco
eBacco is an online wine platform that you can use for your business. It is really important to have real professionals at your side who can offer you careful and personalised advice on your wine needs.
This is why eBacco comes into “play”, where you will have at your disposal more than 750 labels of excellent wines, both from our territory and abroad, all extremely well selected by sommeliers, who will help you choose and sell them to grow your business.
Secure delivery is another strength of eBacco, as you receive the wines you order directly from the producers’ cellars. There are no intermediate warehouses that could damage your bottles!
To find out more about this fantastic platform, we interviewed the CEO, Giuseppe Luca Peschechera.
Hello Giuseppe, it is a pleasure to meet you and thank you for your time. Tell us more about eBacco. How and when did the idea for eBacco come about?
The idea for eBacco was born in 2020. It was based on a mix of passion for the world of wine (professionalised thanks to the Degustibuss international sommelier qualification), experience at Amazon as Ecommerce Account Manager and a strong interest in digital innovation.
We are in Italy, and although there is a great deal of culture and attention regarding wine, we often come into contact with this product, especially if we are less experienced, in a way that is not too well informed. In the average restaurant or point of sale, we are often left to our own devices, faced with a wine list or a list of products, with hardly any staff to guide us.
eBacco was created to help Horeca operators not only expand their wine selection and offer interesting and new products to their customers, but also to supply and resell this historically rich product in a more informed way. We provide the upstream selection of the wineries with which we collaborate, a supply strongly linked to the producer (without intermediate storage) and complete and standardised product pages (readable in 1-2 minutes by the staff of your business and, if desired, printable).
In 2020, the pandemic has also arrived, revealing a major problem of high stocks for restaurants and wine shops. In fact, the current distribution system encourages the purchase of higher quantities of wine, increasing the tied-up capital of operators. With eBacco, we do not place constraints on quantities and selected products, but the distinctive point is the availability of digital services for inventory monitoring, for identifying the most potential references for your business and for personalised advice for your business.
How did you launch eBacco? Did you use crowdfunding campaigns?
Launching eBacco, at least from a legal point of view, was very easy. We used the online legal services of Iubenda, which assisted us in registering as an innovative start-up, and the administrative services of MyAccounting. In short, we wanted to be digital in every way.
The development of the platform (still in its infancy with regard to our objectives) was carried out in-house. The development of applications during the university period proved to be invaluable, demonstrating that all experiences are ultimately useful in everyone’s future.
We started a crowdfunding campaign on Eppela in the first few months after the launch, although we realised that the real potential, given the B2B nature of eBacco, lies in equity crowdfunding, for which we plan to prepare a campaign in late 2022-early 2023.
At the moment we are followed by the Accelera Hub accelerator and are constantly looking for financiers and investors (institutional and non-institutional) to build a larger development and sales team.
We know that there are 2 types of subscription available, Insider and Deluxe. Can you tell us how they differ?
Basically, the use of eBacco is totally free of charge thanks to the Lite plan. Those looking for a wider selection of wines for their restaurant can register and explore the platform at no cost.
The Insider and Deluxe plans (continuously evolving and integrating additional services) are eBacco’s true strength and distinction.
Insider includes access to educational webinars with eBacco sommeliers and producer partners, as well as personalised advice for your venue’s staff (including assistance with the correct calculation of resale prices and management of potential labels).
Deluxe is the next step. As well as guaranteeing exclusive discounts on the supply of wine, it allows you to obtain the assistance and periodic consultancy of a sommelier for drafting and evolving your wine offering. It really is the subscription for those who want to evolve wine from an accessory product to a strategic asset for the growth of their premises and evaluate extra opportunities for use (e.g. organisation of events with limited edition labels, wine list evolving according to seasonality, etc.).
Who is your team composed of?
Currently, the team consists of myself, who takes care of external relations and maintaining/opening new business relations with wine producers and foreign wine importers. Cristian, co-founder, takes care of the legal aspects and participation in calls for startups.
AcceleraHub provides a dedicated team to help scout for new potential customers and investors.
Another 2 team members take care of more operational activities such as order and platform management, as well as digital marketing activities (social, email, content).
Future developments?
At the moment there are two strands of development for eBacco: team growth and digital development of the platform.
It is key for us to build a larger team of people, from Business Development Manager, IT Developer, Marketing Manager and HR manager (a necessary function for building and growing a cohesive team over time).
Development of the platform as the nearest future development because for us it must be the services we offer digitally that distinguish us from the competition. The dream would be, one day not too far away, to be able to define ourselves more as a tech company and service provider than a wine supplier.
In any case, at least in the next two years, we aim at a greater penetration of the Italian market, and then expand our services internationally in the years 2023-2025.
Curiosity: as a good connoisseur and wine lover, do you think wines from our territory or from abroad are better?
It is very, very difficult for me to give an answer to this question. By training, I have had the opportunity to develop an international knowledge of wine and I can assure you that the world is full of exciting territories and producers, even at very affordable prices.
But I put myself in the shoes of a less experienced consumer who has to choose a wine and hopes it is a good one. In Europe, and in particular in Italy and France, a great deal of work has been done to regulate and define controlled designations of origin, which, by setting precise production standards, also allow the consumer to guarantee excellent products.
In this sense, in Italy we have excellent wines, still and sparkling, protected by equally renowned DOC and DOCG. I think Italy offers products with an excellent quality/price ratio, as well as a diversity of grape varieties that is unique and unparalleled in the world.
However, I must also lance a hand in favour of France, from which exciting wines come and which, as a country, has a wine-growing history several centuries older than that of Italy: dialogue and openness towards foreign countries can provide ideas and improvements for production in our country.
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