Vintage Cellars, the liquor arm of Coles, restructures loyalty program with expanded offer

Vintage Cellars is restructuring its loyalty program and to help give the launch a bump is offering as a prize a $1m bottle of rare Japanese whisky.

Vintage Cellars business category manager Ed Scully holding the $1m bottle of Japanese whisky Yamazaki 55.

Vintage Cellars, the upmarket liquor chain owned by Coles, is revamping its loyalty program to better meet the broadening interests of its customer base, tempting them the chance to win a $1m bottle of Japanese whisky to help supercharge its loyalty program redo.

From Wednesday the Vintage Cellars Wine Club will be known as the VC Club. The revamp will allow the loyalty program to expand from just offering discounts on wine purchases under its current form to include discounts on beers and spirits as well.

The current program, which will come to an end this week, ­allowed consumers to accrue points on wine purchases that could later be redeemed for store discounts.

That loyalty program could be unwieldy, with members having to wait until they accrued enough points to get a discount on wine.

The new version will allow VC Club members to obtain immediate discounts at the store on specially market beverages – across wine, beer and spirits – which will be offered as “member discounts”.

In this respect it mirrors a similar loyalty program offered by arch rival Dan Murphy’s.

The change comes as retailers across the sector look to fine-tune their loyalty programs at a time when this type of membership program can be crucial in communicating with shoppers and harvesting data that can be fed back into advertising and marketing programs.

Adding to the attraction in the relaunch of the Vintage Cellars loyalty program is a new offer whereby every member of the new VC Club who makes a purchase of at least $100 between March 2 and April 26 will go into a draw to win a bottle of ultra-rare Yamazaki 55 Year Old Japanese Whisky. The Yamazaki 55 is made from a precise blend of malts that have matured for over 55 years in mizunara oak casks.

The sale of a single bottle smashed sales records in 2020, when it garnered $HK6.2m ($1.075m) at an auction in Hong Kong.

Vintage Cellars business category manager Ed Scully said the revamped VC Club reflected the evolution of Vintage Cellars customer offer since 1951, when the first store opened in Gawler Place.

Launched back in 1994, the Vintage Cellars Wine Club was a market-leading customer reward program and the first of its kind in Australia.

The extension of the loyalty program to beer and spirits is a key pillar of the revamped offer.

“I’m thrilled that we now have a loyalty program that rewards all of our customers, whether they are wine lovers, spirit drinkers, craft beer lovers or a blend of all three,” Mr Scully said. This was crucial, as drinking tastes and trends were evolving in Australia, he said.

“The wine club program was one that was built definitely around the wine category and the drinking trends of Australians have changed particularly in the last five years or so,” he said.

“And so for a business like Vintage Cellars, our boutique experience, spirits, craft beers now have a much larger place within our business and with our customers than what they did way back when the wine club originated.”

Research conducted by Vintage Cellars also found that customers wanted immediate rewards rather than earning points, which can cause delays, as well as a less complex loyalty ­program.

Mr Scully said the $1m bottle of whisky to be won was being held in a secret and safe location until the winner was announced.