Winery Tasting Room Precautions During COVID-19 – What Customers are Looking For

Summary

Survey responses, collected in March 2021, indicate that winery tasting rooms should impose the following precautions to make their customers feel safe and encourage them to visit during the pandemic. The following information shows the top three reasons per category.

Staff and customer responsibilities

• Tasting room staff must wear face masks but are not required to wear visors/face shields
• Customers must wear face masks
• Customers are asked to sanitize their hands upon entering

General cleaning, safety, and social distancing

• Staff disinfect the seating area/table in front of customers
• The winery ensures that tasting room visitors follow all COVID-19 precautions (e.g., wear masks)
• Floor markers showing six feet spacing for social distancing

Reservations, seating, and ordering

• Outdoor seating areas are available for wine tasting and/or to eat food/meals, weather permitting
• Fewer tables are in the tasting room to reduce the number of patrons seated for a wine tasting and/or to eat food/meals
• Seating by reservation only

Cautious Customers

Pennsylvania COVID-19 case numbers are on the rise again as we are moving through the fourth wave of the pandemic. While winery tasting rooms must follow the COVID-19 guidelines of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, many tasting room customers indicate that more precautions are needed to help them feel safe in a tasting room.

We asked 841 tasting room customers in March 2021 about the COVID-19 perceptions they are taking, winery tasting room visits, and what precautions they expect tasting room owners to take to reduce risk and encourage them to visit during the pandemic. More information about our respondents' demographic characteristics can be found in the article "COVID-19 Research to Support Tasting Room Owners in Pennsylvania".

In our survey, most of the respondents were already vaccinated or planning to be as soon as they became eligible: 45 percent of respondents were vaccinated, 36 percent intended to get vaccinated, 10 percent were unsure, while nine percent did not plan to get vaccinated. Note: the availability of vaccinations was still somewhat limited at the time of our survey.

Of those who had visited a tasting room between 2018 and mid-March 2020, 29 percent replied that they had not returned to a winery tasting room since mid-March 2020 when the shelter in place order was implemented. We asked our survey respondents about which precautions winery tasting rooms should take so that they would visit during the pandemic, regardless of vaccination status. Respondents could choose multiple reasons. The most prominent reasons were the lack of feeling safe being near strangers, no travel opportunities, infection concerns, and the tasting rooms these survey participants would have liked to visit were not open. Reassuringly, a lack of precautions by tasting rooms ranked last.

Reasons for not visiting a winery tasting room during the COVID -19 Pandemic (since March 2020)

Figure 1

COVID-19 Precautions

Over 56 percent of the respondents were "likely" or "very likely" to visit a Mid-Atlantic [1] winery tasting room in 2021. When it comes to precautions regarding staff and customers, visors/face shields were the least important precaution. Most respondents indicated that tasting room staff and customers must wear face masks, and customers should sanitize their hands upon entering the winery.

Precautions Regarding Staff and Customers

Figure 2

By far, the most important precaution across all categories is the availability of outdoor seating. This is followed reducing the number of tables in an area to limit the number of customers visiting at one time, the option to reserve seats, and being offered disposable glassware.

Precautions Regarding Reservations, Seating, and Ordering

Figure 3

When it comes to general precautions, more than half of the respondents would like to observe staff disinfecting the seating area. This is also the second most important precaution across all categories. Survey participants also indicated that wineries should enforce all COVID-19 precautions, install floor markers that show six feet distancing, and inform their customers, via social media outlets and their website, about the precautions the business is taking to keep staff and visitors safe.

[1] The following states were included in the survey: Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and/or Washington D.C. in 2021