Fred "Two Buck Chuck" Franzia, admiring his work.
Fred Franzia, the owner of Charles “Two Buck Chuck” Shaw just sold his 400 millionth bottle of wine. Mr. Franzia and his “super-value” wine segment is outlined in this great article, courtesy The New Yorker:
Fred Franzia owns forty thousand acres of vineyards, more than anyone in the country; crushes three hundred and fifty thousand tons of grapes a year; and his company, Bronco, has annual revenue of more than five hundred million dollars. Recently, Franzia celebrated the sale of the four-hundred-millionth bottle of Charles Shaw, known as Two Buck Chuck, which is sold for $1.99 at Trader Joe’s.
Franzia’s objective is to sell as much wine as possible—he sells twenty million cases a year now, making Bronco the fourth-largest winery in the U.S., and would like to reach a hundred million. He believes that no bottle of wine should cost more than ten dollars. Franzia is sixty-five and twice divorced. He is both a major seller and a major buyer on the bulk market. He owns several wineries, including one in Sonoma, and he acts as a custom winemaker for wineries without his capacity. In 2000, he opened a ninety-two-thousand-square-foot bottling plant near the Napa airport.
Talking about his wine, Franzia can sound like an old-fashioned Democratic populist, though personally he’s more of a Darwinian capitalist. With Two Buck Chuck, Franzia invented a category, now a significant segment of the marketplace, which is known as “super-value” wine. His idea was to make cheap wine that yuppies would feel comfortable drinking.
how did he do it? read more at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_goodyear
see also: Two Buck Chuck founder defends cheap wine at examiner.com
and: His Two Bucks Worth from The New York Times
and: Charles Shaw Wine on Wikipedia
Yes, it's really $2
Tags: business, california, good value, link, napa, news, two buck chuck
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