We had a couple of fantastic finds during renovation today. We demolished a wall on the second floor. Inside the wall was a World War One Army Canteen cover, a hat, and a denim pouch made by cutting apart a pair of jeans and sewing together the bottom part of the leg. All of the items were likely dropped in the wall around 1917 when the site was treating WWI soldiers. I posted pictures at our Facebook site (Belvoir Winery).

Business is going very well. Weekends are very busy and we're booking events like crazy.

Two recent news stories...........

Nice updates, thanks! I'll need to track down a Missouri wine, perhaps yours!

More free publicity. I've figured out that some of these daily reporters are always looking for new stories. I can get them out one time for a grape story, another time for a history story and even can have them out for paranormal stories as well. Really helps to develop relationships with reporters at all local stations............

 

Moving into the fall wedding season. We're really busy with a lot of events right now. In addition, we have someone who is a haunted house creator in the area (Edge of Hell in KC was his creation) who is constructing a Halloween attraction in our vacant buildings. They will open October 7th and run daily through Halloween.

Great news for our city as well. For the second time this year, we've been selected as one of the top 10 cities to live in the U.S. This time it was the Money Magazine list.....

America's Best Places to Live, 2011 - Yahoo! Real Estate

This is really important for our future plans. We have drawn up a master development plan for the property. It's basically a small community. The large vacant buildings will be converted to an assisted living apartment facility and an Alzheimer's research and care facility. In addition, we'll be adding new independent living tri-plexes that will have a central clubhouse for meals/activities.

On the other side of the property, we'll be constructing a new set of buildings designed to look like the old ones. They will be three story buildings with the first story containing high-end retail and the top two stories containing condos. On the back portion of the property, we'll be constructing a recreation area that includes two softball fields, tennis courts, and a 1,000 seat amphitheater. The final 60 acres will be divided into 42 one-acre lots. Each will hold a $1M+ home.

Total value of the project is around $70M. It's a big investment, but the demand for high-end retirement communities is extremely high. Add in that you can live in a building on the National Register of Historic Places and be a golf cart ride away from retail, recreation, and a winery and it's a really great match. Final rezoning goes through on August 22nd and we expect a unanimous vote in favor. Then we start lining up the money and move forward ASAP.

Other than that, not much going on in my life. :)

I saw Louisville #1 and almost choked - until I saw it was in Colorado.

We're starting the fall wedding season. Extremely full on Thurs.-Sunday every weekend through early November.

We're going to be targeting some family things this fall. We're holding a Family Movie Night every Friday from mid-September through the end of October out on the front lawn. Purchased a 12' outdoor screen. Early Facebook feedback has been extremely positive, so I think it will go well.

We're also going to be decorating the place in October for Halloween. We'll have to move some of the decorations occasionally for the weddings, but should be a lot of fun. We're known for our paranormal activity, so people are likely going to come out to walk around the place as Halloween approaches.

We're also planning on decorating the building exterior and interior for Christmas. Probably will put up decorations in early to mid November. We'll have several Christmas trees and a lot of light up. Should be able to see a lot of it from the four-lane highway that is on the front of our property, which is a great draw. Around 40,000 people drive by on the highway daily.

I love following you on Facebook, even if my chances of getting in a real visit are extremely small. Seeing you grow this business makes me very happy.

Keep up the good work! :)

My goal initially for the first year was two fold........

1. Increase exposure
2. Don't lose money and don't require any further investment from owner

I've managed to do both without any credit cards. In the process, we've learned a lot. There are definitely some things we'd change, but most of the risks on new products or services I offer are relatively low risk, so we're only talking a few hundred dollars lost if they fail. Those are the kind of failures you don't mind as a start-up.

I've also made sure to surround myself with people who are responsible and care about the success of the business. I also want them to have a invested interest in the history of our property. Outside of a couple minor bumps, we have a good staff now that gets along well with each other and does a good job working together. Makes it a lot easier to run the business that way.

We're offering a new wedding product to our wedding couples starting today. It's called CiiMemories. It's an interactive media product. It's run on a web-based cloud interface.

On the left half of the screen, a slide show of up to 50 pictures shows during the entire event. On the right half is where the interactive section is shown. The couple submits an approved list of guests and friends/family. Those in attendance can send text messages or photos to a given site. Those text messages and photos are posted live to all TV's in the winery where guests can view them. In addition, the couple can approve family/friends that are not in attendance. They can also send live messages to the couple even though they aren't at the location.

After the event, we can go out and click on 'Export' on the site and a full DVD file will be created that we can burn for the couple so they can view all the messages and photos that were sent to them during their wedding. Cost for the service is $300 for the couple.

We just posted the info about this product tonight on Facebook and already have two October 2011 brides who are interested in paying for the service. Really think it's going to be a good addition to our events at the winery.

Here's the link if you'd like to check out the live demo on the site.

http://www.ciimemories.com/

Another TV spot on the winery. We get a lot of TV action this time of the year due to the paranormal activity on the property. The guy that's goofing around is the weather guy on the local ABC affiliate......

Is Liberty's Belvoir Winery Haunted? - Video - KMBC Kansas City

Just had to fire an employee this evening. NEVER an easy thing to do, especially in this kind of economy. It was the employee's fault, but still very tough.

Now I have to work on a new hire in addition to everything else going on.

Have you opened up a bed and breakfast yet?

Not yet. We're in the process of gutting two floors of the building, one of which will be the bed and breakfast.

We are on the front page of kansascity.com today (KC Star website). They have around 150 pictures of the winery taken Sunday during the 2 Million Dogs fundraiser.

Here's the direct link to the pictures.

Puppy Up! Walk: Mingle Photo Galleries

As of today, we've been in business for a year. We're having an anniversary brunch tomorrow with all you can eat pancakes and sausage and all you can drink mimosas.

We've done around 45 weddings and 300 private events over the past year in addition to all of our walk-in business. We've had over 60 brides contact us just this week that were engaged during the holiday season, which will likely ensure a successful 2012. We've exceeded our 2011 initial projection on revenue and events. The community has been fantastic and embraced our endeavor. We're very thankful for what we've put together here and are excited about what's to come.

Very Cool. Congrats on the early success, and good luck managing your growing pains as all of this success also means a lot of work. I missed your Cii Memories update a while back. I think that one is a winner.

I smell a dynasty!

Haven't updated in awhile.

Our revenues for the first three months are up nearly 300% over last year. We were very fortunate to have beautiful weather all winter long, which helped greatly with weekend walk-up business.

We're launching some new stuff this week to help our Friday night crowds, which are generally much slower than Saturday. Starting this Friday, we're doing live music outside from 7-10 PM for the next eight weeks. I picked out several local bands and I'm paying them a couple hundred to come out and perform. Going to try out a wide variety of music and see how it goes. People are generally very excited about it. They love to come out and sit outside at the winery. This will only enhance that experience. We also may do some food offerings during that time depending on feedback.

We also did a Living Social deal today. It is a marketing cost of a couple thousand when you add it all up, but the benefit has been huge exposure. We have 6x the number of DAILY website hits in just the first 9 hours of the day.

The Best Daily Deals in Kansas City - Belvoir Winery - Wine Tasting for Two and One Bottle of Wine

Wedding season is coming. We're going to be awfully busy, but it's a good busy.

Been a busy start to the wedding season. In June alone, we've hosted over 30 events. Great walk up crowds and we've had a tremendous push in word of mouth in the KC area. Part of that is reflected in the Facebook crowd, which we've pushed up over the 2,500 mark.

We also had a huge boost last week from our appearance on a local show on the PBS network here in town. They held a half hour show where they talked about the lack of local wines in restaurants despite the move towards lots of local food in those same restaurants. To further test the quality of local wines, they held a blind taste test to see how people would react to the wines.

Our semi-dry wine (Plumeria) was one of five white wines. The other four wines were a local winery (Holy-Field Vignole), a Rothschild (well known wine maker in France), a Chateau St. Michelle (great winery in Washington), and a 'Three Buck Chuck' out of California. When all was said and done, our wine was selected as the top wine out of that group! Really fantastic publicity for us and we've seen a boost in foot and website traffic as a result.

Here's a link to the show if you're interested. The wine tasting starts around the 10:20 mark if you want to skip the interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=kskvjN1Zhno#!

I think watching this business grow is one of the coolest threads on FOFC.

So where is Missouri wines now on the international rep scale? I would have never guessed Missouri for wines but I'll be darned if it doesn't seem to have the perfect climate for this.

Also...do you have an on-line business for this?

Missouri actually used to be #1 in the U.S. in wine production before prohibition, including two of the largest three wineries in the nation (both which still exist and produce wine). Missouri is often referred to as 'America's First Wine Country'. Pretty good read at this link starting on page 390 if interested.

A History of Wine in America

When prohibition hit, the wine makers had to switch gears. Many of them actually used their cellars and caves to start mushroom production. After prohibition, the winemakers were slow to restart the industry, allowing areas like California to take the reins and surpass Missouri. Below is an old article that does a pretty good job of summarizing that part of the history.

A Tradition Of Wine-making Grows Again In Missouri, The Vines Are Reviving After A Dry Spell Caused By Prohibition. - Philly.com

The big three now are California (623 million gallons), New York (23 million gallons), and Oregon (6 million gallons). After that, there are eight states (Missouri, Washington, Florida, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia) that all produce between 1,000,000-1,900,000 gallons.

No online distribution yet, but that has more to do with the fact that we need all of our wine to cover the 350+ events that we'll have this year in addition to the walk-in traffic seven days a week.

Good deal.

(tho to be fair, I really posted in this thread because you mentioned Holyfield's Vignoles and I'm a huge fan and annoyed they don't ship out of state ;))

SI

Blame the conservatives. They've got some wacky laws in Kansas in regards to wine. Thankfully we don't have many restrictions on the Missouri side, which has allowed our industry to grow rapidly on this side of the state line.

BTW, you might want to watch that wine tasting video that I posted a few posts back. Our wine was matched up against the Holy-Field Vignole in the white category. It's a very good wine as well. Our wine that won the category was 83% Vignole, so those seemed to be the popular choice amongst the judges.

Has the drought affected your crop?

Not really. Grapes don't require a lot of irrigation. We're very fortunate to have a natural underground spring at the top of our field that trickles down through the field. So we get irrigation without any work on our part.

Once we get to the middle of July, we really don't want much rain at all. Too much moisture during the mature part of the grape's life can lead to fungus or mold growth, which can hinder your yield quite a bit for obvious reasons.

Super busy right now. Paranormal events have been sold out for over two months. Lots of newspaper/TV people coming out to do stories about our paranormal activity at the winery. The fall wedding season ends in three weeks. Last year, that would have meant a slowdown in event business. This year, not so much. 15 events scheduled in November with all the weekends in December booked with holiday parties.

We're going to shut down for a week in January to do a good clean-up/maintenance of the building. We won't be that busy during that time anyway and the building has a few bumps and bruises that need to be cleaned up.

Really liked this picture from one of the weddings last weekend. Most photographers make the fountain the main focus. In this case, they used it nicely as a distant background.

Didn't realize this, but you are literally 15 to 20 minutes from some of my family members homes..I suggested the check your place out and if I get out there, I will be up to visit.

Just shoot me a message if you are coming out. Would love to show you around, including many of the places that the general public doesn't get to enter.

Smart to keep the Bill Self Voodoo Doll room isolated.

Macro will be getting the V.I.P treatment...or murdered. :)

We could always use an extra haunting around here. You can never have enough.

Got the B&B set up yet? Or is that not going to happen since you are swamped with wedding and holiday business?

If my wife and I drove up on a weekend we would love to see the place. As much as I have been reading about it and watching its growth, I am really intrigued by what you have done.

Not yet. We are very close to initiating the development deal that I had discussed previously. It's slightly different than the original plans, but still is going to be a great deal for the community. Once we get a bit of cash flow, we'll do the bed and breakfast along with additional ballrooms.

dola

Great set of photos from a wedding two weeks ago.......

Belvoir Winery Wedding + Lindsey & Skyler » Kansas City wedding + newborn photographer

Another big moment for us. We've now moved into the top 10 most 'liked' Missouri wineries on Facebook. We're up to around 3,250 and are adding 3-5 likes a day right now. We should be able to move into the top 5-7 in six months at our current pace. That may not seem like a big deal, but we're directly or indirectly hitting around 10K Facebook pages a day just by doing nothing more than providing regular winery updates. We've already passed several established wineries in the state. It's been a huge asset to the winery.

We're also going to be adding some new features to the winery in January. We're going to turn one of the smaller rooms into a consult room. We'll have couches and coffee table for guests who are interested in booking events. We'll also have a monitor showing pictures from previous events that can also be used as a computer monitor to produce contracts, show features, etc.

We are going to move to having one night a week where we stay open later than our usual 8:00 PM closing time. We're going to have music playing on the patio and in the building and are looking to stay open until 10:00 or 11:00 PM. We want to provide an option for those who want to stay at the winery later during the nicer months of the year. We're shooting for Spring 2013 on that.

We also are a few days away from beginning a schedule towards renovation/expansion on the property. We've been working on putting together a deal for some time, so it's very exciting to reach a point where it reaches a planning stage. If all goes well, we can start work in the latter part of 2013.

Yes, but when will you be able to ship out of state? I (Mrs Glen) wanted to get a bottle for glen for Christmas, but alas no shipping to California.

Yes, I griped to him about it, so this post would not have been a surprise.

Oh and coolness about the good things going on there.

Congrats MBBF. Glad things are going well for you and the winery. If I get back that way again, I'll come down that way and see the place. Sounds like a nice place to visit.

Are you located near I-70 between KC and Columbia? I remember seeing a winery when a friend and I drove to a Nebraska/Mizzou game 8-10 years ago. Wondered if you are building up that property.

My wife is working on getting a shipping portal set up. Likely won't be available by end of year, but we're working on it. We've got a lot of people who have visited who live out of state that request shipping now, so it's a definite need. Your post will be one more form of motivation.


You are referring to Les Bourgeois Winery (http://www.missouriwine.com). We actually do our bottling at their facility just because we can't afford bottling automation machines yet. Very good winery and I'd definitely go and see it. They have a bistro with wonderful food that sits at the top of a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. Fantastic view.

We've got two pianos in the winery at opposite ends of the building. One is a grand piano that is also a player piano. The other piano is a 110 year old upright piano that used to belong to my great grandmother.

I was sitting in the center of the building answering e-mails when I heard classical music being played. I assumed that the player piano had malfunctioned in some way and walked out into the entryway in the main hall of the building. I realized as I walked into the hallway that the older upright piano on the other end of the building was the one playing.

I walked down the hallway about 15-20 steps and the music stopped. Walked into the room and there was no one there. I've never had goosebumps that big in my life. I've experienced a lot of stuff out here, but that one was way over the top.

Apparently the ghosts approve of the work you're doing and give you a little music to show their appreciation.

It actually was pretty good music, but I'm going to pass on any future performances if they ask my opinion.

Not going to lie, I think Mizzou is living the dream I went to school to do :(

You majored in owning a haunted winery and event facility? :)

Close. I majored in Beverage Marketing with an emphasis in wines and spirits. So almost haha

Wrong kind of spirits ;)

SI