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Disruption 2020 – Where will it strike?

but right now it seems that millennials are interested
in craft beer, craft spirits, and alcohol-free, cannabis-
infused beverages. Consumers want something new, and
wine brands are responding with augmented reality and
enhanced marketing strategies.

In winemaking, labor, energy, and water usage are critical.
However, new technology is changing this. For example,
in the vineyard, new technologies monitor water usage,
mechanize picking and sorting, and improve chilling and
filtration. Sorters in the winery can take images of grapes
as they pass in front of a camera, software determines
what to accept or reject, and air particles push rejected
particles out of the stream – at up to five tons per hour.

This describes only a fraction of the dramatic efficiencies
new technologies have brought to the wine industry, and
new technologies are under continuous development.
EMV at petroleum retailers
By Brandes Elitch Now for payments, an industry that is also ripe for
CrossCheck Inc. disruption. In particular, I'm going to explore three
developments in payments that did not seem to get much
he year 2020 marks the beginning of the elev- mention last year. First up is the almost total failure
enth year I have written a monthly column on of gas stations to adhere to that sector's initial EMV
payments for The Green Sheet. As you probably implementation deadline, which Visa slated for October
T know from prior published articles, CrossCheck 2017.
is located in Sonoma County, Calif., or as we call it: Wine
Country. There are approximately 123,000 gas stations in the United
States and about 1 million fuel pumps. Currently, it is
I often find parallels between the wine industry and estimated that only about one quarter of those pumps have
payments. Today is no exception. At this juncture I'd say been converted to EMV. The industry cost for compliance
they're both ripe for disruption. A Dec. 27, 2019, article by is projected to be in the range of $6 billion.
Katie Jones in Visual Capitalist discusses disruption in the
wine industry in some detail. One of her main points is A tangled web of disparate elements related to payment
that the international wine market is being transformed processing all need certification for EMV implementation
by (no surprise) " technological innovation" and changes at the pump. This includes the payment servers, the
in consumer behavior. difference between indoor and outdoor payment
terminals, the fuel dispensers themselves, and an on-
People between the ages of 18 and 27 prefer spirits, or site back-office system. And when you have to demolish
beer, to wine. If you're a winemaker, how do you connect existing concrete pads to lay new electrical wires, there
to this age group? One suggestion is new packaging with needs to be an environmental review by local authorities.
such attributes as smaller serving sizes, portability and
sustainability. Did you know that canned wine is now The new deadline, three years after the original one, is
a $70 million industry, and is projected to make up 10 October of this year. My hunch is total industry compliance
percent of wine sales in five years? will not be achieved by then, but we will see. This will be a
big problem for gas station owners, because there has been
In addition, industry observers are projecting that glass an outbreak of skimming fraud, for which merchants will
bottles will be replaced by edible bottles and compostable be liable starting in October if they have not completed
glass. QR codes can replace paper labels, which is probably their EMV conversion. Incidentally, the margin for this
not a good idea, because most consumers make their business is about 1 percent of sales, so coming up with the
purchasing decisions by the label. Consumer tastes and funds for the conversion is a challenge.
preferences will determine success in the marketplace,

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