New York Wine & Culinary Center
01 Challenge
How do you launch a totally new kind of organization and facility, telling people what it is and what it offers, while creating excitement and enthusiasm to try it?
Richard and Robert Sands, leaders of Constellation Brands, partnered with Wegmans, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the New York Wine and Grape Foundation to establish the New York Wine & Culinary Center—a $7.5 million facility on the shore of Canandaigua Lake. It promotes New York State wine, food, and agriculture to New Yorkers and the world.
Alexa Gifford, the newly appointed executive director, needed a website in time for the opening of the Center on June 17, 2006, to not only explain the Center, and create awareness, excitement, and demand, but to present the look and feel of its uniquely appealing architecture, so that entering the site felt like entering the building.
The team at the Center expected the site to provide information primarily, but events and classes at the Center have proved enormously popular, requiring online registration and payment services. They wanted the site to be easy and friendly to navigate, simple to search for what you need, and to rank highly on search engines, for visitors from near and far.
02 Solution
Dumbwaiter Design designed the site to feel like an extension of the physical space, taking hundreds of pictures to help choose the color palette and the design of the website. To show almost every part of the building, inside and out, we created 360-degree virtual environments. Mobile device users can even access a “low-graphics” version.
We built database-driven class and event registration systems that work seamlessly with the business and inventory systems, for fast, easy registration and payment. We added a very effective site search engine, and optimized the site for search engines, using an extensive site skeleton and metadata tags.
The site uses HTML with Adobe Flash, and PHP/MySQL for the database backend.
03 Result
“The website has had million-dollar PR value,” Alexa Gifford said, “generating lots of buzz.” Each year, 15,000 to 20,000 unique visitors are coming to the New York Wine and Culinary Center. Classes and private events have proved wildly popular, with over 400 of each every year, and 90% of the participants register on website. With the grain and tones of seasoned hardwoods in the site design, and the panoramic views, it is hard to know where the site ends and the Center begins.
Dumbwaiter Design won the contract for the site for several reasons, including a very complete proposal, cutting edge technology and design ideas, and creative suggestions that went beyond expectations. The site was launched ahead of schedule, by late May 2006. The company continues to work on the site because, as Alexa Gifford says, “Dumbwaiter is very accommodating—great and responsive.”
