I believe we connected when you were still at HBS and I had been working with Pooja about wine-related programs and events for the Wine & Cuisine Society. I remember, in fact, talking with you as you checked me into the HBS holiday party… Was it at the Liberty Hotel??

In any case, Lindsay, I wanted to reach out because I’ve noticed Cork’d is now branching out into more city-specific ways and I am, of course, keen to connect with you about the Boston market. You may remember 365daysofwine.com and Red White Boston, where my team and I write about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. We are also about to launch our iPhone app for Red White Boston and I’m incredibly excited about it — more on that below my sig file!

I’d like to connect with you and explore ways we might work together, perhaps for Red White Boston to provide content for your Boston-specific outreach, and in terms of the iPhone app especially since our intention is completely to scale it up and adapt it to other cities (Red White New York, Red White Miami, etc).

I look forward very much to your response and to exploring ways to collaborate!

Very kind regards,
Cathy
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Cathy Huyghe
365 Days of Wine / Red White Boston
Cell: 702.528.3717
huyghe@post.harvard.edu or cathy@well.com

RED WHITE BOSTON IPHONE APP

The idea of the app is to capitalize on the 80% (or more) of wine purchase decisions that are made in the aisle of the wine shop. For the first, roll-out phase I am looking to partner with 20 wine shops all over Boston, each of which will identify their five best wines. 20 shops x 5 wines = 100 Best Wines in Boston. The iPhone’s GPS capability allows the user to identify the wine shop nearest to them at that moment when they are looking to purchase a bottle of wine.

User walks into the store and already, thanks to the app, knows the five wines the shop’s owner thinks are the best on her/his shelves. User can access information about the wines via text, audio, or video. Red White Boston shelf talkers visually highlight the wines for the user (and for non-users as well). User chooses a wine, indicates the choice in the app, and a code is generated for the user to be entered into a weekly give-away of a wine dinner at a Boston area restaurant.

User’s choices are archived in the app’s Wine Journal, where they can also enter notes on what they thought of the wine. The last bit responds to the second biggest complaint wine drinkers have, which is that they can never remember which wines they tried and liked. (The first biggest complaint is not knowing which wine to choose, something the app itself obviously addresses outright.)

There is literally nothing else like this app on the market that we know of, and we are incredibly excited about its potential!

I’ve dropped a few screens from the app into the Powerpoint, attached to this email, for your CONFIDENTIAL review. Please have a look at the screens, if you would, and let me know what you think. I value your opinion very much.