DDBA 8303 Week 10 Case Findings Passage Example

The Tasting Room Became the Sales Floor: A Findings Passage From a Case Study of a Family Winery's Move Toward Direct Sales, Opening With an Interpretive Claim, Giving the Setting a Reader Needs and Tracing the Claim to Its Codes

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8303: Qualitative and Case Study Methodology for Business Analysis Research

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Tasting Room Became the Sales Floor: A Findings Passage From a Case Study of a Family Winery's Move Toward Direct Sales, Opening With an Interpretive Claim, Giving the Setting a Reader Needs and Tracing the Claim to Its Codes

Finding 3: The Tasting Room Stopped Being a Place to Pour and Became the Place Where the Winery Sells

Between 2022 and 2025, the owners of Larkspur Ridge Vineyards, a composite family winery producing about 9,000 cases a year in Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula, moved from selling most of their wine through distributors to selling most of it directly, through the tasting room, a wine club and online orders. The interviews and records point to one change at the center of that move: the tasting room stopped being treated as a place to pour samples for visitors and became the place where the winery made its sales. Staff, layout, scheduling and pay were all rebuilt around that purpose.

The Setting a Reader Needs

A reader who has never stood in the tasting room needs to know what it was like before. Until 2022, the room was a converted barn with a long wooden bar and room for about 30 visitors. Two or three seasonal staff, mostly college students, poured five tastes for a fee, answered questions and rang up the occasional bottle. The owners' attention was elsewhere: on the cellar, on the vineyard and on two distributors who placed Larkspur's wines in restaurants and shops across the state. Weekend afternoons in summer were crowded, often with tour buses; weekdays and winter were quiet.

By 2025, the bar had been shortened and replaced in part by four seated tables where staff guide groups through a tasting. Staff are year-round employees who complete a training program the owners designed. Tour bus visits are no longer accepted. Each staff member is paid a base wage plus a commission on wine club memberships, and the room keeps a reservations calendar so that staff know who is coming. Geertz (1973) called for thick description, accounts that give enough context for a reader to understand what actions mean to those who take them; the details above are what make the change in the room's purpose visible.

The Evidence

The claim rests on three codes that appeared across interviews with both owners, the tasting room manager and five tasting room staff, and on the winery's sales records.

The code "room as sales channel" appeared in all eight interviews. One owner described the shift this way: "We used to think of the room as hospitality. Now it is where we sell." The tasting room manager described the decision to stop accepting tour buses as "the moment we chose fewer visitors who buy over more visitors who don't."

The code "staff as sellers" appeared in seven interviews. Staff described training in how to recommend a wine club membership without pressure, and the manager described changing hiring from students to adults seeking year-round work.

The code "seated tasting" appeared in six interviews and in the floor plans the owners shared. Staff described seated tastings as slower and more personal, and as where most club sign-ups happen.

The sales records support the claim. Direct sales rose from 31 percent of revenue in 2021 to 64 percent in 2025, and wine club membership grew from about 400 to about 1,900 households, with about 80 percent of new members joining in the tasting room.

Where the Evidence Is Thinner

Two staff members described the change less favorably. One said that weekday shifts with no reservations "feel like waiting for a sale." Another said that the commission made some colleagues compete for groups. The finding does not depend on these accounts, but they show that the room's new purpose created tensions the owners did not describe.

Why the Claim Is Interpretive

A descriptive version of this finding would say that the winery added seated tastings, hired year-round staff and stopped accepting tour buses. The interpretive version says those changes share one purpose, turning the room into the winery's sales channel. The difference matters because the interpretation explains why the owners made changes that cost them visitors, which a list of changes cannot.

How the Claim Was Built

Braun and Clarke (2006) describe themes as patterns of meaning that capture something important about the data in relation to the research question, built by reviewing codes against the full data set. This theme was built from the three codes above, then checked against every interview and the sales records. Tracy (2010) lists rich description and multiple sources among the markers of credibility; this passage aims to provide both.

References

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Basic Books.

Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative quality: Eight "big-tent" criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 837-851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800410383121