June 13, 2024
Brad and Lisa Warner in front of their wine tanks
Brad Warner has spent his entire career in the California winemaking business and seen how winemakers borrowed equipment from each other. Recognizing a possible business opportunity, he took a leap of faith in 1991 and established Rutherford Equipment Rental — the first-ever rental business for the wine and entire beverage production industry in Napa Valley.
Creating a niche rental market for the wine industry was a natural evolution for Warner, who started working in the business during 1967, including at the famous Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, Calif., for nearly 30 years. It was while at Robert Mondavi that he founded Rutherford Equipment Rental as a small startup, naming it after the town he was living in at the time.
The winemaking industry was ready for the offering, Brad says.
“In the mid- to late 1980s in the Napa Valley, there were a bunch of new wineries being built and a lot of new investors coming in from the U.S. and Europe. Many didn’t know whether they were going to make it, so they didn’t want to invest in purchasing equipment. I saw that opportunity for renting and said I’ll try this and see how it goes,” he says.
“It was a side hustle,” says Lisa Warner, Brad’s wife, who serves as co-owner and director of operations at Rutherford Equipment Rental. “He bought two wine tanks and slowly grew the business.”
By 2008, the business had grown to a point where he couldn’t keep running it by himself while still working full time as general manager and winemaker at Sawyer Cellars. So he brought on Lisa, who by that time had worked in the wine industry in both procurement and sales for more than 20 years.
“I had warehouses everywhere. I asked Lisa, who I was dating at the time, to see whether she would be interested in getting involved and managing the business as a full-time job. She understood the wine business and wine equipment, which was important,” Brad says.
Brad at the filler
The strategy worked. “By 2009 we brought on a part-time employee and we have just kept growing ever since,” Lisa adds.
In 2015, Brad left the company that bought out Sawyer Cellars and joined Rutherford full time.
The company’s success has focused on philosophies ingrained from the beginning. “I have always had it that I would not rent anything that I would not use myself in my own wineries,” Brad says.
“The other is that we put our customers’ needs first,” Lisa adds. “We take the time to listen, and our goal is to help our customers solve their production challenges. We have experienced what they are going through. Being in the wine industry, we know the challenges they face. We know what questions to ask. Many times we may offer them a solution they have never thought of or didn’t know we could offer.”
Today, the company has three full-time and two part-time employees. Over the years, their inventory has grown exponentially. In addition to tanks, they offer every piece of equipment needed for all phases of winemaking from harvesting to bottling, including bottling and filtration equipment, barrel steamers and cellar sanitation.
They also offer paid consulting, helping wineries with everything from which filtration mediums to use to equipment they can either rent or purchase. They also broker used equipment and have a small winery with their own label, Leto Cellars, specializing in dry sauvignon blanc and dry reds such as cabernet sauvignon, a red blend and a merlot.
The unique part about the equipment they rent is that “whether it’s a tank, filtration or bottling equipment, our equipment is touching or housing our customers’ most valuable asset — their wine. The responsibility that we have to make sure our tanks don’t leak and our bottling equipment doesn’t fail is pretty intense,” Lisa adds.
Their reputation for not only quality equipment but also customer service has garnered a wide-reaching and loyal customer base.
“We serve small startups and large wineries,” Brad says. “Large wineries rent equipment from us for both bottling and harvest seasons. Some of the bigger wineries are not interested in adding more capital items to their list, so they look at renting. On the other hand, if a winery has 100 cases of wine to bottle, they’ll do that by hand rather than bringing in a mobile bottling line. That is a kind of niche we can fill.”
The setup
“A lot of the bigger wineries have a lot of large tanks, but they don’t have small, portable tanks,” Lisa adds. “So we’re renting to some of the biggest wine corporations in the world. And we’re renting to those who are just starting out. We have a wide reach. They are renting from us for different reasons. I would say the one thing they all have in common is the equipment they are renting is not only capital-intensive but also takes up a lot of space. So if you can get it in and out for when you need it, it makes sense to rent.”
While commercial wineries are their main market, they also offer equipment for a variety of commercial ready-to-drink (RTD) categories. “We do wine, beer and cider, primarily, followed by other beverage production,” Lisa says.
Because of the uniqueness of the industry, their equipment can be out on rent anywhere from three weeks to 90 days.
“Harvest season goes from September to November and bottling season is from December through August. Our minimum is a two-week rental during bottling season and a minimum 90-day rental during harvest season. When the equipment goes out for a 90-day period, everyone is harvesting and not bottling. All our tanks are out. The big rush is getting them all delivered and then the big rush is picking them all up when they go off rent,” Brad says.
“We’re busy all year round,” Lisa adds. “That’s the advantage of having equipment that serves dual purposes and having enough of a selection to serve our customers.”
Even though they have a very micro-niche rental business that relies on a lot of hands-on interaction with their customers, the Warners have incorporated rental technology to help them grow their operation.
“When Brad started, everything was on a handshake. Now we have contracts and Point of Rental Software has become critical. We also just added an online quote request. For us, incorporating rental technology has been the key to our growth because there’s no way we could have scaled up without it,” Lisa says.
However, the couple admits they will never stop being a “high-touch” operation that serves the unique needs of their customers — a service they believe will be needed for years to come.
“With more and more small wineries being consumed by larger corporations, we see larger corporations not wanting a lot of assets on their books. They would rather rent or lease items. We think we have a healthy future.” Brad says, adding that he will continue to help make deliveries, especially to new customers to “make sure they have all their questions answered by me,” he says with a smile.
ARA Insurance came to the rescue
When Lisa and Brad Warner, owners of Rutherford Equipment Rental — a micro-niche rental operation in Napa, Calif., that serves the wine and beverage markets — started to add more employees, they realized they needed more resources to support them. They saw the training options offered by the American Rental Association (ARA) and decided to join.
They didn’t realize how important that membership was until last year when, for the first time, they were not able to receive renewal from their longtime insurance broker.
“We worked with an insurance broker. He shopped us out to eight different people and he could not get a renewal for us,” Lisa says.
They had met Chip Arenchild, ARA Insurance preferred agent with InterWest Insurance Services, Nevada City, Calif., the year before but did not need his services at the time.
“A week before we were going to lose insurance, our broker called and admitted that he couldn’t get insurance for us. I called Chip in a panic. He saved us — got us great insurance that also saved us some money. I really felt like we were talking with someone who understood our business. There are unique things about our business and being able to talk with someone who I didn’t need to explain everything to and obtain for us what we actually needed, well, I will never leave them,” she says.
