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MFWF 2019: REVEL’S WRAP

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Sifting through the 300+ events that make up this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival can be daunting, but don’t worry – we’ve done the hard work for you. Below is a selection of events that are hosted by our friends, on topics that we love, or held in regions that we frequent. Enjoy.

NZ Wine

Here are four events hosted by our friends at New Zealand Winegrowers as part of their trans-Tasman takeover.

Heart, Land and Sea

Shiraz (Syrah!) and Lamb Snacks

What Lies Beneath: Cellar Sessions

Riesling and Raw Bar

Sake

It’s not always about wine at REVEL HQ; just look at Sake Matsuri. Here are three sake events we like the look of.

The Evolution of Sake

For Sake’s Sake

Ezard x Maker & Monger x Black Market Sake

Friends

Here are two from our mates at the Carlton Wine Room:

The Somm Takeover

The Merchants Feast

Learn how to make your own wine at Noisy Ritual:

Demystifying Winemaking with Noisy Ritual

The Burn City boys have been involved with almost all our Melbourne events.

Where Did Veal Go?

Regions

Two events in the Yarra Valley, both starring some of our favourite winemakers.

Yarra Valley Women in Wine

TarraWarra’s Tribute to the Yarra Valley

Spend a day in beautiful Gippsland (and glamp overnight afterwards!). While you’re down there, why not also check out a few of our favourite wineries? You can read more HERE.

The Village Feast

The Village Feast Sleepover

 

 

Head of Production (Full time, Melbourne based)

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HEAD OF PRODUCTION

REVEL is seeking a Head of Production who is keen and ready to make a significant impact on the global experience and events stage.

The role, based in Collingwood, will see the successful candidate coordinate and execute over 30 major events annually both here in Australia and abroad. It will require them to travel often to many of the countries and cities REVEL operates in. They will help lead, drive and coordinate both our local and international teams.

Does this sound like you?

ABOUT US:

REVEL is a global experience and media company hell bent on creating remarkable experiences that people love and learn from. Our events, focused primarily around our love of wine and food (in that order!), include showstoppers like Pinot Palooza, MOULD – A Cheese Festival, Sake Matsuri, Oinofilia.wine and more.

We run events in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, and have plans to expand into the USA (and beyond!) in the very near future.

ABOUT YOU:

You thrive in a fast-paced environment and live to conquer new challenges and new cities. You have extensive event experience and excel at event planning, budgeting, management, reporting, supplier relationships and more. It’s your thing.

You love working with a small and dynamic team and lead with empathy and respect, always. You’re constantly curious about ways to improve our events. You care deeply about our guests, our winery and food exhibitors, our suppliers and each event’s financials.

In short, you really give a shit about what you do.

Although you’ll report to the CEO, you can work autonomously and feel confident making clear and considered decisions; and can take responsibility for them.
You don’t see problems; only solutions.
You exude and thrive on positivity.

THE SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE WILL:

  • Have extensive event experience and a deep understanding of event financials and fiscal reporting, including tracking budget costs throughout the course of projects and communicating scope changes that effect the bottom line. 
  • Understand profit margins and effectively meet or exceed them (but not at the expense of the experience)
  • Have strong people management skills and be able to manage teams both in Australia and abroad and be empathetic and respectful to cultural diversities within.
  • Not just be a manager, but a mentor to other team members.
  • Know how to manage and respect relationships suppliers and key stakeholders and understand we can’t do what we do without them.
  • Be willing to work a flexible schedule based on the events and changing priorities of the team. This includes weekend and evening work.
  • Be highly organised and time proficient.
  • Love to create meaningful post-event reports for both internal and external use.
  • Have an in-depth understanding of technology and be proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, Slack, Dropbox, Xero, Airtable and WordPress, or be able to grasp new tools quickly.
  • A valid Australian driver’s licence and passport.
  • The ability to travel both interstate and internationally.

The role is based in Collingwood, Melbourne and the salary is negotiable for the right human.
All applications will be treated in the strictest confidence.

So, if you’re keen to join the REVEL family, please apply by sending a cover letter and resumé to both dan@revel.global & claudia@revel.global

2018 DIGITAL WINE COMMUNICATOR OF THE YEAR

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WE WON AN AWARD!!

In November this year, REVEL was awarded Digital Wine Communicator of the Year by the Wine Communicators of Australia.

As written on the WCA website, the award is given:

“In recognition of outstanding work by an online wine communicator in any digital category including website, video, vodcast or podcast.

This award acknowledges innovation, contemporary and clever use of a suite of communication tools now available to the modern wine communicator.”

While we’re known as an events company, over the past few years we’ve been pushing hard into the media space. This includes building up our social media profiles on Instagram and Facebook, creating native content (copy, video and photography), publishing our own magazine and working with our digital agency, Bolster, to ensure what we’re doing is being seen by the right people (you!).

We’re really proud, humbled and excited that our efforts are being recognised, so thank you to the WCA, and thank you, you. We couldn’t have done this without your support.

To see the full list of winners and finalists, visit the WCA website HERE.

REVEL 2018: 11 CITIES, FIVE COUNTRIES, 26 EVENTS

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Malbec SYD > Malbec MEL > MOULD MEL > Pinot Palooza TOKYO > IWFF > Sake Matsuri MEL > Oinofilia SYD > Oinofilia MEL > Barossa SYD > Barossa MEL > PP PER > PP ADL > VD MEL > VD SYD > MOULD SYD > PP AKL > PP CHC > PP WLG > PP MEL > PP SYD > Margaret River on Tour SING > PP BNE > Sake Matsuri SYD > Rose REVEL TOKYO > PP SING > PP HK

If you thought that saying goodbye to Game of Rhones would make for a lighter load for team REVEL in 2018, well… it did not.

Because in lieu of the comic-con-style wine festival that was GoR, we took MOULD to Sydney for three sell-out sessions, Sake Matsuri to Melbourne, Pinot Palooza to Tokyo and Hong Kong, we ran a brand new rosé event, we helped out with the Melbourne iteration of the Italian Wine and Food Festival and helped to take Margaret River on Tour to Singapore. All up, we ran 26 events in 11 cities in five countries in 2018.

And that’s not all. We published a magazine (which was nominated for Best Wine Publication at the WCA awards). We moved into our very own office in Collingwood. And (drumroll please) we won the Digital Wine Communicator of the Year award.

There were some sad times, too. After five years with the company, Jade moved on to focus on her own family business and spend time with her young children. Peter, too, moved on for a role at Spicers Clovelly Estate in sunny Maleny.

There’s no denying that this year was big. But big is good! It’s what we do, and what we love. Here’s how the year panned out, and what we did to not just survive it, but thrive throughout it.

Like always, we kicked off event season with Gauchito Gil’s Malbec Day. We’re not quite sure what it is about this event and Sydney, but every year this city goes completely nuts for it and 2018 was no exception. We had to cap attendee numbers at around 1000 to ensure there’d be enough wine to go around (if you are or know of any Malbec producers, tell them to get in touch!) but we had at least that many on the waitlist again. For a Malbec event!

Melbourne’s version was also really solid. We sold enough tickets that we were able to use the whole of Meat Market (the first time we’ve ever used it all for this event), we had five of the city’s best Latin-leaning restaurants battle it out for the Golden Empanada trophy, and finished it off with a lot of happy guests.

Next up was MOULD – A Cheese Festival in Melbourne. We ran this event for the first time in 2017, and although it was a success, there were a lot of areas we knew we could do better in for 2018 – particularly around attendee numbers. Cheese love is universal, so in 2018 we made a point of reducing the numbers of guests but adding more sessions, so more people could come but have more space to enjoy it while they were there. It worked a treat, and we had incredibly good feedback across all three sold-out sessions.

Speaking of sold-out events, the next stop on the REVEL calendar was a big one for us, figuratively and literally. Taking Pinot Palooza to a city as big as Tokyo and tackling a completely new wine market was huge, and furthered our foray into Asia. Seeing how the people of Tokyo responded and engaged was really interesting, too – it turns out five hours is long for an event in Japan; they’re used to events that run for around three hours. We’ll be taking all the learnings on board (especially where to find the best ramen) when we return next year.

Back on Australian soil, our events continued on strong. Half the team stayed in Melbourne to help out with the Italian Wine and Food Festival while the other half was in Tokyo. We then ran Sake Matsuri in Melbourne for the first time (Ayla’s first event with us!)) before back-to-back Oinofilia: A Celebration of the New Wines of Greece events in Melbourne and Sydney. Barossa. Be Consumed. was next, again in both Melbourne and Sydney.

The Pinot Palooza tour started in earnest in early August in Perth, and what a way to start it was. We sold it out, which made it the biggest event we’ve run in WA, but it was the presence of the Skin Contact DJs that made it the biggest party we’ve ever run, almost ever. Watching over 1000 people sing along to Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing was the Pinot Palooza finale we didn’t know we needed.

A week later, half the team was in Adelaide at the Morphettville Racecourse, watching horses run in the Pinot Palooza Stakes while the Skin Contact DJs again brought the house down. The other half was running back-to-back Vin Diemen events in Melbourne and Sydney. It was a big weekend, but we were due for a two-week, event-free respite at the end of it.

It was during that brief breathing period that we said goodbye to Jade. In proper REVEL fashion, we sent her off with a long lunch at Scott Pickett’s Matilda restaurant, dining on salmon roe tartlets, buttery spanner crab, roast duck and apple tarte tatin, washed down with Champagne, Chablis and, of course, plenty of pinot.

Then it was back to Sydney for MOULD – A Cheese Festival. It was the first time we’d run this event in this city, but the response was so strong and the first two sessions sold out so fast that we ended up needing to add a third session!

The Pinot Palooza tour continued a week later, hitting Auckland and Christchurch and then heading to Wellington the week after that. Both Auckland and Wellington’s events were total sell-outs, and Auckland’s ended up being the biggest event we’d ever run in New Zealand. Christchurch is still a new market for us and so that event was a little smaller, but still heaps of fun. The New Zealand leg was bittersweet though, as Wellington was to be Peter’s last event with REVEL. We made sure to sing him Happy Birthday, and sent him home with a box of eggplants (private joke… we were really very sad!).

Then, a free weekend before our biggest two events of the year: back-to-back Pinot Palooza Melbourne and Sydney. It started with a huge bump-in day on Friday at the Royal Exhibition Building, and ended with dinner at the Dolphin Hotel in Sydney on Sunday night. In between, there was 6500 attendees, dance floors, frosé, missed flights and lots of coffee. We worked out afterwards that collectively we walked over 250km this weekend… nuts! Both events were freaking awesome, and Melbourne’s in particular was as close to perfect as we’ll ever admit.

We’re getting tired at this point, but there’s a few events to go before we can rest. Pinot Palooza Brisbane is on the following weekend, but before that there’s just enough time for Dan to nip over to Singapore and lend a hand at Margaret River on Tour; an event designed to promote tourism to the region.

After Singapore and after Brisbane, we pop back up to Sydney for the final Sake Matsuri event of the year. Then, there’s just three events left, all of which are overseas.

The first is Rosé REVEL, a brand new event for us and one which we decided to trial in Tokyo. It’s small, but cute, and although it needs development we think it could be a fun one for summer.

The final two are Pinot Palooza Singapore, which we’re back at for the second year running, and Pinot Palooza Hong Kong which is a first for us. Of all the events we ran in 2018, Hong Kong was the greatest unknown for us – we weren’t sure if we’d get the numbers, the venue was weather dependent… there were so many things that could go wrong. But we must have done something right in the lead up, for the event gods favoured us with perfect weather, over 800 attendees, and an absolute ripping party for our final event of 2018.

Next year, the plan is to run even more events in more cities and countries. Who’s with us? Bring it on!

TEAM REVEL STATS 2019

Total kilometres walked on event days: 1115km (+ DS TBC)
Total flights taken: 146
Total number of coffees consumed on event days: 150 (,000!!)
Total number of times we sang Peter ‘Happy Birthday’: 7
Total media reach: 12.3 million