Starbucks, Schmarbucks. The Pompeiians Thought of This First…

Melissa and I visited Pompeii yesterday.

That’s the ancient Roman village in Southern Italy that was buried under 18 feet of ash and pumice after nearby Mt Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.

Archeologists have been excavating the place since the 19th century and have uncovered one of the best-preserved ancient ruins on the planet.

Melissa and I walked those ancient streets yesterday and discovered…

…wine bars…

…lots and lots of wine bars.

Archeologists have unearthed at least 160 bars packed into Pompeii’s 160+ acres. (For those challenged by math, that’s 1 wine bar for every acre).

That’s a high wine-bar density, especially in a town with only 10,000 to 20,000 people.

Rich people didn’t frequent the bars. They had jugs o’ wine in their homes and had sloshy dinner parties in private.

The poor folks hung out at these corner taverns.

Here’s another thing Melissa and I learned:

The wine and bar biz thrived, in part, because of savvy marketers.

Archeologists have discovered that the bars were placed in strategic locations where they were easily visible to people entering the city gates or traveling the busiest roads.

You thought Starbuck’s was clever to put a coffee shop on every other busy street corner. Pompeii’s bar owners thought that up first.

And local wine producers knew a thing or three about marketing, too.

Down the road in Surrentum (present day Sorrento), one producer not only sold clay jugs of wine (with their branding on it), they distributed calices (wine cups) engraved with marketing messages.

Archeologists found a cup with this engraving: “do not accept calices born of some cheap dust, but rather the smooth shaping of a Surrentine potter’s wheel.”

Another says, “Are you drinking Surrentine wines? Don’t take up cups of mottled agate or a gold one—these wines will provide you with their own calices.”

There are so many great marketing lessons here (and more I didn’t mention). Since I’m on vacation, I’ll leave it at that, and let you excavate the lessons from this story.

For now, bottoms up…

…and thanks for reading.

p.s. Speaking of branded cups, you can pop into your neighborhood Starbucks, drop $16.95, and get a Terracotta Recycled Ceramic Mug, engraved with the company logo. But remember, the Pompeiians thought of that first.