About the Speaker

Zane Stevens is the Founder of Protea Financial and has specialized in the wine and beverage world since 2014, beginning his career at KPMG before building a firm dedicated to operational accounting for wineries. With more than twelve years spent in the day-to-day details of winery books, he brings hands-on expertise in bulk-to-bottle costing, TTB compliance, club and DTC accounting, and M&A. Named to the North Bay 40 Under 40 in 2024, Zane is a firm believer that good numbers grow good businesses.

What we’ll cover:

• No true cost per case: why pricing without a real cost-to-produce means every price is a guess
• Casual inventory: treating your single biggest asset as an estimate, and how to value and reconcile it properly
• Cash vs. accrual confusion: how seasonality hides whether you actually made money
• Flying blind on margins: tracking margin by channel and against benchmarks so you know what “good” looks like
• Tax-first thinking: why optimizing the tax bill before the business is profitable starves growth

We will close with what good actually looks like in practice: financials you trust monthly, cost and margin by wine and channel, a short KPI dashboard, and tax handled as the last step rather than the first. Bring your lunch and your questions.

Who Should Attend:

This session is designed for winery owners, general managers, bookkeepers, and anyone responsible for pricing, inventory, or financial decisions in the Virginia wine trade.