Our Culture

Having worked for other people in other businesses prior to launching Telaya, we knew that when we started our own business, we wanted the culture to be radically different than anything that we had experienced in the past.

First and most importantly, we incorporated the 5 values that we raised our kids with (Family, Accountability, Integrity, Compassion and Perseverance) into the fabric of the company’s culture. We believe that one’s values should be the same whether at home or at work – and remind our team, our customers and ourselves of these values as we pass them posted in our upstairs hallway and in our tasting room daily.

We strive to be intentional with all of our decisions around the business. We try to incorporate the best work experiences that we have had in the past and eliminate the negative ones. We run an open-door policy where we freely share financials, challenges, successes and goals with our team.

Here at Telaya, family always comes first. We look at our employees as an extension of our family. Without them we wouldn’t be able to realize our dreams and provide for our own family. Each of our core employees is a full-time, salaried member of the team. We provide them with a wide range of benefits including an annual education and charity budgets. We also travel as a team twice a year. These trips allow us to brainstorm, plan events, discuss issues while empowering discussion, change, and leadership – and bond as a team. Those trips have taken us to Italy, Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico and closer to home including Park City in Utah, Big Sky in Montana and McCall in Idaho.

We empower our team to take action and to make the customer experience everything they want it to be. We encourage critical thinking and we challenge ourselves to understand problems, form intentional solutions and anticipate potential externalities that might arise. By giving the team the authority to make these decisions in real time without “asking permission”, we cement the culture that we trust our team. This also means we are ever-changing and improving on the customer experience.

Our team is constantly working to improve. We have weekly discussions on what went wrong and what went right in the past week so that we can incorporate lessons learned and improve the guest experience. We constantly strive to provide the highest level of hospitality in our industry. We incorporate active listening while engaging with guests and have built a comprehensive hospitality standards document to memorialize how we treat each other and our guests. We firmly believe that if we take care of our employees, they will take care of our customers which will then take care of the business.

Our culture should be felt right when you walk in the building when you are greeted with a warm smile, a great glass of wine and an experience that is second to none. If we have done that, we have surely succeeded.