The van I was riding in pulled off the highway in Lompoc, California, amid vineyards and processors in Santa Barbara County. As we turned onto Industrial Way, I encountered a type of outsourcing I didn't know existed.
Parking Lot Bottling.
A large 18-wheeler size vehicle was opened up like a giant food truck, with big awning flaps propped open. From the rear, a team of men were unloading boxes.
The static sounds of a cranked-up boom box spewed a peppy song in Spanish with lots of drum beats and horns. A crew of workers lifted cartons from a conveyor hooked to the back of the truck, and carried them over to smaller transport vans.
The winemaker who was about to take my friends and I up to the hills to see the vineyards stopped to explain to us that the truck is a mobile wine-bottling facility. Inside the truck is a fully automated operation. You can see through the wide sides that a carousel rotates around, pumping the bottles full of wine.
Labels are applied and then the bottles are corked.
It struck me as a clever alternative, so that a small winery need not maintain its own bottling equipment. It's outsourcing at its best. Literally outside. In the parking lot.