Retail: Off-Premise
A FAMILY AFFAIR How a family-run store turned into an Arizona liquor legacy. BY ERIKA RIETZ
PHOTOGRAPHS: (THIS PAGE) MEGAN MCCABE
It was a not-so-happy accident that led Greg Eccles to open Tops Liquors in 1981: A college student in his early 20s, he was a passenger in a car wreck that left him with a broken leg—and a handsome settlement. It was Greg’s father, Bob, a Dos Equis rep and former grocery store manager, who suggested that Greg use the money to purchase a liquor store on Mill Avenue, a stone’s throw from Arizona State University. But the finance major had his sights set on a more traditional career. “I told him I didn’t want to do it. I told him I wanted to go out and make money, make my mark in life,” Greg says. “I got my degree, and five days later he had all of this mapped out ... how we’re not going to lose money, but even if we lost money, how we could sell the store and still make our money back. He convinced me. And that’s how I got to go into business with the guy I admired most in my life.” After the first year, Tops started to sell kegs to ASU’s fraternities and sororities for $35, earning a meager $5 profit. Greg delivered the kegs and taps to the fraternities midweek, then returned on Monday morning to load them onto a truck and take them back to the store, all for free. “We would do 40 keg drops a week; it was crazy. When Playboy came out with their top party schools and ASU was on the list, we were 100% part of that. We weren’t making a lot of money, but we got to know everybody in the fraternity and sorority system, and they all came to Tops Liquors. It was gangbusters. We tripled our business.” Tops has since moved a few blocks from its original location and is still popular with ASU students, but has added legions of craft spirits and beer fans from around the state
C R AF TSPIR ITSMAG.COM
to its customer base. Greg still does his share of kegs sales, but the breadth of his selection extends miles beyond low-end liquor, listing tens of thousands of bottles that range from five-figure rare whiskeys in a locked case to whiskey barrels he hand-selects for bottling. There’s even a “mezcal mountain,” a 7-foot-high display of more than 100 different mezcals. And it’s not just a volume game, it’s about curating quality and highlighting star bottles; locally made spirits and bitters are given eye-level placement on the shelves. He focuses heavily on local spirits, including a line of flavored vodkas from O.H.S.O. Brewery & Distillery’s line of Arcadia spirits (among them, Lemon, Horseradish, Rosemary and Orange) and offerings from SanTan Spirits (including Saint Anne’s Botanical Gin Kashmir Spice and Sacred Stave Arizona Rye Whiskey). “We always tried to carry everything that the grocery stores didn’t cover. That was our thing, and it still is to this day. And it works.” Greg and his dad made annual pilgrimages to Tennessee and Kentucky distilleries with two or three employees to pick out barrels for special bottle releases back at the store. Their tasting process was serious business: “There’s no talking. There are no expressions. Nothing. There’s no way to influence the person next to you.” Each taster scored the barrels on paper, and the barrels with the most points were selected. Last year, shortly before they were supposed to do the whiskey trip together, Greg’s father passed away at the age of 86. “On the plane we decided to dedicate all of the barrels to my dad; we said, ‘Let’s come up with
some names for the barrels,’” Greg recalls. “My dad’s name was Wilson Robert Eccles, but he always went by Bob because he hated Wilson; when he was a kid they’d call him Willy. We told the master distiller at Willett Distillery about my dad, and we came up with the name Don’t Call Me Willy. So we put it on the bottle.” Don’t Call Me Willy turned out to be a coveted 131-proof rye whiskey, and all 75 bottles of it sold out in two days. Tops was always a father-son effort, but the liquor store business permeated the rest of the Eccles family, as well; Greg and Bob partnered with Greg’s sisters and brother to open nearby Sun Devil Liquors in the early 1990s (which they sold three years ago). The employees at Tops are equally close-knit; most of the people who have worked there were passionate customers first, and some have worked in the store for more than 20 years. Soon, the next generation of Eccles will be taking the reins: Greg’s son, Ben, and daughter, Kirsten, who have both helped to run the store for more than decade, will become the new owners of Tops Liquors when Greg retires this spring. ■
F E BRUARY 20 20
| 57