Adeline Mangevine Hasty despatches from the frontline of wine retailing shop model in terms of the food we’ll be
serving, but I’m keeping that under wraps for now.”
Whalley can wait for new wine bar Tom Jones at The Whalley Wine Shop has been looking to separate out the retail and on-trade aspects of the business, so when the site next door became available, he jumped at the chance to take it on as a wine bar. “It’s a challenging time for all of us,” he
says, “but you have to look past this and plan for what the next step is.”
Originally the idea was to open in the
old Barclays bank site this summer, but for
W
e’ve just had the best two
weeks of business outside of Christmas, for all the
wrong reasons. Our shelves look like
something out of Russia in the 1970s –
apart from the super premium reds and whites, of course. Stockpiling always
covers the essentials, never the treats.
Gav’s gone into self-isolation because
his girlfriend has terrible asthma and I’m exhausted from making up everything as
I go along. And from him asking what the plan is for the future. How the hell do I
know? I don’t even know if I’ll still be in
business in a few months’ time. Or indeed if some of my suppliers will still be going. We stopped the drink-in offering
obvious reasons things are on hold for now.
before the government announcement, as
has ground to a halt, we’re still heading in
a handful of occupied tables due to Dry
Jones says: “It’s still bubbling away in the
background, and though the everyday stuff the right direction.
“We’re lucky that we can carry on with
the delivery side of things. It gives us the luxury of being able to plan how we’re going to grow.”
Jones anticipates that he will need a bar
manager and an assistant manager as well as a number of part-time bar staff.
“I want to give quite a bit of freedom to
Gav got uncomfortable at how crowded it was suddenly getting. We went from
January, and then Lent, to the last chance saloon. Lucrative though it was, I just
“Some of our key lines will be in there
and we’ll want some of the suppliers we work closely with to have a presence. So
although there’ll be some overlap, I hope there’ll be some unique products too.”
Jones estimates that construction will
take about two months. “So as it won’t be the summer, like every good house move, we’ll be in by Christmas,” he says
slapped together a version of my longplanned-but-never-quite-happened
online shop, including some mixed cases. Needless to say, unlike loo roll, people
are not repeat stockpiling wine. But the orders are steady. We deliver in time
for the weekend and – unlike Deliveroo or Uber Eats – we get to keep all our
margin. I am, in fact, rather moved by
Lent, lockdown and the last chance saloon – and some love from our customers
many people are understanding when
Something about staff and customer safety …
As I write this, we are now doing
customers calling up saying they wanted
kinds of wines we are serving.
by phone and email and have hastily
#stayathome hashtag-loving friends.
sounding story to my virtue-signalling,
and have the chance to put their own
stamp on things, including decisions on the
So now I am taking bespoke orders
how many people have come out of
I am telling a better, more responsible-
delivery only. Again, I am sounding
person who can come in early at the start
he has said in a long, long time.
couldn’t manage it on my own. Though
whoever we recruit as the bar manager,”
he explains. “Hopefully I will find the right
about taking precautions, not something
responsible in how I tell it, but I needed a bloody big nudge to get here: several to support me but didn’t want to shop in crowded spaces, where all sorts of
people were handling the bottles. I tried to restrict the number of customers
coming in at any one time, and then tried to keep them from touching the wares.
But for all those voicing concerns, there
were plenty of others who just acted like
social distancing and hygiene didn’t apply to them. Then Mr M started nagging me
THE WINE MERCHANT april 2020 7
the woodwork in support of their local independent wine merchant. And how you don’t have their favourite wine in
stock because you are limiting how much you buy. If only running an independent wine shop could always be like this.
Without, of course, the deadly virus.