(philosophy)
We have two goals in operating our store. First, find great tasting wines that represent a good value, regardless of their price, preferably from small, quality producers. Second, provide our customers with an inviting , informative, and comfortable environment for buying their wine.
To achieve our first goal we work hard with our distributors to find wines that taste great, but are overlooked by most retailers since they don’t have a BIG name or a BIG marketing budget. Then we do something extraordinary … we actually taste the wine. Too many wines these days are sold by “the score.” The score is done by somebody that the customer never gets a chance to talk with about the wine. Also, that person who determines the score, doesn’t have to stand behind the product. WE DO!! We stand behind each and every bottle of wine (or beer, or accessory, or whatever) and we will work hard to make sure that the customer is happy. One of the owners was fortunate enough to have had a chance to meet and chat with Stanley Marcus, of Nieman-Marcus fame, a number of years ago. Stanley told him that retail was really very simple … “sell products that don’t come back, so your customers do.” We believe that he was right and so we work hard to find great products for our customers so they will keep coming back to our store.
How do you make a store inviting and comfortable for people to shop in? Vino per tutti has been designed to be uncluttered, leaving the focus on the wine. We have made sure that our aisles are wide, the wines are all well labeled and displayed, and there is more information about the wine than just how much it costs. We even store our wine as it should be, on its side instead of upright on a shelf.
We strongly believe that wine is an information rich product. There is the history of the winery or the area where it comes from. What kind of grapes are in the wine, how the wine was made, who made the wine. And then there is the experience of the wine, how does it smell, how does it taste? Unfortunately, most wine is sold in an information poor environment. You simply can’t get a lot of information from a sign that says “Staff Favorite” or “On Sale Now.” We have greater information about each and every wine in our store than most stores have for all of their wines combined.