Are any folks on this board running a wine bar/retail hybrid?
I am working on a business plan in this space and would love to pick some brains if there are folks out there.
I realize that all concept are a little bit different, and state and local laws are a significant impact (this would be in Chicago), but would love the opportunity for some existing wisdom anyway!
Where are you now in this journey? This post got buried under others since January.
Still working on it. Business plan and concept developed.
Scoping locations… but we have a very narrow focus and nothing great available right now. Also likely will require zoning changes. Chicago is complicated.
There was a place in the town next to us called Rosie’s Wine Bar, part wine store and part restaurant. You could pull a bottle off the shelf and have it with your meal, they added a nominal mark up for that
Let me know when you open 
gives me an excuse to visit my brother and drink wine!
HI
My spot is a winebar retail. More wine bar than retail but retail is growing.
Happy to help.
angie
You should try to reach out to Ed Moore of The Third Corner in San Diego. He’s been doing hybrid wine shop/wine bar/restaurant for at least 20 years. As far as I know the first to do so
Division Wines in Portland … you walk in and the split is left right. Left side shelf’s filled with retail. Right side nice long bar with tables. Awesome wine btg great food.
Sea Horsey in Lincoln on the coast just opened this summer and they are tiny boutique style. Curated wall of wine with some tables for glass and small bites.
If you dm Sea Horsey folks on IG I’m sure they’d chat!
Talk to Zach at Easy Does It. Super nice guy and a great operator.
The 3rd Corner was the first, I believe. Opened more than 2 decades ago and seems to be going strong with two locations (Ocean Beach and Encinitas). Head chef was Ed’s head chef at his previous restaurant Thee Bungalow, so good food is definitely part of the appeal.
Yes, they are still going, but I don’t know whether I would say they are going strong. The selection and quality of the wine that they have for sale has dropped dramatically. I used to be able to buy things like scarecrow, Peter Michael, kongsguard and other highly allocated wines at below release price, but those days are gone. Pricing is higher now too
They still do Saturday tasting, but at least in Encinitas the gal who does them doesn’t really know what she’s doing
As with many things, it was a time and place that is in the past
The food is still OK and it’s still a decent deal to pick up a bottle of wine off the shelf and pay a few bucks corkage to have it with dinner, but it’s a shadow of what it was
That’s too bad. But I’m guessing Ed’s at the point of retiring. There was always a selection of choice wines for sale that weren’t out with the rest of the bottles (iykyk). I’d only ever been to the OB location and (when it existed) the one out towards Palm Springs.
Ed and his wife are still around going strong. They still make the big biannual trip to the burgundy trade tasting in France every other year. Ironically, a friend of mine was able to get an invite a few years ago and once you get in, they invite you back every year and you can bring another person who also gets invited back every year. I’ve got a standing invite to go and they tell me it’s the craziest experience you could ever have drinking hundreds upon hundreds of high-end Burgundy you could never have anywhere else. And best of all one of the friends who now goes has French as his first language so as American, who speaks perfect fluid French, he is able to charm his way into just about anything that is going on there for the small group of my friends that goes over
The Palm Springs location only lasted a few years. Too much seasonality there.
And they still have small locked reserve rooms, though what is in them is a shadow of what used to be in them