Big changes in the store this past week – we tripled our beer selection and moved just about every bottle of wine around.
We wanted to capture the beer sales that Sheridan’s has been doing, so knew for the last few months that we’d need to expand that. The challenge was how to do it. When we were designing the store we thought the bar in the retail side would be a nice asset, letting people look out the window as they had a glass of wine. It ended up being just dead space, though, mainly used as overflow for our paperwork or random bottles. So, a couple of weeks ago we had our carpenter (the fabulous Greg Beaupre of Willow Design) come in to cut the bar down significantly, allowing for another wine rack along the back wall.
On Tuesday, we got in another double beer cooler to put next to our existing cooler; we moved the wood shelving that had been there to the corner near the retail cash register; and moved the wine rack that was there to the newly created space along the back wall. So far, so good.
What we’ve also been noticing, though, is that our wine racks were leaning forward, and it was starting to freak me out. (All that inventory crashing to the ground, plus potential liability….) The manufacturer recommends securing them to the wall, but when we started up the shelving units were several weeks late in arriving and I needed to put them together and get the wine in them ASAP so we could open, and the way the space is configured there was no easy way to secure them. They seemed sturdy enough, so I hoped they’d be fine. They weren’t. Rather than risk losing several thousand dollars worth of inventory, I had Greg come in on Wednesday morning to fix it. Tuesday night after the sparkling wine tasting we pulled down all of the bottles in the racks (fortunately, there was some sparkling wine left over from the tasting, which made the late night more tolerable). I got back to the shop at 6 on Wednesday morning to help Greg pull back the racks, install 2×4s by the windows, and secure and align the racks. They’re upright and rock solid now, and Greg secured them to each other so that when you look down the row, it’s a smooth unbroken line instead of being herky-jerky like it had been. Little things like that make me inordinately happy.
We also took the opportunity to reorganize all of the wine – the US had been all over the place, with California red in one section, white in another, and WA and OR still another. We unified the US (if only the real world was that easy) and created a more logical flow. (imagine, OR Pinot next to CA Pinot!)
A busy week, but a definite improvement. It’s hard and all-consuming now, but if we just keep plugging away and working to improve all the time, I know it’s going to pay off.